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Spying Browsers?

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wulf
Posts: 163
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2018 9:56 am

Spying Browsers?

#1 Post by wulf »

I've just been looking at this site>
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/
I'm a little perplexed by what's been written there.
Waterfox is the only browser I have installed, so I can't vouch for what is said in the article about the others in the list.
I ran mitmproxy against Waterfox and I don't see what the author sees. What I DO see is calls from uBlock Origin updating the filters list and update checks to other addons, but that's expected and normal behaviour. Maybe it's because I don't use sync and have made many configuration changes to the standard package that also carry-over in updates? I dunno... I just don't get the same results, thankfully.

User avatar
manyroads
Posts: 2598
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2018 6:33 pm

Re: Spying Browsers?

#2 Post by manyroads »

If you like security info, this site provides some good links. Be careful where you get your info from, not all sites are reliable. Many are severely biased.

Edit: here's the link... https://www.techworld.com/picture-galle ... s-3625613/
Pax vobiscum,
Mark Rabideau - ManyRoads Genealogy -or- eirenicon llc. (geeky stuff)
i3wm, bspwm, hlwm, dwm, spectrwm ~ Linux #449130
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." -- H. L. Mencken

User avatar
Captain Brillo
Posts: 106
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 12:29 am

Re: Spying Browsers?

#3 Post by Captain Brillo »

I'd like to try to verify the claims in this story - but I haven't been able to get "mitmproxy" to work. Neither tarball nor zip seem to have any instructions; the web page they point to has none.

Can anybody help me out?
GAFA-free zone

skidoo
Posts: 753
Joined: Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:56 pm

Re: Spying Browsers?

#4 Post by skidoo »

wulf, I found "nothing" written there, just a list of links. What writing... where, specifically, are you saying is "perplexing"?

The cards are really stacked against us in regard to testing, corroborating, any malbehaviors.
Various sites dynamically, conditionally, serve differing content to requestors... and browser vendors silently (switch on, silently opt-in for A/B testing) features for only a subset of users ~~ leaving us would-be troubleshooters/reporters arguing amongst ourselves as to "who really saw WHAT"?

Brillo, it's necessarily a "deep dive"; I wouldn't encourage you to go down the mitmproxy rabbithole.
If you do, in advance you'll need to consider attention-to-detail "stuffs" like: developer.mozilla.org/...Subresource_Integrity
"security.sri.enable=FALSE"

User avatar
KoO
Posts: 491
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2017 1:21 am

Re: Spying Browsers?

#5 Post by KoO »

I was lead to this a few days ago I so shocked to read about waterfox.
The whole of the internet has became a joke lies from every company out their.
Now I what is meant by the term internet USERS..
Main : MX 19.1-AHS (i3) 5.4.13-1~mx19+1, Asus B450-i AMD 5 3600 , 32gb Hyper-X 3200 , GTX970 . :linuxlove:
Lenovo T430 : Debian10 antiX17 (i3) , 4.20.12 , i5 , 12gb .
Lenovo X220 : Test Machine (ATM)

skidoo
Posts: 753
Joined: Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:56 pm

Re: Spying Browsers?

#6 Post by skidoo »

KoO wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:38 pmI so shocked to read about waterfox.
Is your post a riddle? A joke?

I haven't noticed any recent scuttlebut { buzz | rumor | dish | gossip | hearsay} regarding waterfoxproject.
smooth sailing, calm waters... https://old.reddit.com/r/waterfox/

User avatar
wulf
Posts: 163
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2018 9:56 am

Re: Spying Browsers?

#7 Post by wulf »

skidoo wrote: Thu Feb 07, 2019 4:27 pm wulf, I found "nothing" written there, just a list of links. What writing... where, specifically, are you saying is "perplexing"?

The cards are really stacked against us in regard to testing, corroborating, any malbehaviors.
Various sites dynamically, conditionally, serve differing content to requestors... and browser vendors silently (switch on, silently opt-in for A/B testing) features for only a subset of users ~~ leaving us would-be troubleshooters/reporters arguing amongst ourselves as to "who really saw WHAT"?

Brillo, it's necessarily a "deep dive"; I wouldn't encourage you to go down the mitmproxy rabbithole.
If you do, in advance you'll need to consider attention-to-detail "stuffs" like: developer.mozilla.org/...Subresource_Integrity
"security.sri.enable=FALSE"
It was from the authors first source link on the Waterfox article after clicking the Waterfox link and reading his/her? findings, and then reading this from their first link>
https://web.archive.org/web/20180607023 ... wsers.html
I was perplexed because it's not describing the browser I'm using. As I said, that might be because of numerous configurations I've made, removing "phone home"/telemetry stuff as a matter of course, which is inherent in Waterfox as a consequence of being a Firefox variant. I've not used stock Waterfox for a long time because my configurations stay in place through every update. I take your point re;- silent opt-in for testing. I had that happen to me once with Firefox. I don't know, and it's just a guess on my part, but I wonder if there are significant differences in browser standard configuration and behaviour, dependent upon which country you are in?
Capt' Brillo...mitmproxy is available in stable repo in MXPI or/and Synaptic. No need to download from anywhere else. Agree with skidoo that if you haven't used it before, you should maybe do a bit of reading-up on it before running it.

User avatar
Captain Brillo
Posts: 106
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 12:29 am

Re: Spying Browsers?

#8 Post by Captain Brillo »

I read the blurbs on Vivaldi and Slimjet that he links to, and it was not good at all.
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi.html
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/slimjet.html
Of course what they say could be all garbage, but how does a body figure out how much to believe?
GAFA-free zone

User avatar
Stevo
Developer
Posts: 12745
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2006 8:07 pm

Re: Spying Browsers?

#9 Post by Stevo »

Looks like Iridium (which we have in our test repo) could be be your best bet for a Chrome based browser. We also have some others in main or testing, such as Qutebrowser. https://repology.org/metapackage/qutebrowser/versions

User avatar
Captain Brillo
Posts: 106
Joined: Mon Jan 07, 2019 12:29 am

Re: Spying Browsers?

#10 Post by Captain Brillo »

wulf, stevo - not finding mitmproxy or iridium in any repos or in synaptic on this machine
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