Is Your Web Browser Spying on You? - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV007) - ATL BitLab Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jordan Bravo (00:00):
Google Chrome at this point is spyware.
I don't think I'm being controversialor spicy by saying that.
It literally spies on everythingyou do in the browser.
That's how they generate thevast amounts of data that is
key to their business model.

Stephen DeLorme (00:15):
I remember in the early two thousands, Firefox was like so cool.
Remember, just feeling like a totalbadass, like, oh, look, this school
computer doesn't have Firefox installed.
Let me take care of that shit.
Download Firefox and install it.
It's like, yeah, I justmade this computer better.

Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show, presented by ATL BitLab.
I'm Jordan Bravo, and this is apodcast where we teach you how to
take back control of your devices.
Sovereign Computing means you own yourtechnology, not the other way around.

This episode is sponsored by ATL BitLab.
ATL BitLab is Atlanta'sfreedom tech hacker space.
We have co working desks,conference rooms, event space,
maker tools, and tons of coffee.
There is a very activecommunity here in the lab.
Every Wednesday night isBitcoin night here in Atlanta.
We also have meetups for cyber security,artificial intelligence, decentralized

(01:12):
identity, product design, and more.
We offer day passes and nomad passesfor people who need to use the lab only
occasionally, as well as membershipsfor people who plan to use the lab
more regularly, such as myself.
One of the best things abouthaving a BitLab membership isn't
the amenities, it's the people.
Surrounding yourself with acommunity helps you learn faster
and helps you build better.

(01:34):
Your creativity becomes amplifiedwhen you work in this space,
that's what I think at least.
If you're interested in becominga member or supporting this space,
please visit us at atlbitlab.
com.
That's A T L B I T L A B dot com.
Alright, on to our show.

Hey everyone.
Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show.
I'm Jordan Bravo and I'mhere today with Stephen DeLorme.
Uh, first we wanna remind everyonethat you can boost into the show and
let us know your opinions, what youwant to hear as far as topics go.
And as a reminder, you do notneed to be listening live.

(02:14):
You can boost into any prerecordedpodcast episode no matter how old it is.
You just use a podcast 2.0 Capableapp, such as Fountain fm and you
can go ahead and choose whichepisode you're listening to.
It will, it will select that oneand boost into that specific episode

(02:35):
and we will get your message andwe'll read it on the show coming.
Coming up today.
On today's episode, we are gonnatalk about a web browsers and
search engines and how you can.
Choose the most private options andcustomize them for even more privacy.
But first, we're gonnatalk about today our.

(02:58):
Uh, news article that we wanna analyzeand share with everyone, and that
is about, this is an ongoing sagathat's currently un uh, furling about
Apple's battle with the UK government.
They recently, the UK government recentlyordered Apple to remove end-to-end

(03:18):
encryption in their, uh, iCloud.
Accounts for UK users, and it looks likeApple has now had to comply with that.
So let's talk about what that meansfor everyone, including people
who don't live in the UK and areusing Apple devices like iPhones.

(03:38):
Um, let's take a look first at Stephen.
Do we have the no BS Bitcoin article?

Yeah, lemme get to that.
That one real quick.
Apple pulls E to end encrypt.
End-to-end encryption, iCloud encryption.
Ah, apple pulls end-to-endiCloud encryption in the uk.
Boots 135,000 plus non-compliantapps from the EU app store.

All right, so Apple has, let's scroll down a little bit.

Lemme blow that up a little bit.

For those of you just listening, I'm, we're gonna read this
out loud so you don't have to worry.
Uh, apple has removed its advanced dataprotection a DP tool for new customers
in the UK after the government demandedbackdoor access to encrypted user data.
A DP is an opt-in feature usedfor protecting sensitive user
data, such as iCloud files,photos, notes, and other stuff.

(04:42):
And Apple expresseddisappointment, blah, blah, blah.
Um,
that's, that's pretty much the gist of it.
We already covered that, but let's, let'stake a look at the implications of that.
There's a Forbes article that I want towanna share with everybody, and this shows

(05:02):
something really telling, and this, thisarticle talks about how a few, uh, a few.
Weeks or months ago, I believe the FBIand other US agencies, they were actually
recommending end-to-end encrypted appsfor US citizens and and tech users

(05:25):
because Chinese hackers had hackedinto the US telecom infrastructure.
And so we had commented onthat article saying, wow, it's,
it's interesting to see the US.
Three letter agencies who previouslywere anti end-to-end encryption
because it inhibited them to beable to spy and gather user data.

(05:47):
Uh, they were now recommending end-to-endencryption, but it turns out they weren't
really recommending it a hundred percent.
Um, they were just, they wanted the,if you look at this article, they
were kind of caveating it with well.
We want end-to-end encryption.
Sure, that keeps out the Chinese hackers,but we still wanna be able to read user

(06:10):
data if we demand it from a a US company.
So in other words, they wantend-to-end encryption with a backdoor.
Which, as we've talked about before, isnot real end-to-end encryption either.
It keeps out everybody except the intendedrecipients or it doesn't, and it has a,
a backdoor that third parties can use.

(06:31):
And, uh, I'm gonna read a quotehere from the FBI that says,
law enforcement supports strongresponsibly managed encryption.
This encryption should be designedto protect people's privacy and also
managed so that US tech companies canprovide readable content in response
to a lawful court order end quote.
And let's scroll down a little bit more.

(06:52):
Stephen,
uh, there's a particular quote I wannaread that's, that's really telling, and
it's about how they want it both ways.
In other words, um.

