An open-source privacy audit of popular web browsers.

I am a little disappointed that Vivaldi did not do so well in this test. What do you think? Is there a way to improve Vivaldi in these areas? Is it necessary? Should privacy-conscious people use another browser?

  • @accentgrave@lemm.ee
    31•10 months ago

    The person doing these tests works for Brave and doesn’t disclose this on the main page. He keeps spamming social media with his results and therefore this comes up time and time again. The main problem is that he refuses to test browsers which have been configured, he always tests them ootb. For Vivaldi this means ad and tracking protection is disabled, even though the choice of setting this up is presented to the user in the very first setup steps (one‐click operation), without the need to visit settings …

    I wouldn’t take the results serious. If you want a sliver/the chance of privacy, you have to use Tor browser anyway.

    • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
      8•10 months ago

      Of course this is bullshit. One single Browser does not win in basically every category except this is an advertisement for said browser.

      • Catweazle
        1•10 months ago

        @Dirk @accentgrave, many are confused about what is important to privacy. These are not technical details or statistics (OS, screen resolution, language, etc.) that are important for the proper functioning of a web page, but personal data
        It is always a compromise, if I activate all the protections it has, many pages stop working correctly. Privacy depends more on the search engines used and the user’s common sense than on the browser(if other than Chrome/EDGE/Opera)

        • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
          1•10 months ago

          if I activate all the protections it has, many pages stop working correctly.

          I use cookie whitelist AND a Javascript whitelist. I’m used to not “properly working” websites.

            • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
              1•10 months ago

              Yep. I have a “set” of sites I allow cookies and JS for because I use those sites on a regular basis. Everything else can screw off.

              If I really need the information on a site an I am quite sure I cannot get this information on another site I open it in a private mode window where JS is allowed and cookies are destroyed after closing the window. Otherwise Ctrl+W it is …

              • Catweazle
                1•10 months ago

                @Dirk, a good extension I use and which is a good complement for your ad and trackerblocker. It’s called Site Bleacher it’s remove by default all the crap from the pages you visit (cookies, local storages, IndexedDBs, service workers, cache storages, filesystems and webSQLs…), except from the whitelisted sites, all other you “had never visited”.

                https://github.com/wooque/site-bleacher

                Don’t forget to whitelist the sites where you want to log in.

        • teft's transporter clone
          0•10 months ago

          Sure many pages stop working but did you want to use those ones anyways? There’s a reason they break if the privacy stuff is turned on in your browser.

    • DarkThoughts
      2•10 months ago

      Kinda suspected something like this with Brave being so highly rated. Pretty sure if you add the usual privacy addons to Firefox you’ll end up with more or less the same results.

    • @AndreTelevise@lemm.ee
      1•10 months ago

      Even if this is independent, Brave turns off a lot of the kinds of trackers and scripts that make big corporate social media websites work properly. That’s why a lot fo those websites load slower on Brave than on something like Vivaldi.

    • BrikoX
      1•10 months ago

      Important context, original test was created before they were invited to work at Brave and in part because of their creation of the test. And LibreWolf and Mullvad wins the tests, not Brave.

      And testing out-of-the-box experience is valid use case as that is what most of the non-tech people you recommend the browser will run.

      Also while it’s great that Vivaldi has ad and tracker protection added, it’s average at best. Installing uBlock Origin with default configuration is better than what Vivaldi offers.

    • BrikoX
      -1•10 months ago

      Full disclosure and transparency
      (Updated June 2022)

      This website and the browser privacy tests are an independent project by me, Arthur Edelstein. I have developed this project on my own time and on my own initiative. Several months after first publishing the website, I became an employee of Brave, where I contribute to Brave’s browser privacy engineering efforts. I continue to run this website independently of my employer, however. There is no connection with Brave marketing efforts whatsoever.

      I am committed to maintaining this website’s accuracy and impartiality. It is my goal not to promote any browser here, but rather to offer objective test results for all browsers that encourages a general improvement in privacy across the industry.

      By keeping this project fully open source, I endeavor to provide the maximum possible transparency and verifiability of the tests and results. Anyone who wishes to check the results can clone the git repository and run the browser tests independently. Ideas for additional tests, or code (pull requests) for additional tests that provide further insight into browser privacy, will be gratefully accepted.

      https://privacytests.org/about.html

      • EinarOP
        1•10 months ago

        You down vote for providing a source!?

        Right…

      • @accentgrave@lemm.ee
        1•10 months ago

        The point is his allegiance should be disclosed front and center on the main page. Might as well declare it as Brave browser advertisement. You can’t be impartial, if you work for the company.