You Suddenly Need to Stop Using Google Chrome | Hacker News Reader

You Suddenly Need to Stop Using Google Chrome

forbes.com

40 pointsBerislavLopac30 comments

The author, according to the bio-data on the piece, is "the Founder/CEO of Digital Barriers—developing advanced surveillance solutions for defence, national security and counter-terrorism. " It's ironic that he is lecturing us on privacy matters while developing surveillance solution at the same time.

Not really ironic.

It is not like is Zuckerberg collecting "dumb **s'" data while having a dummy plug into his 3.5mm laptop port. That is hypocrisy.

This is just good advice.

I mean doesn't that give him some level of knowledge?

Why is it ironic?

I believe it is a fair warning, and if somebody he knows how easy to collect data through these companies. In some way he might be a not-radical Snowden.

Went back to Firefox about a year ago, it's sometimes painful but overall the experience is very decent, I only use Chrome for Node debugging now.

"Remember that as it is a shame to be surprised if the fig-tree produces figs."

Main pain points:

- sometimes sites are built in a weird way and something like document download doesn't work, modals/content loading misbehave

- HomeDepot.com; about 30% of the time when I visit that site, I cannot successfully Add to Cart... why it works sometimes and not others is a great mystery!

- recently was working through a React/Redux tutorial and was put off that the developer assumed you were using Chrome in your development workflow (OK this isn't a typical browser usage pain point, but it lowered my opinion of the tutorial author...)

- reCaptcha is much more obnoxious when you're not a Chrome/Google user; no doubt the same tools you use to compartmentalize your online behavior to separate it from Google's prying eyes is why that tool is so cruel to Firefox users

- Gmail.com is painfully, dreadfully slow (I just use Thunderbird instead)

Do you have different adblockers installed or lots of Firefox extensions installed?

All of these seem inconsistent with my experience. I’d recommend a clean install without ad blockers, see if these still happen, and then layer back in your extensions one by one.

uBlock Origin, Facebook containers, multi-account containers, Bitwarden. I've tried disabling uBlock Origin for the Home Depot cart issue, but it still occurs.

Can you be more specific with how these are inconsistent with your experience? Since I said these things sometimes happen, it sounds like you just have not experienced these yet. Are you saying it's not possible someone else experienced these?

Containers are effective at making Google cookies unfresh, as is uBlock disabling Google analytics spyware.

That is sufficient to trigger the captcha unless you're actively logged into Google in the container.

Exactly my point! Google + reCaptcha is one of those things that says "if you're a good Google conformist and fall in line with our needs for data collection we can use to make truckloads of money, here's your ticket to the I'm A Human express train for using the internet!"

I may not have been clear in my original comment, but I wasn't blaming Firefox for the pain points; just pointing them out.

Geez, that site's cookie consent pop-up is several phone screens long, listing all manners of trackers..

Exactly, I couldn’t even find a way to turn it off. Anyone could figure it out?

Edit, apparently Forbes doesn’t think mobile Safari on a modern mid screen device is important enough to make sure the option bar on the bottom renders ok. The buttons were hidden by their mobile view. Excellent dark pattern forbes!

Disabling JavaScript should work.

"What is this 'JavaScript' of which you speak?" asked Lynx.

Using Firebox and uBlock origin and didn't see any prompts.

Same here and me neither.

And that is pretty interesting...

An article that says don't use Chrome, was difficult to read in Chrome.

There's a browser extension, if you truly don't care

https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

It did the same on Chrome (well, Bromite) on Android. Some "clever" web dev must've thought of it.

Forbes is one of those sites I've seen been anti-ad-blocker, and I haven't visited it in a couple years because it was just more hassle than it's worth. And yet, this page opened right up for me with no issue or pop-ups.

Firefox + uBlock Origin on Windows.

Google makes money off your data and spies on everything you do, more at 11

I'd actually like to for privacy reasons, but until someone else produces a Mac browser that has live captioning support or Apple adds it at the system level, that's going to be hard to do... quick, easy captioning is a killer feature for me. :(

Does anyone have suggestions for mobile browser?

My best bet right now is duckduckgo privacy browser, but I do not like the fact that it is locking me in their search engine.

I’ve used Firefox on mobile for a long time. Perfect, no, but it’s not Chrome and can sync my bookmarks.

I use Firefox for most things. Sometimes I use Firefox Focus for sites I don't want to store in my history (like Slickdeals.net; I'm on that site too much as it is, so I try to make it less convenient. Totally not to hide my shopping habits :)!)

I use uBlock Origin and Bitwarden on Firefox for Android. It's really nice to have the option to install add-ons!

Brave is a pretty decent choice on mobile.

I recently switched to Brave and have been quite happy with it. Their new syncV2 works pretty well. Plus, I get a perfect import of all chrome settings including extensions.

I like Safari, it goes a long way to provide sufficient protection out of the box and without the need to install or configure anything.

2 things i hate about Firefox on iOS:

- Can't change font size (such a basic feature...)

- Content blocker (strict) is worse than Safari + Adguard

Other than that, i like it. Can set my own search provider, and i'm using Sync with Desktop as well.

Safari. Everything else is just a mobileSafari wrapper, so it seems redundant using anything else unless you have all your passwords tied up in something proprietary.

Brave and Firefox

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