Maybe is it this one?
The FBI's formal position isthat it is a strong advocate for
the wide and consistent use ofresponsibly managed encryption.
Encryption, the providers can decryptand provide the law enforcement
when served with a legal order.

Yeah, that's right.
And let's see it.
It's just either above or below theseparagraphs, but they essentially are
saying they want it both ways, right?
They're saying.

Oh yeah, it's The challenge is that while the bureau
says it does not want encryption tobe weakened or compromised so that it
can be defeated by malicious actors,it does want providers who manage
encrypted data to be able to decryptthe data and provide to law enforcement
only in response to US legal process.

Right, so it's saying in the same sentence, it doesn't want
encryption to be weakened or compromised,but it does want to be able to.
Break through that encryptionvia a backdoor when it's a, uh,
an order by US law enforcement.
So in other words,

Yeah,

they are just talking out of both sides of their mouth.
So.

Oh, sorry to cut you off.

No, no, it, it's, uh, It kind of says it all.
I don't know if I have anythingelse to add here just that the
US government agencies are betterat, at, um, acting like they care,
maybe than, let's say Chinesehackers who really don't interface.
They don't have like apublic PR department.

(08:32):
So we can say, Oh, Chinese hacker's bad.
They wanna break in FBI, and C-I-A-N-S-A.
Good.
They're the good guys.
I. But really, they wanna be able toback, continue to backdoor us because
we know that they've been spying ontheir own citizens for years now.
So, I don't know, to me, this is justpolitical speak, you know, double talk.
And all it says to me is that we needto continue to, uh, us as users, we need

(08:59):
to continue to make the choice of usingend-to-end encrypted communications and
end-to-end encrypted storage and notput our trust in any one company such
as Apple, because even if they havethe best of intentions, they can be
compelled to by, um, any government wherethey are in that jurisdiction, right?
Because a legal entityhas to be responsible.

(09:22):
They have to comply with the governmentof whatever jurisdiction they're in.
Or they'll simply be shut down.
They don't really have a choice there.
They, no matter how principled theyare, no matter how many billboards of
sexy Apple privacy ads they run, right.
They have to eventually atthe end of the day, comply.

Yeah, and I think, uh, I mean, one quick point is that, you know,
I mean, it is interesting 'cause like,just a couple weeks ago, we were reading
an article saying FBIs recommend you, youuse end end encrypted apps like signal.
Because, you know, uh, you know,Chinese threat actors could,
um, compromise companies and,and read sensitive messages.
And then now it sounds like they'resaying, well, we want encryption,

(10:02):
but only encryption that the, youknow, uh, tech companies can, uh,
can decrypt if we ask them to.
Sounds like a contradiction.
But I think one thing we've learnedjust, you know, especially recently
with everything going on in the newswith Doge and all of that is that,
like, government are not just these,like, monolithic organizations.

(10:23):
It's not like one brain that haslike one opinion and one viewpoint.
It's composed of, uh, you know,people and people are, you
know, flawed and imperfect.
And we all have our ownopinions about things.
And so, like, um, you know, I don't knowhow public statements get issued from
the FBI, but it very well could be thatthe statement we were reading a couple

(10:44):
weeks ago was from You know, uh, onebranch of the Bureau, and this is coming
from another branch of the Bureau, right?
Like, um, you know, I think that,you know, just depending on who
you ask and the government, you'reprobably gonna get uh, a different
a different answer about something.
Um, but.
Yeah, I mean, I'll just for for anyonewho might be listening who might be

(11:07):
new to these topics of, you know,sovereign computing and end-to-end
encryption, this kind of languagesounds very mature and responsible you
just like are are reading it on paper.
It's like, you know, of course wewant responsibly managed encryption.

(11:27):
You know, we want to keep the bad guysout, but we do want to be able to let the
good guys in, um, you know, if we need to.
And That that does sound like a very,um, you know, responsible uh, viewpoint.
But it's the, that when youdig into it, it's, it's, it it.
doesn't make sense.
It's, um, I think, uh, You have asituation where any kind of flaw or

(11:51):
weakness in the encryption, um, That,you know, can be exploited by a good
guy can also be exploited by a bad guy.
In other words, it's like, um, if youwant to protect your data by having
it end-to-end encrypted, except thereis a good guy that you trust to be
able to access that data without yourconsent, whether that is the government

(12:17):
or whether that's apple or someother good guy, pick your good guy.
even, even if the, you know, you,you trust them to be always good.
If they get hacked, if they getcompromised, if they get attacked, then
the bad guy has compromised you as well.
So weakening end-to-end encryption, um,my view is not a, a good thing to do.

(12:42):
And.
Um, you know, dressing it up in thislanguage of, well, this is mature and
responsibly managed in encryption.
Um, it it doesn't, you know, it doesn'tactually work in practice, I don't think.

Agreed.
And it, it's worth pointingout that they put the typical
boogeyman in this, um, article.
There's a quote from the FBI.
It wouldn't be a quote fromthe FBI about encryption.
If they didn't mention terrorist, I.terrorists, hack and child predators,
so they can always, I think, play onpeople's fears by invoking these really

(13:20):
bad people that we don't, none of us want,uh, you know, being able to commit crimes.
But it's, it's that fear of those peoplethat the FBI and others are using to
say, ah, you, if you don't want thesepeople doing bad things, you gotta let us
weaken the encryption and have a backdoorso that we can surveil everything.

(13:41):
So just wanted to throw that out there.
It's a kind of a obligatorystatements from them.

