Old Habits Die Hard, But Things Have Changed
When most people thing of web browsers, Chrome, Firefox and occasionally Edge are immediately mentioned. Chrome is fully controlled by a company that seems to have dropped a word from their old motto of “Don’t Be Evil”, Firefox is prevaricating about what the word ‘sell’ means when it comes to your private data and usage statistics, and the only thing you can say about Edge is that it’s not Internet Explorer. There are other names that have cropped up, and while Vivaldi so far seems innocent, Brave was caught doing questionable things numerous times. This led Hackaday to take a look at some of the new kids on the block to see how well they work as a web browser and if they offer better privacy protection that the aforementioned mainstream web browsers.
They settled on trying out Vivaldi, which is trying to keep the feel of Opera alive, and LibreWolf which is a custom version of Firefox which is being developed completely separately from the Mozilla. They also took the opportunity to rethink their search engine provider, settling on Qwant. That search engine is based in France, which means it complies with the GDPR and is very focused on protecting the privacy of those who use it.
If you’re a victim of habit and are concerned about the lackadaisical attitude many of these web browsers and search engines have towards your private data, take a look at the new web browser offerings.