Secure browser

[Belatucadrus]

As a long time fan of the Ghostery browser extension I was interested to note they'd been purchased by a German company called Cliqz for incorporation into their Firefox derived browser, a product in part owned by Mozilla. The browser is apparently designed to comply with tight German privacy legislation and as a result  doesn't make note of your browsing or search history and doesn't pass it on to third parties.

 

Cliqz Browser

 

Having tested it out it seems quite quick if a little spartan looking, in order to maintain its security level it doesn't support any third party plug ins or extensions, but does come with an integrated ad blocker which you will need to turn on  if you want it and Ghostery. The Ad Blocker is a beta and doesn't seem to allow any user customisation but works OK out of the box. As with most current browsers it has the ability to open links in Incognito or as they say New Forget window. It also has an integrated Video recorder that will allow you to rip You-tube vids, not that you would of course that's in breach of the T & C and totally wrong.

 

If you like the idea of a fast bare bones browser with enhanced security it's well worth a look, if your browser toolbar is stuffed to the gunnels with  Extension control buttons less so.

 

I quite like it.

[Belatucadrus]

 April 29, 2020 Cliqz had to shut down and while the browser still works there are no updates or security fixes, so it's probably a bit of a liability now. I kept it for the YouTube downloader but their new security protocols seem to have circumvented it and it's now fairly useless. My suggestion, look for an alternative. 

[Boris]

What are your thoughts on Vivaldi ?

[Belatucadrus]

I was using it on the Linux Mint machine and for a while it was fine. Then after an update it just locked up solid and nothing I could do would get it working again. This is the point when I dumped it. I never got round to running it on Windows and it looks as if they've got a new version anyway. My understanding was it was for Opera purists who didn't like the current development path of Opera.

If you're looking for a secure browser the best seems to be Tor the odd drawback seems to be that as it's so secure that while law enforcement can't see what your looking it, they can however tell your using it, which may attract their attention. Also apparently not the fastest browser.

 

For obvious reasons I doubt I'll add any new reviews, I just like to add warnings where appropriate when changes make stuff I've left open-ended potentially hazardous on the outside chance somebody reads them. 

[Belatucadrus]

Having seen that there's a new version of Vivaldi I reloaded it to the Linux machine and the new version works fine. Comes with built in AdBlocker and AntiTrack so in theory you don't need additional extensions, I have yet to test the effectiveness of these but will give them a bash. I went for the bare bones install so haven't bothered with the mail and other optional features. It does seem to mangle some webpage formats, so at the moment I don't feel like making it the default browser.

 

Other possible alternatives :

Waterfox

CCleaner Browser probably the same as Avast! You've no doubt seen the popup as CCleaner tries to foist it on you during updates. I used to be a real Avast! fan but in recent years their tendency to bundle software and the somewhat hysterically phrased popups trying to nag you into paying up for the full version made them a bit scareware and I ditched it. They also got in trouble a while back for selling off users private browsing data so how much you would trust either is open to question.

Comodo do Dragon & IceDragon . Neither of which have I tried.  

[Boris]

Vivaldi has been my browser of choice for some 18 months now. No problems at all 👍

[Belatucadrus]

Back in the day this would have inevitably prompted andsome to tell us Internet Explorer was the finest browser ever created and that all others were second rate wannabees, ho hum.