Hey everybody. I’m somewhat new to the field of privacy, but I am eager to learn. Right now I am wondering what mobile web browser to use for everyday activities. I’m running GrapheneOS. Options that often come to mind:
- Tor
- Firefox Focus (= Firefox Klar in German)
- IronFox (formerly Mull Browser)
- Cromite
- Vanadium
I feel like I simply don’t know enough about the underlaying mechanisms to elaborate which might be better and which might be worse. Feel free to teach me!
I’m using this unofficial Helium build. It’s basically Vanadium + Helium patches with Extension support. Ublock Origin works like a charm.
From the linked GitHub webpage:
I wouldn’t recommend browsers developed by a single person and in an experimental state-part of the reason why I don’t recommend Cromite.
The original Vanadium is great, but the lack of proper content-blocker integration is a big privacy trade-off, in my opinion. Vanadium only provides a per-domain blocker solution, which is based on the very small set of EasyList.
A good Chromium-based alternative would be Brave, as it has a good content blocker that attempts to recreate the full feature set of uBlock Origin.
I get your point. But if you check the source you’ll notice that they don’t add any code themselves, they simply take Chromium and apply patches from Vanadium (Helium is commented for now) and build an apk. Yes, they call it experimental. Use at your own risk. I have had a very good experience so far - but you may disagree. However, there may be other people like me out there who think it’s a good value proposition.
A discussion like this is exactly the reason I love this sub. I am learning more and more every day. Thanks to both of you guys.