Web Browser telemetry - 2025 edition
https://sizeof.cat/post/web-browser-telemetry-2025-edition/#vivaldiOpen linkView original on lemmy.ml117
Comments21https://sizeof.cat/post/web-browser-telemetry-2025-edition/#vivaldiOpen linkView original on lemmy.ml
Thank you for posting this! I assumed some FF-based browsers, while claiming to remove telemetry, in fact still phoned home to a degree. This is good know!
Also, I was surprised by a few others on the list, like Mullvad, Kagi, and DuckDuckGo, being so straightforward -- not that making fewer connections implies better privacy, as even a single connection can transmit any kind of data, but moreso that there some browsers that are designed to operate with less complexity.
Really surprised by Zen, which is a FF derivative claiming to be all about a 'beautiful' and 'simple' web browsing experience, having a ton of connections.
beautiful and simple don't necessarily mean privacy oriented. It's marketing language
That line chart should be a bar chart.
🤮
I think a big improvement to these test would be to show what actually gets send. You can do this with a certificate and a proxy.
Not so important how much telemetries, but where these go. A complex feature rich browser can have a lot of tech telemetries, but this is only bad if these go to sites not related to the functionality and third parties, eg. to Facebook, Amazon and others.
Does "more telemetries" mean "worse"? What if the least telemetry (greater than zero) had the Omega Mother of All Telemetries which crams everything the others do times 47 + 3 into one?
No, worse is not the amount, but where they are sent these telemetrias. A browser with a lot of features may have also a lot of tech telemetries related to these features to ensure a smooth operation. This is not the same as sending browserdata to third parties, like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. which has nothing to do with the browserfeatures but with logging and selling userdata. Even worse if you use above an search engine which logs your activity, like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
Yeah something is broken here...
I thought it was just me until I saw this
Surprisingly Firefox is at 6 percent. I expected it to hover around the 3 percent mark.
Why? It's easily the best popular browser
What is the point of these stats, they could be uploading your entire drive with 1 connection. And some of the connections are there because they bundle ublock, why should that count?
I was really enjoying Zen browser aswell
Sorry to say, but both Zen and Floorp were obvious honeypots from the beginning.
Unsolicited advice, but don't adopt the latest browser/search engine/OS that promise privacy and/or security, and you'll avoid a lot of disappointment. Most fall apart at the seams within a year or less.
If the one browser/SE/OS you currently use works, stick with it until more research on the newer stuff comes out. Then you can reassess.
Ungoogled chromium looks good to me. I wish this author tested mobile browsers as well
I uninstalled it after the whole security debacle discussion on GitHub. But the browser was quite enjoyable to use indeed.
Oo ty for this I was toying with the idea of installing it but I guess I wont now :)
I thought firefox and ungoogled chromium did same job in terms of privacy.
I see I was wrong.
https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/