Yeah, and on that note, I mean, it's like, you know,
that, you you know, everyone'sgonna have their own interpretation
of of these kinds of things.
I think, you know, one, you know, oneway to interpret all this stuff is like,
you know, uh, uh, Oh, yeah, they're,they're, they're all evil and all of that.
And, you know, governmentswant to control everything.
I think another, maybe perhaps morecharitable interpretation is that I

(14:10):
think when you look at, You know, anyagency or division of the government
or whatever, They are given a missionlike it's people's livelihoods to
carry out a particular mission, right?
So, like, if you are in, let's say, themilitary, um, especially if you're a
high, you know, high up military leader,your mandate, um, being in charge of, of,

(14:33):
of that, like, part of government is to
be able to win wars.
That's your job and you're, you'regoing to want to have every resource
at your disposal to be able towin wars because that's your job.
Um,
you know, you know, so pick yourdepartment of government, figure out
what they do if you're gonna do yourjob well, that, that's like, you

(14:54):
want every resource or your disposal.
Same thing with FBI,they're tasked with, uh.
down all, all of these types of criminals.
And, you know, it's, it's certainly,Uh, from a job perspective, logical
that you want every resource at yourdisposal to be able to do your job well
and certainly if you could just spy onevery every everybody's communications

(15:15):
all the time, that would actuallymake your job way easier to do.
Um, So, uh, in that respect, I it,I mean, it it makes sense, um, why
someone in that, de uh, division ofgovernment might hold that opinion.
nonetheless.
um, you know, you know, that's not thethe, the world I wanna live in where,
you know, every, you know, citizen,um, you know, has to get spied on.

(15:37):
So it's our, you know, uh, responsibilityto push back against that, I think.
and.
You know, build uh, technologythat um, allows us to to protect
our privacy and and sovereignty.
But I think there's, you know, mayalways be this kind of struggle,
you know, that, you know, some some,somebody else will will always want
the tools to do their job better.

Yeah.
That's right.
It's, it's a matter of peopleand organizations made of those
people responding to incentives.
And before, uh, we move on fromthis topic, there is one other angle
that I think is really interesting.
And that is, I think towards the end ofthe article that they start to get into
this more, but that's the idea that thisis just the first move in a Uh, opening

(16:24):
salvo, you might say, or, or a seriesof changes that we might see going on.
So coming up, we now mightsee the US government pressure
Apple to do the same thing.
And then it could also pressureother companies to do the same thing.
So you have things like Meta,which owns WhatsApp, which
uses end-to-end encryption.

(16:44):
And Microsoft is another big one.
Um.
And Google, of course.
So all of these companies that havereally popular apps, it's highly
likely, or at least probable that goingforward after this, this is sort of a
precedent being set on the world stage.
And now the US government might.

(17:06):
attempt to pressure companies toreverse their encryption as well.
Okay.
With that, let's move intoour main topic of today.
We are gonna be talking aboutweb browsers and search engines.
There's a wide variety of browsers tochoose from, both for desktop and mobile.

(17:28):
And let's concentrate on desktopfirst, because I think there's more
choices there and more to talk about.
So, um, I think first let'stalk about our goal is.
Our goal is to have a balancebetween convenience and privacy.
Obviously, I'm gonna be leaning prettyhard on the privacy end of the spectrum.

(17:51):
I'm willing to give up a little bitof convenience for some privacy.
But at the same time, um, I amnot going all the way to one side
where Some people might say usethe Torah browser for everything.
I think that's not practical.
I think for anybody who's usingthe internet on a regular basis
and relies on it, Tor is justtoo slow and too unreliable.

(18:14):
So we're gonna be looking atnormal HTTPS capable browsers and
kind of everyday use browsers.
Uh, First, I wanna talk aboutwhat browsers not to use
because this is a shorter list.
And we're gonna talk about the, thegranddaddy of them all, which is Chrome.

(18:36):
Google Chrome is by farthe most popular browser.
It's not even close.
I think they have maybe 90.
percent of the browser market.
Um, and it's important to, we'rewe're gonna take a little trip down
software education lane for a second.

(18:57):
Chrome is actually built onan open source browser called
Chromium, also made by Google.
Um, And then Chrome is just Chromium withsome extra Google proprietary stuff baked
in to make it have a slightly smoother UX,but also tightly integrated with Google's

(19:18):
ad ecosystem in in terms of your account,your Google account and data collection
and then the Google search engine.
Uh, It's highly optimized to beincredibly fast, and that's just great.
Business on their part because the betterthe ux, the more people that use it.
And also, and that means the moredata that they're able to collect.

(19:41):
Uh, Google at Google Chromeat this point is spyware.
I don't think I'm being controversial orspicy by saying that it literally spies on
everything you do in the browser.
That's how they generate thevast amounts of data that is
key to their business model.
Um, so.

(20:02):
It's also important to understandthat are a lot of browsers out there
that you might encounter that mightseem different, but are actually
just built on top of Chromium.
There are actually only threeunique browsers out there.
Uh, Chromium, and Safari, eachwith their own engines in them.

(20:24):
So Google Chrome and Chromiumhas the Blink rendering engine
with the V8 JavaScript engine.
then Firefox has the, s um, doyou remember what the, what's

Gecko, I think is what it's called.
I think it's Gecko.

Thank you.
has the Gecko rendering engine andthe SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine.
then Safari has the WebKit renderingengine, I believe it's called,
and the JavaScript core engine.
so every browser out there is builton one of those three browsers.
that It's basically just fancy skinsand some added functionality on top of

(21:03):
those primary, uh, browser baselines.
So.

