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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely hate the combined location/search bar. I get the autofill of previous locations visited, but sending every single key press is not something I'm interested in at all. Is this a Chrome only feature or any browser that has default search engine set to Google?

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Install Firefox, add search bar back to the menu, disable URL bar search, job’s a good’un.

Firefox phones home every time it is opened.

Install Librewolf or Mullvad Browser. Both are based on Firefox and shouldn't phone home.

Tye key question is why.

For example, if it phones home to check it’s up to date then I’m OK with that.

If it’s for advertising then I’m not OK with it.

No, the reason doesn't matter. Seemingly-benign things like update checks, NTP syncs, and weather apps still create metadata about the fact that you're awake and using the computer plus your physical location. Not even VPN avoids this.

So... we should all protest any form of device that features DNS caching or OCSP?

To do what exactly?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid#:~:t....

So you're telling someone that's looking for an alternative to Google automatically collecting every keystroke they make and using it for ads, not to switch to Firefox because Mozilla collects, uhm, telemetry?

Do you really not see the difference?

That's not what I said at all ... not even remotely close. I said Firefox phones home, which it does. Firefox is OK but it's not all rainbows and unicorns.

Toggling everything off in “Data Collection and Use” in settings doesn’t change this?

I would assume it's most browsers. You can see Google suggestions popping under the address bar as you type on many browsers: Safari, Firefox, etc.

Some people can, but I've disabled that shite. Also, I don't use Chrome, so it would still be interesting if the default search was not Google in Chrome to see if Chrome still sends the keystrokes to Googs. It's one of those things that I've always hoped Chrome keylogging was just a conspiracy theory, but never cared to look one way or the other. There are some things that even for science I just don't have the time, so hoping others will/do.

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