this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Data is Beautiful

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-46
Web browser privacy score - lower is better (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Vub to c/dataisbeautiful
45 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Based on https://privacytests.org

Desktop browsers in their current stable versions, sorted from better (left) to worse (right). These are:

Librewolf, Mullvad, Brave, Tor, Safari, Chromium/Ungoogled, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Chrome.

Note: Each test is counted with a value of one in this chart, however each test may not have an equal importance in regard to privacy. It still gives an image of which browsers value privacy and which do not.

The maximum (worst possible) score is 143.

Edit: Also FUCK BRAVE. But for other reasons than these points. Read the description before you vote or comment ffs...

all 46 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] slazer2au 48 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why does this site smell of marketing by brave listing all the things it can do but ignoring alternative privacy features?

Do keep in mind brave installs VPNs without your consent, solicits donation on behalf of creators and won't refund collected money, and diverts ad revenue from legitimate sites to themselves.

[–] Vub -2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Have you read the about page on privacytests.org? How is it a Brave ad (and not a Mullvad or Librewolf ad) when it is not even the best ranked?

Let me cite what I wrote above once again, please read it: "Note: Each test is counted with a value of one in this chart, however each test may not have an equal importance in regard to privacy. It still gives an image of which browsers value privacy and which do not."

I am the OP of this and I do not use Brave and would never touch it because of the scummy crap they have done. But this is NOT what this graph is showing. The website linked is certainly legit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I've been looking to replace brave on mobile, do you have any recommendations?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Firefox is great, especially with uBlock Origin

[–] Vub 1 points 11 months ago

I agree with the other comment that Firefox is a good option (especially on Android). On iOS it makes less sense to use anything other than Safari since the web rendering is done by Safari regardless of which browser app you use. Safari can also make use of adblockers though, such as Adguard.

[–] RatoGBM 31 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How on earth do you have to measure for Brave to be more private than Tor?

[–] Malkor 29 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is false, Brave propaganda. Delete this.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Several months after first publishing the website, I became an employee of Brave, where I contribute to Brave's browser privacy engineering efforts. I continue to run this website independently of my employer, however. There is no connection with Brave marketing efforts whatsoever.

Also sure, Brave blocking trackers is +13 points, and Tor not leaking your IP adress is +1... Same level of privacy.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Seems you’re getting frustrated by folks misunderstanding. I think it comes down to the oversimplification of a bar graph. Gotta offer data visualization that says what you mean it to. The bar graph says brave>tor. It’s probably best to avoid the bar graph or accept that people will misunderstand it. I’m a fan of privacytests. It’s a great starting point.

[–] Vub 8 points 11 months ago

Thank you. I think you are right, both on me being frustrated and also the weakness of the presentation. I appreciate the comment.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (5 children)

How is Firefox that high?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The tables in the source shows why.

There are many things measured in those tables around preventing URL tracking, cookies, and storing data in session storage etc which none of the mainstream browsers are doing, including Firefox.

Some of them are decisions made for good reason, because although preventing them would improve privacy it would also massively impact usability, and so only the most all-in privacy-focused browsers are doing that.

OP themselves notes that they have weighted each 'check' as a 1 and each 'cross' as a 0 in calculating the size of the bars in the chart, without consideration of how relatively important or not those features are against other.

Personally I believe the approach to generating the chart is flawed and does not give a fair measure of browser privacy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Yes, this seems like a really flawed method, and the only reason I could see someone using it would be if they were trying to make one browser appear better or worse than it really is.

The truth is this chart is misleading and not very helpful.

[–] breakingcups 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Tor too, that's even more surprising.

[–] Anticorp 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Because it's a Brave ad.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Well, now it makes sense.

[–] Vub -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It certainly is not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Even though it's not, it certainly looks like one. It's what your readers perceive that matters. I write a little blog about family life in a local newspaper. I write the content before it is published, but after publication, the text belongs to the readers. I have no possibility of altering the content after reading the comments and understanding what the people think the text is expressing. It wouldn't matter, anyway, as none will come back later to read the updated version and almost everyone will read it in the first few hours after publication. Editing after publication is futile. This is just to underpin that, explaining a graph on a different website is bonkers, as only data analysts will actually follow the link to understand the data behind the graph. "Normal" people will take the graph as is and jump to the most obvious conclusion: "Librewolf, Mullvad, Brave, Chromium are all better than Firefox, and Chrome is the worst!". Or even better, "Ah, a list of browsers. Chrome seems to be the best one. Cool! scroll". Those are the ones that didn't even comment or up- or downvote the post. You won't ever know who or how many those people are. The best approach might indeed be to delete the post, build yourself some data visualization knowledge, and come back with an improved graph. Also, even though you say it's impossible to weigh the individual points in the tests, this might still be something you have to do to get your message across, whatever that might be. It involves work. You'll be ok. Making mistakes like this and posting them publicly is what will give you the information you need to improve.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

This comment is way too long. Sorry.

