LibreWolf is a great privacy oriented Browser for desktop. But there is no version for android or IOS . There are some like mull but they have their own problems. Mobile phones stay with us most of the day. So we need extra privacy for it.
This always gets downvoted, because it’s a painful truth, but Chromium on Android is significantly more secure than Firefox.
There is a reason why the default included browser on GrapheneOS, Vanadium, is a Chromium fork.
So I’m sorry, until Firefox on Android catches up to Chromium, another Firefox fork isn’t going to make the impact on the ecosystem that you think it is.
I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t use Firefox forks on Android, I’m saying do so being aware of their limitations relative to Chromium forks, such as Cromite, or Mulch, the latter being the same dev as Mull. That same dev also has a lengthy write-up going over the technical details of why Chromium is more secure than Firefox on Android.
This has nothing to do with desktop browser engines, this is specifically and exclusively in regards to Android browsers
Mull is a good choice for android at the moment
Oh, cool. I hadn’t heard of this one before. I use Fennec. I wonder what the main differences are. I noticed Mull mentions fennec in their F-droid page:
It [Mull] is compiled from source and proprietary blobs are removed using scripts by Relan from [https://gitlab.com/relan/fennecbuild here].
It seems like Mull is more privacy focused?
I just swapped to mull today. Fennec is only on fdroid or build it yourself. Fdroid updates take a week for official repo. Mull can get faster updates through DivestOS repo. Firefox just had a huge 0day and fennec is currently vulnerable.
Ahh, cool! Good to know. I just checked that 0day, and they’re both JS exploits (which I imagine most probably are), so NoScript will probably protect me unless some of my trusted domains get compromised. It’s not ideal, but it’s within my comfort tolerance.
It’s not LibreWolf, but how about IceRaven?
https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browserHas been my goto FireFox fork for Android for years.
True. For now I got a combo of Firefox and Firefox focus. Set focus as default browser, and if you do need cookies, copy the link.
The problem is that they both have telemetry.
Firefox Klar has telemetry disabled to comply with stricter German regulation
Fennec, maybe?
Just to mention, Fennec’s F-droid page does list the following as an anti-feature:
This app tracks and reports your activity
Connects to various Mozilla services that can track users.It does say that telemetry has been removed, but that it still connects to services (like Firefox Sync, for example) which could still potentially be used to track you.
That’s not a dealbreaker for me personally, but if it bothers anyone else, it seems like Mull might be the more privacy conscious choice, at the cost of some convenience features.
Soo, what “own problems” does mull have? I mean, pretty much fennec with some tor patches
Like today i tested Firefox nightly (to see new changes on official Firefox). After changing bunch of setting and dns i compared it with mull. Somehow mull was slow and it was taking longer to load the same page. ( good thing is mull has no telemetry)
My thing against Firefox/Librewolf is lack of security…unless it’s improved?
Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they’re currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn’t have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox’s sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn’t happening for their Android browser yet.
So that leaves the choice between giving our data to Google or randos on the internet then?
or randos on the internet then?
I mean isn’t that practically everyone on the Internet that you don’t know personally? Or do you actually know the Firefox and/or Librewolf team, and audit their code as well?
If no to both…sounds like you are putting some measure of trust into “randos on the Internet.” Which is not abnormal. Trust is required at some point in most processes.
