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

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Google Chrome is not just a browser; it's a surveillance tool. In this episode of the Sovereign Computing Show, Jordan Bravo and Stephen DeLorme delve into why Chrome collects vast amounts of your data and discuss more private alternatives. They explore various browsers like Firefox, Brave, and the up-and-coming Ladybird, as well as private search engines such as DuckDuckGo, StartPage, and Kagi. Learn how to take back control of your web browsing experience with privacy-focused tools and strategies.

Chapters

00:00 Google Chrome: The Spy in Your Browser
00:36 Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show
00:52 Sponsorship and Community at ATL BitLab
02:02 Boosting and Interacting with the Show
02:58 Apple's Encryption Battle with the UK Government
04:57 The US Government's Stance on Encryption
17:13 Choosing Private Web Browsers and Search Engines
18:24 Why You Should Avoid Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge
22:56 The Benefits of Using Brave Browser
27:48 Exploring Firefox as a Private Browser Option
29:17 The Importance of Firefox in the Browser Ecosystem
30:07 Nostalgia for Firefox's Early Days
31:55 The Rise of Brave and Other Chromium Forks
33:00 Introducing Ladybird: A New Browser on the Horizon
34:25 Essential Browser Extensions for Privacy and Ad Blocking
37:55 Mobile Browsers and Syncing Solutions
46:28 Exploring Alternative Search Engines
54:27 Listener Boosts and Podcasting 2.0 Apps
56:05 Closing Remarks and How to Support the Show

Transcript

Jordan Bravo: [00:00:00] Google Chrome at this point is spyware. I don't think I'm being controversial or spicy by saying that. It literally spies on everything you do in the browser. That's how they generate the vast amounts of data that is key to their business model.

Stephen DeLorme: I remember in the early two thousands, Firefox was like so cool. Remember, just feeling like a total badass, 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 just made this computer better.

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

Stephen DeLorme: This episode is sponsored by ATL BitLab. ATL BitLab is Atlanta's freedom tech hacker space. We have co working [00:01:00] desks, conference rooms, event space, maker tools, and tons of coffee. There is a very active community here in the lab. Every Wednesday night is Bitcoin night here in Atlanta. We also have meetups for cyber security, artificial intelligence, decentralized identity, product design, and more.

We offer day passes and nomad passes for people who need to use the lab only occasionally, as well as memberships for people who plan to use the lab more regularly, such as myself. One of the best things about having a BitLab membership isn't the amenities, it's the people. Surrounding yourself with a community helps you learn faster and helps you build better.

Your creativity becomes amplified when you work in this space, that's what I think at least. If you're interested in becoming a 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.

Jordan Bravo: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Sovereign Computing Show. I'm Jordan Bravo and I'm here today with Stephen DeLorme. [00:02:00] Uh, first we wanna remind everyone that you can boost into the show and let us know your opinions, what you want to hear as far as topics go. And as a reminder, you do not need to be listening live. You can boost into any prerecorded podcast episode no matter how old it is. You just use a podcast 2.0 Capable app, such as Fountain fm and you can go ahead and choose which episode you're listening to. It will, it will select that one and boost into that specific episode and we will get your message and we'll read it on the show coming.

Coming up today. On today's episode, we are gonna talk about a web browsers and search engines and how you can. Choose the most private options and customize them for even more privacy. But first, we're gonna talk about today our. Uh, news article that we [00:03:00] wanna analyze and share with everyone, and that is about, this is an ongoing saga that's currently un uh, furling about Apple's battle with the UK government.

They recently, the UK government recently ordered Apple to remove end-to-end encryption in their, uh, iCloud. Accounts for UK users, and it looks like Apple has now had to comply with that. So let's talk about what that means for everyone, including people who don't live in the UK and are using Apple devices like iPhones.

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

Stephen DeLorme: 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-end iCloud encryption in the uk. Boots [00:04:00] 135,000 plus non-compliant apps from the EU app store.

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

Stephen DeLorme: Lemme blow that up a little bit.

Jordan Bravo: 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 data protection a DP tool for new customers in the UK after the government demanded backdoor access to encrypted user data. A DP is an opt-in feature used for protecting sensitive user data, such as iCloud files, photos, notes, and other stuff.

And Apple expressed disappointment, blah, blah, blah. Um, that's, that's pretty much the gist of it. We already covered that, but let's, let's take a look at the implications of that. There's a Forbes article that I want to [00:05:00] wanna share with everybody, and this shows something really telling, and this, this article talks about how a few, uh, a few.

Weeks or months ago, I believe the FBI and other US agencies, they were actually recommending end-to-end encrypted apps for US citizens and and tech users because Chinese hackers had hacked into the US telecom infrastructure. And so we had commented on that article saying, wow, it's, it's interesting to see the US.

