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Looking for Privacy-Oriented Open-Source Android Browsers (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Looking for Privacy-Oriented Open-Source Android Browsers

I'm looking for a privacy-focused, open-source Android browser. Here are some options I've found:

Is there any other browser out there that fits this criteria? Is there an even better choice? I’m particularly interested in ones that focus on privacy.

EDIT: in terms of popularity, privacy and functionality I guess the best choices are iceraven (based on firefox) as it has most stars on github and cromite (based on chromium) as brave is controversial

Solved Questions

I know that Brave is a bit controversial, but If Brave does something behind our backs wouldn’t we be able to know it since all the source code is out there? If it has some features we don’t like can’t we simply modify the source code?

@slackness

re: open source In theory: yes. In practice: maybe. It’ll probably eventually be caught by some researcher but unlike popular belief all open source code bases are not constantly being audited by the community. A random person can’t just read Brave source code for all platforms and accurately gauge if they’re doing something nefarious. It is very easy to hide stuff in code or misuse a protocol for evil purposes, etc.

You can modify the source code but as evident by the fact that there’s no Brave fork with crypto removed (there was one but their branding was too similar to Brave’s so they got sued), it’s not an easy feat to maintain that.

few questions

  • What is the difference between IronFox, Fennec, Waterfox and iceraven?
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[-] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago

firefox

[-] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

firefox on android does not enable resist fingerprint by default. To protect our browser fingerprint we have to tweak many settings and install several extensions (and I'm not sure those extensions supports android browser). That being said, firefox might not be privacy oriented

[-] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

yeah, and extensions additionally work against you in fingerprinting. Though I'm totally interested in what extensions you are using.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago

I would stay away from chromium forks in general. Google is doing some underhanded stuff using web manifest v3, not to mention all the bastard stuff they are doing in general.

I am very curious not only to hear the answer to your question regarding FF forks, but also why they get rated that way.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

I should mention that DuckDuckGo recently released an android browser and it is privacy focused. I cant tell you how well it does its job BUT the important thing is that it has an experimental feature that creates a virtual network interface that routes coms and blocks phone home attempts and tells you what app is doing what.

I have had it running for a few months and its crazy to see how much traffic is going on without your knowledge.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

Thanks! I will look into that

[-] [email protected] -3 points 8 hours ago

Mull

[-] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

No longer maitained since half a year ago. Please stop using and recommending it

[-] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

I use Cromite and Brave (yeah yeah) plus IronFox via Accrescent.
Brave may well have undesireables like the CEO, cryptocurrency etc., but so easy to switch off. Use your device with RethinkDNS (with or without Wireguard configured) to remove further wrinkles.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

Iceraven often lags behind on security updates. I know you specified privacy, but good to keep in mind.

I use Ironfox, because I previously used Mull (rip) with RethinkDNS, and Orbot

[-] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

good to know!

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

See also:

Firefox-based

Chromium-based

WebView-based

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I know Brave is controversial but they were the only ones (edit: not sure about Vanadium, I'm curious if they were vulnerable) disallowing JS to access localhost thus blocking Meta and Yandex's recently discovered spying.

Sounds like such a no brainer to not allow random websites to communicate with the localhost and very easily circumvent all sandboxing you spent thousands of hours building. Looking at you Android (Google) and all the browser vendors (also Google?, huh).

[-] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

actually I'm a bit curious about how an Open Source project could be "controversial". If Brave does something behind our backs wouldn't we be able to know it since all the source code is out there? If it has some features we don't like can't we simply modify the source code?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

It has cryptocurrency integration and it did some shady ad-referral stealing. But yes, it's fully open source.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

Based on this information, I'm really surprised that no one has forked a Brave branch to remove the undesired feature.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

There are several alternatives. Keeping up with security patches is a full time job. It's quite reasonable in this particular case.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

thanks for the explanation

[-] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

Don't mention it.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago

It's backed by Peter Thiel who is a war mongering Nazi billionaire.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

Why go that far? Its CEO funding anti-gay efforts is enough to me.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago

Infuriating as it is, I still have the same question mentioned above

[-] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

I gave you the real reason it should be controversial. Brave's fuck ups have not been significantly worse than other companies'.

re: open source In theory: yes. In practice: maybe. It'll probably eventually be caught by some researcher but unlike popular belief all open source code bases are not constantly being audited by the community. A random person can't just read Brave source code for all platforms and accurately gauge if they're doing something nefarious. It is very easy to hide stuff in code or misuse a protocol for evil purposes, etc.

You can modify the source code but as evident by the fact that there's no Brave fork with crypto removed (there was one but their branding was too similar to Brave's so they got sued), it's not an easy feat to maintain that.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago

it is a shock to me that an Open source project can get sued!?

Why they didn't create a repo outside github and always use proxy when developing the project to stay anonymous?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Huh, I didn't know that. I wonder if any of the rest have implemented that since...

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Isn't webview-based still essentially chromium-based?

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[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Fennec development has not stop, why do you think that's the case? The github repo shows it's on the current firefox build.

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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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