And you know, a funny thing on that note is, uh, I
know you said you wanted to focus ondesktop, but I'm pretty sure on iOS
that all the browsers are WebKit.
It's weird because you gotta thinkit's like even the Firefox and
the Chrome browsers are actuallyrunning on WebKit on iPhone.

Yeah.
So we'll, we'll get to this ina, in a little bit, but iPhone
users are incredibly limitedon their browser choices.
uh, and, and for that major reason,which is that does not allow browsers
on iOS that are anything otherthan just reskins of, uh, Safari.

(21:52):
So going back to the desktop, wedon't want to use Chrome because
Chrome is, is just the highlyGoogle tuned version of Chromium.
Um, what about Microsoft Edge?
Edge is Microsoft's version of Chromium,And it's just, it's basically just

(22:13):
chromium with Microsoft stuff on top.
So in many ways it is aworse version of Chrome.
It's got Google's.
Spyware built into it and Google'sdata collection as well as Microsoft's
data collection on top of it AndFrom what I've been able to to
gather it's no faster and it doesn'tprovide any extra features I think

(22:36):
it's just a Microsoft branding thing.
That's really the onlyum, Advantage you get.
So you're a big fan of Microsoftbranding, maybe you want to go with
edge, but I wouldn't recommend it.
So we talked about whatbrowsers not to use.
Let's talk about what weactually do want to use.
The first browser I'm gonnarecommend is actually a chromium.

(23:00):
fork.
It's built on top of Chromium.
So you're gonna get a lot of thespeed that you would expect from
Chromium and good user experience.
And this is brave.
Many of you probably use brave already,but if you haven't heard of it, it's
simply Chromium with built-in ad block.
the downside is thatit comes with a lot of,

(23:24):
Brave branded Shitcoin stuffand it's very crypto focused
and if you're not interested inthat, very easy to disable it.
But just be aware that outta the box youare gonna see buttons and settings that
give you easy access to web3 crypto stuff
And Braves Brave has a, A token, thebat token, BAT, basic attention token.

(23:49):
they had this cool idea of how to.
Pay you if we're looking at online ads,and then you could trade that token.
But really it would've been moreinteresting if they had just used
SATs, Satoshis, uh, the, the internetmoney that we all know and love.
But, um, in any case, you don'thave to, I, I use Brave a lot.

(24:12):
I just go into the settingsand disable the Web3 stuff.
And, um.
It's, it's a great browser.
It feels very similar to Chrome.
No huge surprises there.
They do have, I wanna give a shout outthat Brave has a great search engine.
uh, search.brave.com.

(24:33):
I. And it's, I mean, it's thedefault one that Brave is gonna
use you install it, but you can usethis search engine on any browser.
It's not limited to Brave.
So you can use this onFirefox, Chrome, et cetera.
But I find it to be, it.
it uses a completely different.
search algorithm and index than Googleor any of the other major providers.

(24:55):
So it's not like just a re-skinning of it.
You're actually gettingunique search results.
I find the search resultsto be pretty good.
And on top of that, Brave hasa little AI blurb at the top
of the search results page.
So Stephen's gonna do a a sample searchfor The Sovereign Computing Show.
And above the search results it'sa quick little blurb that says,

(25:19):
The Sovereign Computing Show.
There is no specific show calledThe Sovereign Computing Show.
Ah,

Here we go.
Oh, there's no specific mentionof the Sovereign Computing
Show in the context provided.
Well, that just means we need towork on the, uh, SEO of the uh,
podcast page a little bit more.

I think that's a, a good example of, of, a brave search in action.

Yeah.

Any comments on brave?

Yeah.
I mean, I'll just echoeverything you said.
I mean, it's like the, I I thinkwhat they were trying to do is kind
of noble with their token thing.
Not that I, I would agree with makingtokens, but just from them trying to
be like, okay, if we're gonna makea browser that cuts out advertising.
Like, How does the web economy?
Like the website, um, webcontent economy work in a world,

(26:09):
um, where all ads are blocked.
And I, I disagree with their answer thatthey came up with, but I do agree with
them asking the question to begin with.
Um, that, yeah, it is, it is aninteresting, uh, kind of problem if
you do advocate for ad blocking, howyou, um, You know, incentivize uh,

(26:33):
websites to uh, publish and host uh,great content that you wanna see.
Um, and I suspect the answer wouldprobably have to do uh, more with
Bitcoin and Bitcoin micropaymentsand and, and all of that.
But yeah, I mean, that'sa whole other topic.

There is one thing I'd like to give credit to Brave
for, which is they have a built inTor functionality in their browser

Yes.

were to go to a website that has a Tor onion address, it will actually
load in Brave, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, and they'll give you like a little icon up at the top.
I was trying to find an example of of one.
Oh, actually, does theirsearch page not have it?
Yeah, their search page has it.
So you can click on the onion here.
And, uh, yeah, it's really nice to seea browser that has a tor integrated
as, uh, a first class citizen.
I'm actually opening it in abrowser, Um, but you probably can't

(27:25):
stay on the screen share 'causeit opened it up in a new window.
But.
That is pretty cool.
Um, you know, usually peoplehave to download, you know,
historically, you had to download awhole nother browser uh, for tour.
So it's nice to have another onejust that it has it built in,
and, you know, with the same easethat you would make an incognito
window, you can make a to window.
So that's really cool.