Three letter agencies who previously were anti end-to-end encryption because it inhibited them to be able to spy and gather user data. Uh, they were now recommending end-to-end encryption, but it turns out they weren't really recommending it a hundred percent. Um, they were just, they wanted the, if you [00:06:00] 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 data if we demand it from a a US company. So in other words, they want end-to-end encryption with a backdoor. Which, as we've talked about before, is not real end-to-end encryption either. It keeps out everybody except the intended recipients or it doesn't, and it has a, a backdoor that third parties can use.

And, uh, I'm gonna read a quote here from the FBI that says, law enforcement supports strong responsibly managed encryption. This encryption should be designed to protect people's privacy and also managed so that US tech companies can provide readable content in response to a lawful court order end quote.

And let's scroll down a little bit more. Stephen,

uh, there's a particular quote I wanna read that's, that's [00:07:00] really telling, and it's about how they want it both ways. In other words, um.

Stephen DeLorme: Maybe is it this one? The FBI's formal position is that it is a strong advocate for the wide and consistent use of responsibly managed encryption. Encryption, the providers can decrypt and provide the law enforcement when served with a legal order.

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

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

Jordan Bravo: 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 encryption via a backdoor [00:08:00] when it's a, uh, an order by US law enforcement. So in other words,

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah,

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

Stephen DeLorme: Oh, sorry to cut you off.

Jordan Bravo: No, no, it, it's, uh, It kind of says it all. I don't know if I have anything else to add here just that the US government agencies are better at, at, um, acting like they care, maybe than, let's say Chinese hackers who really don't interface. They don't have like a public PR department. 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 to back, continue to backdoor us because we know that they've been spying on their own citizens for years now. So, I don't know, to me, this is just political speak, you know, double talk. And all it says to me is that we need to continue to, uh, us as users, we need to continue [00:09:00] to make the choice of using end-to-end encrypted communications and end-to-end encrypted storage and not put our trust in any one company such as Apple, because even if they have the best of intentions, they can be compelled to by, um, any government where they are in that jurisdiction, right? Because a legal entity has to be responsible.

They have to comply with the government of 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 they are, no matter how many billboards of sexy Apple privacy ads they run, right. They have to eventually at the end of the day, comply.

Stephen DeLorme: 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, you use end end encrypted apps like signal. Because, you know, uh, you know, Chinese threat actors could, um, compromise companies and, and read sensitive messages. [00:10:00] And then now it sounds like they're saying, well, we want encryption, but only encryption that the, you know, uh, tech companies can, uh, can decrypt if we ask them to. Sounds like a contradiction. But I think one thing we've learned just, you know, especially recently with everything going on in the news with Doge and all of that is that, like, government are not just these, like, monolithic organizations.

It's not like one brain that has like 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 own opinions about things. And so, like, um, you know, I don't know how public statements get issued from the FBI, but it very well could be that the statement we were reading a couple weeks ago was from You know, uh, one branch 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're probably gonna get uh, a different a different answer [00:11:00] about something. Um, but. Yeah, I mean, I'll just for for anyone who might be listening who might be new to these topics of, you know, sovereign computing and end-to-end encryption, this kind of language sounds very mature and responsible you just like are are reading it on paper.

It's like, you know, of course we want responsibly managed encryption. You know, we want to keep the bad guys out, 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 you dig into it, it's, it's, it it. doesn't make sense.

It's, um, I think, uh, You have a situation where any kind of flaw or weakness in the encryption, um, That, you know, can be exploited by a good guy can also be exploited by [00:12:00] a bad guy. In other words, it's like, um, if you want to protect your data by having it end-to-end encrypted, except there is a good guy that you trust to be able to access that data without your consent, whether that is the government or whether that's apple or some other 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 get compromised, 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. And. Um, you know, dressing it up in this language of, well, this is mature and responsibly managed in encryption. Um, it it doesn't, you know, it doesn't actually work in practice, I don't think.

Jordan Bravo: Agreed. And it, it's worth pointing out that [00:13:00] they put the typical boogeyman in this, um, article. There's a quote from the FBI. It wouldn't be a quote from the FBI about encryption. If they didn't mention terrorist, I. terrorists, hack and child predators, so they can always, I think, play on people's fears by invoking these really 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 people that the FBI and others are using to say, ah, you, if you don't want these people doing bad things, you gotta let us weaken the encryption and have a backdoor so that we can surveil everything. So just wanted to throw that out there. It's a kind of a obligatory statements from them.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, and on that note, I mean, it's like, you know, that, you you know, everyone's gonna have their own interpretation of of these kinds of things. I think, you know, one, you know, one way to interpret all this stuff is like, you know, uh, [00:14:00] uh, Oh, yeah, they're, they're, they're all evil and all of that. And, you know, governments want to control everything.

