this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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Firefox with uBlock Origin has been working well for me, for ads at least. I haven't looked too much into blocking trackers but I think Firefox has some ability to do that
Yeah it has some and if it doesnt work Extensions can help out. As it uses still the v2 manifest. It is just straight up better to use firefox ( or their "children" like librefox ( a bit hardend firefox browser ). It doesnt depending on chromium, its not a big Corporate that is super greedy.
This is the golden combo in my opinion. uBlock Origin is an excellent adblocker and it works best with Firefox. The built-in privacy features of Firefox are also decent, even when left at the default settings.
What about a search engine though?
DuckDuckGo
I used to use it but switched to brave after reading that DDG lied about tracking.
Any others? (and not the one that requires a subscription, thanks)
Startpage supposedly uses Google's search engine without tracking your ip.
Not heard of them, will check it out, thanks!
E: a quick look tells me it doesn't work with VPN, so that's a no from me...
That's strange, I use Mullvad VPN and Startpage is my main search engine and It's only given me trouble once. They made me fill a captcha and wait a while in order to be able to use it again, but it was just an our at most.
I read quite a few reviews that said they were having this problem, and I don't really have the kind of patience it takes to wait that long. 😂
Fair enough lol. Just for the record, I've had this problem once in 6 months.
FWIW though, I think that agreement no longer applies. I getchu though, on the principle of the matter, assuming they actually lied about it. E.g., if they said, "we don't let any tracking through," without mentioning their deal with Microsoft. If they just said, "we block most trackers," and let people hype it up in their heads though, that's kind of a gray area IMHO.
DDG also curates/censors/biases the results though.
And even if the company thinks it's for a good reason, they've set themselves a precedent and now we don't know what else they could be curating, censoring or biasing in their search results.
tbf I didn't know about the agreement no longer being relevant, but yeah, like you say it's a grey area and weakens the trust at least some.
If I don't find any better alternative I guess its back to the duck I go...
That's the reality of the situation unfortunately. No infallible heroes, just fifty shades of grey.
Looks like it. Still gonna keep my eye out for an alternative though..
I think that topic got really heated back then. DDG is far more transparent than any other companies and also did a statement regarding this. Besides that it’s still the most private search engine next to Searxng. And SearXNG is less convenient.
That’s also the reason why it is still used within the Tor browser for example.