All right.
Next we're gonna talk about Firefox.
Firefox is a product of Mozilla andsomething interesting about Mozilla is
that, and with Firefox in particular,the way that Mozilla makes money from
Firefox is via Uh, getting paid byGoogle to make Google the default

(28:09):
search in the Firefox browser.
So that's kind of interesting.
They have, that's a weirdincentive for them, right?
Cause they're supposedly thecompetitor, the more private version.
Um, and that's how they market themselves.
But at the same time, they're gettingpaid by this trillion dollar corporation.

(28:29):
Who's Got basically a monopoly on thebrowser market to have a token competitor.
And if it sounds like I'm implyingsome sort of conspiracy, I
think that might be the case.
Google was.
charged with, a. I think it's called the,an, you know, the antitrust case that they

(28:50):
were a part of, it was sort of like whatMicrosoft went through, but basically the
government said, you have a monopoly onthe browser market and that's not good.
and I think what, I think what Googledoes is they pay Mozilla a, a fair amount
of money, like we're talking tens orhundreds of millions of dollars here

(29:10):
in order to have, Token competitionto be able to say, Oh no, we're not
the monopoly, but there's competition.
Look at Mozilla.
Look at Safari.
Right?
So I I think if it weren't for Googlegiving them that money as part of
their strategy, I don't think Firefoxwould still exist just competing in the
market based on how few people use it.

(29:33):
That being said, use it.
I think it's great.
I, I hope that we continueto have a competitor,
even if they're like a controlledopposition, because I think it's
healthier for the web ecosystemto have more than just one.
Main browser.
And if people are building on differenttechnologies like Firefox's technology

(29:54):
in addition to Google, Chromium and,um, Apple Safari, I think it's just a, a
healthier market for the web in general.

Yeah, sure.
I think that all makes sense.
I, You know, it funny.
I remember in uh, like the earlytwo thousands, man, like fire,
like Firefox was like so cool.
It like.
Remember, like, you know, justfeeling like a total badass, like,
Oh, look, this school computerdoesn't have Firefox installed.
Let me take care of that shit.

(30:26):
Um, and then, you know,download Firefox and install it.
It's like, yeah, I justmade this computer better.
Um, and, uh, because Firefox wasactually faster in those times.
in those days, it was like, uh, uh, it wasactually was faster and more performant
than, Like IE6 and, you know, this beforeEdge when it was all Internet Explorer.

(30:49):
And so it felt really cool.
And that that was actually that time.
That was the big draw 'cause we weren'tas worried about privacy and the data
collection, um, you know, stuff back then.
And, you know, then eventually theykind of got this uh, privacy, uh,
you know, narrative or or whatever.
But, um, I don't know.
It's interesting.

(31:10):
I mean, because and I think You know,for anyone who's not aware, this, this,
this all came out of the Netscape.
This was after Netscape collapsed.
A lot of that.
uh, Source code uh, went over to Mozilla.
As I understand that, um, it's aninteresting piece of Internet history.
I don't know if I'm as bullishon it long term because, Um,

(31:31):
I just
I, I don't know.
I guess I I haven't, like,really seriously been a Firefox
user in a bit here, but.
I just felt like they couldnever compete with chromium
in terms of the speed and, uh, you know,all of that of the browser and like,
definitely it's great to me thatwe have, I, I put more faith

(31:52):
and more, I shouldn't say faith, but
I guess I'm more, um, excited aboutbrave as like a chromium fork and all of
that, because like, I feel like they'reactually trying to have like a business
model that's like, been, they're, they'rehaving not only a de-googled browser,
but also a de-googled business model.
Um, and I kind of feel Like,

(32:14):
you know, if it's all open source, it'slike, I don't know if it's a bad idea,
if we all converge on the same code base.
Like if, if, um, you know, uh, uh,V8 and, um, uh, uh, whatever the,
uh, uh, rendering engine was called.
if Those are all, um, you know, better,Blink, yeah, sorry, Blink and V8 are

(32:35):
better and faster and more performant.
It makes sense for peopleto just use that code base.
So I think I'm personally more interestedin a project that's trying to use Blink
and V8 and just kind of like maintainthat, but build products that are Degod.
Um, but I don't know, I'm, I'muh, digressing a little bit there.
But it, you, I mean, I'm glad you're, Iagree it's a good that there's somebody

(32:56):
else trying something out there.

yeah, Um, on that topic, okay.
I wanna finish out Firefox here, butI do wanna make a quick detour because
this is relevant to what we were

Yeah.

about.
Go ahead and open up anew tab to ladybird.org.
is a new browser that is notready for, public release yet.
It's still in very much likealpha stage, but it's being built
from the ground up by a tech guy.

(33:32):
And it is completely independentof any large corporation and it's
fully open source and privacyfriendly and all that stuff.
Um, it's, I I listened to a,interview with the creator of
it, and it sounds very promising.
It'll be good to have another player inthe browser space that's actually viable.

(33:56):
Uh, right now, I think said maybein late 2025, it might be ready
for beta, but it's not ready yet.
However, I'm gonna be keeping aneye on it and I will report back on
the Sovereign Computing Show with.
any updates I have on it.
And if I try it out when it isavailable, I'll let you know how it goes.

Wow.
this is looking uh, pretty promising.
It's interesting.

