this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025

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Privacy

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Web Browser telemetry - 2025 edition (sizeof.cat)

submitted 1 year ago by Zerush@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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[–] chirospasm@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for posting this! I assumed some FF-based browsers, while claiming to remove telemetry, in fact still phoned home to a degree. This is good know!

Also, I was surprised by a few others on the list, like Mullvad, Kagi, and DuckDuckGo, being so straightforward -- not that making fewer connections implies better privacy, as even a single connection can transmit any kind of data, but moreso that there some browsers that are designed to operate with less complexity.

Really surprised by Zen, which is a FF derivative claiming to be all about a 'beautiful' and 'simple' web browsing experience, having a ton of connections.

[–] newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

beautiful and simple don't necessarily mean privacy oriented. It's marketing language

[–] wuphysics87@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Does "more telemetries" mean "worse"? What if the least telemetry (greater than zero) had the Omega Mother of All Telemetries which crams everything the others do times 47 + 3 into one?

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not so important how much telemetries, but where these go. A complex feature rich browser can have a lot of tech telemetries, but this is only bad if these go to sites not related to the functionality and third parties, eg. to Facebook, Amazon and others.

[–] stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah it’s unimportant how many requests go out.

A secure browser ought to phone home on startup (and honestly with as little overhead as requests incur nowadays, on tab open) and make sure it’s updated to the latest version, do a dns sanity check, etc.

I don’t even mind Firefox having ads in the default homepage.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Important only which requests go out and to where. If tech data go to the company of the browser, it's OK, but not if user data goes to Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Towerdata, etc., which has nothing to do with the functionality of the browser. Permissions can be restricted in the settings of the OS.

[–] SuperZorro@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 1 year ago

What is the point of these stats, they could be uploading your entire drive with 1 connection. And some of the connections are there because they bundle ublock, why should that count?

[–] LiamTheBox@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah something is broken here...

[–] pinguin@fault.su -1 points 1 year ago

I thought it was just me until I saw this

[–] kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 year ago

I think a big improvement to these test would be to show what actually gets send. You can do this with a certificate and a proxy.

[–] forked_bytes@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

That line chart should be a bar chart.

[–] Tundra@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was really enjoying Zen browser aswell

[–] Pirata@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry to say, but both Zen and Floorp were obvious honeypots from the beginning.

Unsolicited advice, but don't adopt the latest browser/search engine/OS that promise privacy and/or security, and you'll avoid a lot of disappointment. Most fall apart at the seams within a year or less.

If the one browser/SE/OS you currently use works, stick with it until more research on the newer stuff comes out. Then you can reassess.

[–] Tundra@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Ungoogled chromium looks good to me. I wish this author tested mobile browsers as well