this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/android
 

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.

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Mull is a good choice for android at the moment

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago

android already has fennec and mull though

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Soo, what "own problems" does mull have? I mean, pretty much fennec with some tor patches

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (8 children)

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

[–] saywhatisabigw 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's because you are making extreme claims without any sources.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Pretty sure I told you where you could find more information, as well as pointing out that the default browser on Graphene is a hardened Chromium browser, not Firefox Gecko.

But okay, here, I can even do that little bit of searching for you:

https://divestos.org/pages/browsers

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

what divestOS is actually saying:

While DivestOS includes a Gecko based browser for privacy reasons, Chromium based browsers have many security advantages. It is up to the user to choose their preference.

https://divestos.org/pages/browsers

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

Surprisingly, I thought about the same thing a few days ago ... but we have mull browser

[–] RustyNova 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The problem is that they both have telemetry.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

Firefox Klar has telemetry disabled to comply with stricter German regulation

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

You can disable FF Sync from about:config

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I recommend a combo of Mull and Mulch or Cromite instead. Configure one of them to delete cookies and history on exit. Use URLCheck as your default browser. Then you can see the actual link when you click on one, you can remove tracking parameters, and then choose which browser to open it in.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's not LibreWolf, but how about IceRaven?
https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser

Has been my goto FireFox fork for Android for years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It still has telemetry. Devs also mentioned it in the github repo

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (12 children)

ok but like... telemetry is not automatically bad. a vast majority of users never report bugs in software, and are trained to just click through popups. this means the bugs don't get fixed, and the crash reports don't get sent.

scrutinizing what actually gets sent from your browser is how you keep yourself safe, blocking all telemetry is how you get unpatched security holes.

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[–] mashbooq 7 points 2 months ago
[–] FutileRecipe 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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.

Ref: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

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