So let's go back to Firefox and to talk about some extensions that
are really useful first for Firefox andreally for any Browser you block origin
is the gold standard in ad blocking andtracker blocking brave actually comes

(34:45):
with their own of this built in as far asI can tell they just took uBlock origin
and bundled it with their browser So youdon't have to install it on brave but on
any other browser, I highly recommend itto me I can't use a browser without it
like that the internet is just the web isjust unusable to me without it because of

(35:07):
How, uh, I have written it is basically.
And this'll, this'lleven block YouTube ads.
So if you are watching YouTube with thisextension enabled, you will no longer
see YouTube ads, which is pretty sweet.
Here's another reason you'llwanna stay away from Chrome is
that, Google nerfed the, all ofthe extensions in the web store.

(35:30):
They're basically.
blocking the functionality ofextensions that contradicts their
business model of tracking and ads.
And you could see this section righthere that Stephen has up on screen,
which says, this is u block origin.com,And they are explaining to everybody
about Manifest V3, which is somethingGoogle pushed last year, I believe.

(35:54):
Or in the last year or so, andthey basically said all of the, um.
extensions that are using this ManifestV2 API, we're going to stop allowing, and
we're going to enforce Manifest V3 API.
And what that means is just, it, ittakes away a lot of the power that
extensions have and the upshot of it.

(36:15):
is, is that for you block origin, itreduces their ability to block ads.
So if you are on Chrome and you're usingyou block origin, it's not gonna be
working nearly as well as it was before.
You can ditch Chrome though, andyou can use it on Firefox, which
still works a hundred percent.
And you can, and as far as I cantell, brave put out a statement

(36:36):
saying that their ad blocking willwork as well, a hundred percent.
And, and furthermore, brave is not.
Using Manifest V3, they're stickingwith Manifest V2, which was the previous
version that had more power, um,allowed via the API to the extensions.

Interesting.
I'll need to dig into Manifest V3'cause I know like they've made uh,
uh, overhauled the extensions a lot.
And I know you can now buildlike extensions that like come
out in like little side sheetsinstead of little pop out windows.
Um, But uh, I wonder if that hassomething to do with Manifest V3 anyways.
Uh,

And you can

Okay.

the alter, um, uBlock Origin site says alternatives and solutions.
One, continue using uBlock originon Firefox because it's still
full powered on Firefox two Use.
uBlock origin light.
Chrome, which is, as it sounds,kind of a more version in terms
of having less capabilities.

(37:40):
Three, switch to browserscommitted to Manifest V2 support.
That would include Brave.
I'm not sure which otherones off the top of my head.
then four, explore othercontent blocking methods.

Got it.
Got it.

Alright.
the next extension I want to talkabout is called X Browser Sync.
And we're gonna pull thatup for those of you viewing.
And what I love about this one isright now, uh, the way that a lot of
browsers encourage you to sync allof your bookmarks and stuff is by

(38:19):
signing into their specific Account.
So Brave has Brave Sync, Firefox hasFirefox Sync, Google Chrome has its own
Google account syncing system, which noneof them are compatible with each other.
And
Depending on how much you trust thesecompanies, which for Google should not be

(38:41):
a lot, they are gonna be using your datafor ways in ways that you might not want.
So enter this extension X browser sync.
This is the X stands for cross.
So it's cross compatible acrossdifferent browsers, and it works on
any browser that allows extensions.
So that would be.
Chrome, Firefox, Brave, et cetera.

(39:03):
And it's very ba, it's a very basic app.
It does one thing, and it doesone thing well, and that is
that it sinks your bookmarks.
And so I've been using this for years.
It just that of fades into the background.
I don't really think about it, andit sinks all my, all of my bookmarks.
They do have a, an Android app as well.

(39:24):
And unfortunately, they stoppedsupporting their iOS app.
You could see, um, I'm on, we'reon X browsery.org and in the FAQ
section, they say, What happenedto the XB Browsers Sync iOS app.
we had to pull the iOS app due tothe inability to continue supporting
continuous braking iOS updates from Apple.

(39:47):
only was this impractical from the goal ofhaving a shared X Browser Sync code base
for all platforms, but it also meant tohaving to purchase newer Apple hardware to
develop on, as well as paying 99 a year.
for an Apple developer license.
Combined with Apple's extremely stringentApp Store submission review process, we
couldn't justify the iOS app holding upnew releases for the other platforms,

(40:11):
so the hard decision was taken, wastaken to pull iOS support completely.
apologized to all Apple users who wantto continue using X browser sync and ask
those users to consider moving to Android,which is far more developer friendly,
as well as providing many otherbenefits over the Apple ecosystem.
And it does suck for people who areon iOS that they can't use that.

(40:35):
But I do echo the sentiment here, whichis consider using a more sovereign
operating system on your mobile devices.
And unfortunately Apple isjust too locked down for that.
So, um, there's gonna be alot of instances where we're
gonna talk about various.

(40:56):
Open,
Um.
Ways of, of loading apps onto phones.
The big one is how iOS doesn'tallow side side loading of apps.
And in another episode we're gonnatalk about mobile operating systems,
and we'll go into this in more detail,but I'm just kind of, uh, giving you
a teaser here and encouraging you toconsider getting a secondary device

(41:21):
and loading up a D googled versionof Android on that, like Graph OS or.
Calx OS, uh, more to come on that topic.
Okay,
Uh, anything you wanted to add, Stephen?

not really.
I look uh, look forward to tryingthat sometime, maybe on the desktop.

One last thing on X browser Sync is that it is self hostable.
You can host your own syncingserver, although it does use client
site encryption, so, unless youare particularly enthusiastic
about self-hosting, you can justuse one of the default servers.

Nice.

