Privacy browser?

[Bozo]

Epic Browser

 

[ddrueding]

It looks like they've done their homework and are in fact offering a very secure experience. That also by definition makes it a very clunky experience. I know people who will consider it a worthwhile compromise, but I'm not one of them.

 

[CougTek]

It uses Chromium as a base. I'll try it for a while. It looks reasonably modern.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Mercutio]

I already have a number of ways to sandbox in the browser I'm most comfortable using. The place where I'm most theoretically concerned with this is actually on my mobile devices, but given the way mobile operates, I'm not sure it's even remotely possible to have truly private communications using devices from any major platform.

 

[ddrueding]

I already have a number of ways to sandbox in the browser I'm most comfortable using. The place where I'm most theoretically concerned with this is actually on my mobile devices, but given the way mobile operates, I'm not sure it's even remotely possible to have truly private communications using devices from any major platform.

I'd agree that this is where the concern is greatest. I haven't looked into VPN connections from a mobile device, but that would be the only way I can think of. The device itself might as well belong to them, and the pipe out also belongs to them. Hiding your location is impossible, and hiding what apps you install is futile. Establishing an encrypted VPN might prevent them from seeing what sites you are going to, but this is of limited utility considering all the rest is already theirs.

 

[Mercutio]

Really, the only thing you could do is end participation in the walled app gardens, force a VPN connection to a trusted service provider and only use audited open-source client software. Which is closer to the tiny blip on the market that is the Mozilla Smartphone than anything else that actually exists. Or I guess you could root your device and use the local hosts file to prevent all communication with whatever service providers you don't want to talk to. I have no idea how that would impact things like PRL updates or other basic mobile device functions, and there's really nothing you can do about the SIM or SIM-like transceivers you might have.

And I suspect you'd probably want to route everything possible through TOR starting at a non-logging VPN service to add some deniability.

Since the OpenBSD people aren't talking in any serious way about solving mobile device paranoia on that level, we're probably SOL.

 

[P5-133XL]

I can manually configure the incognito version of Chrome to do virtually everything that Epic is doing. That being said, I kinda like some of the speedups, (like caching) and features (ad blocking for example) that are turned off by the ultra-paranoid.

I actually keep two browsers running all the time with two separate favorites. One is used for a very limited set of standard sites I visit and are known to be safe and without any advertising on them like StorageForum or foldingforum. The other is the default browser (so I can click on 3rd party links and it is the browser that will run), and is configured to be incognito and ultra-paranoid. I use the incognito browser for almost everything. I also have a 3rd ultra paranoid incognito browser that runs on a virtual machine sandbox for known high risk sites. I've never used Tor, mainly because I want to use my browser choice than limit myself only to Tor's. I have played with some anonymizing proxy-sites but found that lots of sites (specifically forums) just refuse to allow me to login using them.

 

[Bozo]

I have Vidalia load when starting the computer. That connects me to the TOR network. I have been using Epic for a browser. Sometimes it is too restrictive though.

 

[P5-133XL]

A relatively non-technical article on NSA's ability to beat TOR. I thought it was somewhat interesting.

 

[Mercutio]

Honestly, I'm not worried about the NSA, simply because I'm not doing anything the NSA would find terribly interesting. I'm more interested in avoiding the notice of media companies and the like, who probably wouldn't like many of my online activities. I doubt the NSA shares all that much data with them, or that media companies are savvy enough to do anything with data on the level that the NSA must collect it.

 

[P5-133XL]

I'm not worried about the NSA either except as an abstract govt. privacy issue. I'm an American and still believe in my own privacy rights. I understand that the vast majority of internet users just give it away but I'm not of that persuasion.

I understand why the NSA would be very interested in TOR. That being said, considering TOR's reputation I thought it was pretty much unhackable on a practical level. I guess I was wrong. I suppose PGP is likely to also have been compromised and that I just don't know about it yet.

 

[Bozo]

The government thinks everybody that uses a torrent program to download files, is a crook. They must also believe that everybody that uses TOR is a terrorist.

 

[mubs]

I suppose PGP is likely to also have been compromised and that I just don't know about it yet.

It has. I can't provide hard links, but Snowden's revelations pretty much confirmed it - I remember reading about it with dismay.

 

[LunarMist]

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