I daily drive Firefox, but more and more websites are starting to break without Chromium, so I still have to occasionally switch to get something working. I was using Ungoogled Chromium until I realized that there was no easy way to update it when that pixel-stealing exploit came out a while back.
To be clear, I’m not talking about stock “no settings changed” Vivaldi. With that requirement, even Firefox could be called invasive! What I want to know is if Vivaldi is relatively safe to use with all the telemetry and stuff disabled in the settings and using any necessary extensions.
Thanks!
No. Vivaldi is proprietary.
Their CEO is not an asshole (at least not publicly) but they are still not committed to privacy. Vivaldi is a commodity browser, they include UI features and other usability features which are nice. But it isn’t private, at all.
They have their own telemetry which includes an unique ID per installation and they basically have no protection against fingerprinting, a feature that Firefox (and Librewolf and Mullvad Browser) and Brave (do not use Brave) have and I consider essential.
From what I saw, it was fairly easy to turn that off in the settings and install uBlock Origin to cover the gaps in their tracker. I meant Vivaldi post-hardening, not “out of the box” with 0 settings or extensions changed.
that still doesn’t solve the lack of anti fingerprint protection. uBlock Origin can’t do that, it has to be built into the browser.
And the fact that it’s proprietary and we do not have the source code.
Yes, they provide a “part” of their source code which is mostly chromium code which is freely available anyway. this is just a marketing practice, it has no real value because it is incomplete and can’t be compiled and even if you tried to examine the available parts, they do not provide a git repository for easier examination. This is a huge reason for not trusting them. I wouldn’t place my trust on a browser that obscures it’s source that way and tries to compensate by publishing part of it. Their lack of transparency is worrisome.
There’s also the fact of the chromium monopoly but other people got that part covered.