While we are on the topic of this extension, uh, I've decided we
should go to the mobile browsers now.
Maybe Maybe we can talk about, we'vealready covered how on iOS, you don't have
much choice If, in fact, if you downloadGrave or Firefox, it's just a a skin over.

(42:33):
Safari.
However, and here's something that I, Irealize now I need to do more research
on and maybe Stephen, you have someinput here, but if you download Brave
on iOS, do you at least get the adblocking that's built into Brave or no?

I'm pretty sure you do.
Oh, let me verify that by pullingout Brave on my phone right now.

Okay.

Um,
let's see.
Yeah, I can still click on, yeah,I can still click on the uh, lion
icon and it comes up it says, youknow, Brave shields are up, 14 ads
and other creepy things blocked.
So, yeah, you still get all that.

Okay, great.
So even though it's mostly Safari underthe hood, it sounds like you still get
the benefit of ad blocking outta the box.
So I would say brave isprobably a good choice on iOS.
I'm not sure how much ad blocking andtracker blocking Safari has outta the box.
I'm sure they have some, but Idon't think it's as robust as a of.

(43:40):
As you block origin, which iswhat Brave is essentially using.
The other option on mobile is Firefox.
And I don't think there's a reasonto be using it on iOS, but on
Android, I do like using Firefox.
And the reason is they are the onlybrowser, the only mobile browser, as far

(44:03):
as I know, that lets you use extensions.
So Brave on, on Android, for example, doesnot have the ability to install extensions
the way you can on Brave on desktop.
However, with Firefox, theydo have a select number of
extensions that you can install.
Again, it's not the full suite.

(44:24):
I guess you have, when you aredeveloping an extension, you have
to specifically target a mobile butthey do have some of the big ones.
So for example, have U block originand they have decentralized, which
is one that, uh, I Neglected to talkabout earlier, but Decentralize, which

(44:47):
is spelled like D Central E-I-E-Y-E-S.
That is one that gives you a lot moreprivacy when you're viewing sites such as
YouTube and other content delivery sites.
Uh, The last extension I wanna talkabout is a password manager extension.

(45:10):
So, for example, if I'm usingthe Bit Warden password manager,
I'm I'm absolutely gonnainstall that on all my browsers.
It's a must have.
It just makes a breeze and allowsme to store all of my important
data in my password manager.
I'm sure all the major passwordmanagers have extensions.

(45:32):
I know, for example, LastPass hasone, though I wouldn't recommend them.
Um, password is great.
that you can think of, Stephen,that you would recommend?

Yeah, proton pass is also a good password manager.
It's part of the the wholeproton uh, ecosystem.
Of course, simple login, of course.
I mean, uh.
All that kind of stuff.
Um.
But yeah, I mean, obviously, when once youget out of the chrome chromium ecosystem,
you lose the ability to use like Albee andstuff like that for lightning payments,

(46:07):
unless they have a Firefox extension.
Now, I don't think they do.
Um, but yeah, I mean, uh, I don't know.
Everybody's got their favoriteextensions and you know, I probably
don't have a a whole ton to add there.

Okay, um, go back to talking about search engines.
We covered brave search.
Another one that many peoplemight have heard of is DuckDuckGo.
This is another privacy centricextend, uh, excuse me, search engine.
And interestingly, theyalso have a browser.
I don't have a lot of experiencewith the DuckDuckGo browser.

(46:45):
I've played with it briefly,but I'm not really sure.
I see a attraction for, Uh, or rather, I,I don't really see a benefit for it that
would draw me away from using and Firefox.
Do you have any thoughts on that?

I've never used it and I don't actually know like what it is.
Like, is it a fork ofChromium or a fork of Firefox?
I don't know.
Um, and yeah, I I really don't know.
I, I think it's just a good, this mightbe a good time to bring up like, a,
why are we talking about search enginesand browsers in the same episode?

(47:25):
And it's like, because we we kindof debated it if if this was.
You know, if this should beseparate topics or the same.
And what we've really seen overthe past, like, uh, you know, 30
plus years is just that, uh, thesearch engine and the browser have
kind of become really intertwined.
And for a lot of people, they'reactually, uh, I think they've

(47:47):
kind of become inseparable ideas.
Like used to be you, you were on yourbrowser and you actually had to type
in yahoo.com or alta vista.com orgoogle.com, And then the next stage was.
Um, having the browser homepage defaultto a search engine, like Firefox,
like having Google on the homepage.

(48:08):
And then the next stage was kindof like, Oh, get the Google toolbar
for Internet Explorer, right?
Then chromium came out and they'rejust like, eh, we're just gonna
let you, we're gonna turn it intoa unified search bar at the top.
That's like you can type in awebsite or you can type in a search
term and we'll know what you mean.
And ever since that happened,every other browser has adopted

(48:31):
that same design pattern.
Firefox and Edge and Spar,they're all that now.
And so now, for like, most people,I don't even know if most people
even understand the difference.
I actually wonder if most, like, youknow, regular folks actually even
understand what a search engine is.
Because it is so tightlybundled into the web browser.

(48:52):
And so I I kinda wonder what theDuckDuckGo thing if um, this was like
part of that, like realizing, becauseobviously as a search engine, instead
of selling data, DuckDuckGo sellsadvertising the way that Google used to.
But their advertising is nottargeted towards you individually.

