this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
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Vivaldi is extremely slow on IOS and 2gb+ big. Firefox has no extensions so no Adblock. Generally there are few privacy friendly/Foss browsers on IOS.
That's because so far every browser on iOS had to use WebKit as it's HTML rendering engine, meaning that even if you installed another browser manually you were basically still using Safari under the hood. IIRC the new DMA rules include allowing other browser engines like Gecko, so Mozilla is probably already working on making addons available. I mean they are available on Android, so why wouldn't they make them available on iOS now that they finally can?
I wouldn’t be sure because of how stupid Apples compliance is. But if they do I would definitely switch. I guess it’s just going to be Firefox focus until then.
Um, Safari is so privacy friendly that Google regularly asks me if I'm human. For example it has "private relay" which is similar to TOR* so trackers don't even know your IP address — combine that with blocking third party cookies (and even some first party cookies) by default and providing false data to fight fingerprinting even if you don't block trackers entirely - and blocking them entirely is as simple as installing an extension. Private Relay also adds a layer of encryption on top of DNS queries and otherwise unencrypted http traffic.... so your ISP/Cellular provider/Work/School/abusive husband/etc can't track you
99.99% of the Safari's code is FOSS — dual licensed under LGPL and BSD.
It's not the browser I use - pretty lacking in the feature department, but it's definitely more pro-privacy than Brave or FireFox. I've never had to jump through a captcha to use Google in those browsers.
(* if anything, it's better than TOR... with that service there's a risk your entry/exit nodes are tracking you. With Private Relay it's always one of Apple's servers for the entry node and a reputable cloud company like Akamai for the exit node. Both would have to be compromised in order to identify you... maybe a nation state can do that, but a big data tracking company definitely can't)
Private relay is more like a VPN than tor.
I mean they did say few. Generally speaking, every browser is basically safari (WebKit) on iOS and apple doesn’t allow support for 3rd party browser extensions (least natively, Orion supports this somehow). So you’re already limited in that regard. If you don’t use safari , a browser like FF + VPN is IMO a better experience. You also have the option of just using wireguard and controlling your traffic at home/VPS if you’re into that.
WebKit might be open source but the browser deployed by apple is not. That’s like saying chrome is open source. They both use open source engines.
Man imagine being so far up apples butt that you actually think Safari is safer than tor
You have this backwards. Google showing you captchas is basically them saying they can't match your browser to any know (shadow) profile they have already stored. So they aren't sure you are a human and if so which one specifically. Getting harassed with a captcha is essentially like a badge of honour for your browsers privacy settings.
No they don’t, that’s exactly what they said. Safari makes them do CAPTCHAs so it is the most privacy friendly. It is true that it has better blocking features than Firefox on iOS (because Firefox doesn’t have extensions).
Firefox is deliberately gimped by Apple on iOS, along with every other browser. It's not a fair comparison. It's basically Safari without a ton of extra features that Mozilla was never going to be allowed to implement, which is why the EU decided Apple was being anti-competitive.
Firefox doesn't even need extensions to match Safari, but it does need gecko and all the settings it supports on other platforms.
Apple is a shady company and trusting them with your data is a big mistake.
I don’t disagree that Firefox is deliberately gimped, and it’s built in blocking features on desktop match Safari on iOS. I’m not sure I really agree that Apple is a “shady company,” in many respects they are doing a good job with end to end encryption and ensuring that they don’t have access to your data in the first place (not to excuse their extreme walled garden approach, which stifles competition and limits good options like Firefox [real Firefox] with uBlock Origin [or uMatrix]).
Oh you are right, I misread that. Thanks for pointing it out.
No problem
You can get one but not the other. Orion has been pretty solid for me, has all the lovey iOS integration so the happy chemicals Apple spent R&D on does it’s magic while blocking all sorts of things, but it’s closed source :/