[–] Vub 1 points 11 months ago

Thanks for your feedback - and no worries about it being too long :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Right, totally missed Tor.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Firefox tries to keep its defaults on the 'functional' side of safe. Firefox will pass almost every test on here by changing some settings away from default to more strict (like the enhanced privacy tracking), but doing so can actually break some websites. That said, this is a brave ad. A big tip off for me is GCP. Its development was supported by the Mozilla foundation but Firefox gets a 'fail' here because it isn't on by default. No test that expects a user to know what all these things are could also reasonably expect a user to not check if they're enabled. A fair test would have been to rate all these browsers with their defaults AND hardened (without plugins). Keep in mind Brave doesn't give you the choice to disable GCP, they dictate what you can and cannot do in this regard, so it isn't possible to A/B test Brave's behavior in a lot of these cases.

[–] Vub 0 points 11 months ago

I can guarantee you it is not a “Brave ad” (again, sigh), I am a Firefox user which found this website with a bunch of tests. I am not claiming it is perfect, the best thing would be able to weigh different tests based on importance. But I am not aware of any website with more accurate data. Do you a link to one? I’d be happy to make another, better one.

[–] Vub 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

How is Firefox that high?

How? Firefox 121 has that score because it "failed" on 86 of the 143 tests, you can see which tests if you go to the source.

As someone already commented, Firefox actually lets a bunch of things through and has telemetry. But it can be hardened and it is (IMO) the best browser all-in-all.

But it is not perfect.

Please note (AGAIN) that 1 test (1 point) here is NOT equal to all other tests. But I have no way to weigh one test against another, there are 143 tests (points) to consider. I thought it was obvious but for some reason people chose not to read the description, or misunderstood it. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I appreciate your effort in doing the work and putting the chart together :)

You fairly disclosed how it was all generated, but sadly not everyone will read that. A lot of people are going to look at that chart and their conclusion will be "Wow, Firefox is like a tenth as private as Brave!" - which you and I both know is not a true statement at all.

Even if people did read it, things get saved and shared out of context all the time, and before you know it this chart is going to pop up in some Discord argument as evidence for why Firefox sucks just as much as Chrome, completely divorced from your comments or any reference of where the data came from - the source website URL isn't part of the image either.

I guess that's the danger of visualisations. Data Viz can paint a complex picture clearly in an instant, we just have to make sure its painting the right one.

[–] Vub 1 points 11 months ago

Thank you so much for writing this, the mindless comments made me kind of depressed and I considered never posting anything to Lemmy again. :D But your comment made me think otherwise, and I should not forget that fanboys are not known for even reading the entire headline.

I say this as someone who has always used Firefox and would never use Brave or any Chromium based browser. But that is just not what this chart shows.

Your second point about taking things out of context is VERY true and I consider if I should delete the image for this reason alone. The image is not good without the description and the source link which explains what it means.

Have a good day!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Because stock FF is full of telemetry and tracking.

(Librewolf and Mullvad have the best scores because they are just FF without all the garbage)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They are FF with the defaults set to "I don't care if enabling this breaks my websites".

Telemetry is personal preference. Sending that data to a company you trust to use it for the stated purpose (making Firefox better) is a choice, and FF lets you easily disable it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I don’t care if enabling this breaks my websites

I haven't experienced any website breakage with Librewolf. Mullvad breaks websites because it has noscript by default (even though uBlock Origin has noscript built in).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Then that's my point illustrated. It's easy to make a browser 100% secure, you just take it off the Internet.

The middle ground is the hard part. Supporting both is the hard part

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

If you’re already used to running an assortment of privacy-oriented additions on another browser, librewolf breaks in familiar ways… but it still breaks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

For example?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Iunno, I fix and move on. Usually fields refusing to cooperate unless they phone home.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Never encountered that issue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Fortunately it’s infrequent, but it’s still annoying to re-enter multiple fields because a connection couldn’t be made to a telemetry service.

[–] Vub -2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

People seem to really misunderstand this post. ONE TEST (POINT) IS NOT EQUAL IN IMPORTANCE TO ALL OTHER TESTS. I ask you to read the description and the information on privacytests.org before you vote or comment. If my description is not clear enough, please let me know how I can improve it to make it understandable (I am not a native English speaker).

It's not a "Brave ad", geez... I am a strong proponent of Firefox.

If anyone have any sources on the website being a bad source, please send me those. The tests are very reliable, you just need to understand the data points.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Here's how interacted with this post:

  • Title told me that "lower is better". Assumption: it's introducing the graph, I should look at it
  • Graph shows from left to right the best browsers for privacy. Assumption: they are the best for privacy, the title told me so

Then I read the description. But I'm a data analyst, I'm used to look at the details. Most people do not. They want quick "tell me what's happening". It's something you accept if you work in this field, the best DAs can tell their stories in just a few graphs.

Tip: assume that people won't read anything. They will just look at the graph. If each point is not equal, then your graph needs to show it. Looking at the source really quick, I maybe would've done a graph that shows points per category. It would need some work to look good and not cluttered, but that way you can let the viewer decide for themselves what they consider important and look at the points that matter to them.

Take this as constructive criticism and not as a "gotcha", I fall for this trap every once in a while too. Try to not be frustrated, it's just how it is. Next time you'll do a better job at passing your message

[–] Vub -1 points 11 months ago

Thank you for your comment, you make some very good points and I appreciate it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If one point is not equal to another, why count the number of points? Why make a graph if not to show data in a meaningful way?

[–] Vub -2 points 11 months ago

I still think it it interesting to see that for example Librewolf gets a very low score in total and Chrome a very high one. I feel it does show something about all browsers, even though it is not perfect.