(49:15):
Their advertising is targeted towards um,whatever search term you're searching for.
Right.
So And maybe that they're just kindof like, okay, Um, you know, the, the
browser and the search engine have becomeinseparable in most people's minds.
So we needed to offer an end-to-endsolution browser search engine

(49:35):
to get more people to yoursor service to sell more ads.
Um, Maybe that was part of the thing.
But anyways, that's why we are wherewe're at talking about search engines
and browsers in the same episode becausethey're technically different, but
they're, they're for better or for worse,they're bundled as a single unified

(49:55):
product to, for most consumers these days.

And you've reminded me of some conversations I've
had with non-technical people.
And you're exactly correct Wreckbecause I would ask them something
like, what browser are you using orwhat search engine are you using?
And either way, theanswer would be Google.
They didn't really have thedistinction, like you mentioned.
You know, for them, they just, there'sa search thing, search bar on their
phone, and they just type in somethingand then search results come back.

(50:22):
It's totally transparent to them.
I don't even think they understand theconcept of having different browsers and
different search engines that can May ormay not be coupled with those browsers.

Yeah.
I can't.
How can you live like that?
Anyways.

Two, two more search engines I wanna cover that
aren't coupled with a browser.
First is start page.com.
page is a good option if youonly want Google results.
Let's say you're used to Google resultsor let's say you specifically need the
same results you would get from Google,but you don't want, you want some privacy.

(51:01):
Start page is like a proxybetween you and Google.
They just hit Google servers for you.
but They're not passingyour data onto them.
So if you want Google results,but without the Google
surveillance, try start page.com.

Yeah, and on that note, I mean, on that note real quick,
uh, it's like, um, uh, you know, uh,maybe I shouldn't need to say this, but
obviously if your privacy is important,uh, don't go to start page and be
like restaurants near my home address.
Like, if you type in restaurantsnear and then you put in your home

(51:39):
address, you've kind of, you know,identified probably who you are.
Um, uh, to to somebodysomewhere uh, along the line.
But having said that, assuming youare uh, searching for something that
has a, um, high enough anonymity set,then yes, you have greater privacy.

Sure.
and I would say even in the case whereyou're searching an area that would
docks your approximate location, uh, atleast it's not passing on your IP address
and.

Yeah, yeah.

fingerprinting and those kind of things.
So,
you're still getting some benefits thereand something that this is a point that
I want to hit on and I will hit, continueto hit on over the course of this show,
which is you wanna have multiple layers.
Sort of a defense in depthapproach to your privacy.
You don't wanna rely on any one tool.

(52:32):
For example, just using a VPN,but not changing any of your
other behaviors or tools is notgonna give you a lot of privacy.
You're still gonna leak yourI identity via other means.
But if you have multiple tools and,um, private approaches, that's gonna,
They're all gonna add up and whereone might leak data, the other might

(52:53):
cover that hole and vice versa.
So that's why you'll, you'll usea variety of tools to build up a
nice sovereign computing toolbox.
The last search engine we'regonna look at is called cgi.
I think I'm saying that right.
KAGI.

(53:13):
Let's see if
we can.

dot com?.

I don't know the domain name.

Well, that's just to be safe.
Search for cgi search cgi.com.
Okay.
CGI c.

So this one, CGI is a newer search engine and they, They market
themselves as a private search, but theyactually take, you can buy a premium.
Account for a price they'vegot some premium features.
Um, I haven't tried the the paid accountversion, but supposedly it's got some

(53:48):
great algorithms and great results.
And it's, it's a good experience.
So if you, if you like the idea ofpaying for a search engine so that
you're not paying with your data, then.
tag seems like an up and comer, so Ijust wanted to give them a quick mention.

(54:12):
Any other, any other comments or youwould like to talk about regarding search
engines, browsers, or extensions, Stephen.

Uh, not that I can think of.

All right, let's move on to our boost section.
And before we read the boost for thisepisode, I would like to shout out to
all of the listeners that were streamingin last time you guys are Really
appreciated all of your sats if you wannaboost in you can do so with fountain

(54:49):
the fountain app Or go to fountain.
fm and search for the A TL bitlabpodcast if you're listening to this You
probably already know how to find it.
um As of right now, Fountain isthe easiest way for podcast, the
easiest podcasting 2.0 app to use.
However, there are some others that,that, um, I wanna talk about, but we

(55:13):
won't go into too much detail here.
Maybe another episode, but podverse is one and Breeze is another.
Both of these have the abilityto to podcasts and stream sets
as well as send in boosts.
All right.
We are now gonna read our boost,Let's go ahead and pull that up.

Yeah, it should be.
I think it's just this one this week.

Alright.
We have a boost from live long andprosper for 100 sats and live long
and prosper says, Hey, good job.
Thank you.
Live long and prosper.
Your sats are much appreciatedand we hope you keep listening.

Yeah, ditto on that.
All right, cool.
Yeah, that's the boost.

That's all the boost for today.
I wanna remind everyone that you cango to atl bitlab.com/podcast and you
can see all of the episodes there.
You can donate to the show, youcan boost in and you can get all
of the show notes and the video.
If you like watching the video ofit, we have all of the screencasts
recording as we are talking.

(56:26):
Um, That's all for today.
Thanks everybody for listeningand we'll see you next time.

Hey, thanks for listening.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you want to learn more aboutanything that we discussed, you can
look for links in the show notesthat should be in your podcast
player, or you can go to atlbitlab.
com slash podcast.
On a final note, if you foundthis information useful and you
want to help support us, you canalways send us a tip in Bitcoin.

(56:55):
Your support really helps us so that wecan keep bringing you content like this.
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Is Your Web Browser Spying on You? - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV007)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Is Your Web Browser Spying on You? - The Sovereign Computing Show (SOV007)