this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
56 points (93.8% liked)

Privacy

39087 readers
602 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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:

  • IronFox
    • recommended by LibreWolf
  • Fennec
    • no repo
  • Waterfox
  • Vanadium
  • iceraven
    • most stars
    • https://lemmy.world/u/Thetimefarm@lemm.ee - As far as I know ironfox supports any extensions normal firefox mobile does, but neither give you access to the full full extensions store. Iceraven is the only mobile browser I know of that lets you use all the extensions that you can on desktop firefox.
  • bromite
    • no longer maintained
    • Bromite has a fingerprint randomization and Vanadium doesn't. But Vanadium has better security if you use Graphene. So yeah, for privacy Bromite might be better
  • cromite
    • Bromite fork
  • brave
    • controversial
  • duckduckgo

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?

As far as I know ironfox supports any extensions normal firefox mobile does, but neither give you access to the full full extensions store. Iceraven is the only mobile browser I know of that lets you use all the extensions that you can on desktop firefox.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] happeningtofry99158@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] slackness@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

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?