I think another, maybe perhaps more charitable interpretation is that I think when you look at, You know, any agency or division of the government or whatever, They are given a mission like it's people's livelihoods to carry out a particular mission, right? So, like, if you are in, let's say, the military, um, especially if you're a high, you know, high up military leader, your mandate, um, being in charge of, of, of that, like, part of government is to

be able to win wars. That's your job and you're, you're going to want to have every resource at your disposal to be able to win wars because that's your job. Um,

you know, you know, so pick your department of government, figure out what they do if you're gonna do your job well, that, that's like, you want every resource or your disposal.

Same thing with FBI, they're tasked with, uh. [00:15:00] 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 your disposal to be able to do your job well and certainly if you could just spy on every every everybody's communications all the time, that would actually make 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 of government might hold that opinion.

nonetheless. um, you know, you know, that's not the the, the world I wanna live in where, you know, every, you know, citizen, um, you know, has to get spied on. So it's our, you know, uh, responsibility to push back against that, I think. and. You know, build uh, technology that um, allows us to to protect our privacy and and sovereignty. But I think there's, you know, may always 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.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. That's [00:16:00] right. It's, it's a matter of people and organizations made of those people responding to incentives. And before, uh, we move on from this topic, there is one other angle that I think is really interesting. And that is, I think towards the end of the article that they start to get into this more, but that's the idea that this is just the first move in a Uh, opening salvo, you might say, or, or a series of changes that we might see going on.

So coming up, we now might see the US government pressure Apple to do the same thing. And then it could also pressure other companies to do the same thing. So you have things like Meta, which owns WhatsApp, which uses end-to-end encryption. And Microsoft is another big one. Um. And Google, of course. So all of these companies that have really popular apps, it's highly likely, or at least probable that going [00:17:00] forward after this, this is sort of a precedent being set on the world stage.

And now the US government might. attempt to pressure companies to reverse their encryption as well.

Okay. With that, let's move into our main topic of today. We are gonna be talking about web browsers and search engines. There's a wide variety of browsers to choose from, both for desktop and mobile. And let's concentrate on desktop first, because I think there's more choices there and more to talk about. So, um, I think first let's talk about our goal is. Our goal is to have a balance between convenience and privacy. Obviously, I'm gonna be leaning pretty hard on the privacy end of the spectrum. I'm willing to give up a little bit of convenience for some privacy. But at the same time, um, I am not going all the way to [00:18:00] one side where Some people might say use the Torah browser for everything. I think that's not practical. I think for anybody who's using the internet on a regular basis and relies on it, Tor is just too slow and too unreliable. So we're gonna be looking at normal HTTPS capable browsers and kind of everyday use browsers. Uh, First, I wanna talk about what browsers not to use because this is a shorter list. And we're gonna talk about the, the granddaddy of them all, which is Chrome. Google Chrome is by far the 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're we're gonna take a little trip down software education lane for a second. Chrome is actually built on an open source [00:19:00] browser called Chromium, also made by Google. Um, And then Chrome is just Chromium with some extra Google proprietary stuff baked in to make it have a slightly smoother UX, but also tightly integrated with Google's 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 be incredibly fast, and that's just great. Business on their part because the better the ux, the more people that use it. And also, and that means the more data that they're able to collect. Uh, Google at Google Chrome at this point is spyware. I don't think I'm being controversial or spicy by saying that it literally spies on

everything you do in the browser. That's how they generate the vast amounts of data that is key to their business model. [00:20:00] Um, so. It's also important to understand that are a lot of browsers out there that you might encounter that might seem different, but are actually just built on top of Chromium. There are actually only three unique browsers out there. Uh, Chromium, and Safari, each with their own engines in them. So Google Chrome and Chromium has the Blink rendering engine with the V8 JavaScript engine. then Firefox has the, s um, do you remember what the, what's

Stephen DeLorme: Gecko, I think is what it's called. I think it's Gecko.

Jordan Bravo: Thank you. has the Gecko rendering engine and the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine. then Safari has the WebKit rendering engine, I believe it's called, and the JavaScript core engine. so every browser out there is built on one of those three browsers. [00:21:00] that It's basically just fancy skins and some added functionality on top of those primary, uh, browser baselines. So.

Stephen DeLorme: And you know, a funny thing on that note is, uh, I know you said you wanted to focus on desktop, but I'm pretty sure on iOS that all the browsers are WebKit.

It's weird because you gotta think it's like even the Firefox and the Chrome browsers are actually running on WebKit on iPhone.

Jordan Bravo: Yeah. So we'll, we'll get to this in a, in a little bit, but iPhone users are incredibly limited on their browser choices. uh, and, and for that major reason, which is that does not allow browsers on iOS that are anything other than just reskins of, uh, Safari. So going back to the desktop, we don't want to use Chrome because Chrome is, is just the highly Google [00:22:00] tuned version of Chromium. Um, what about Microsoft Edge? Edge is Microsoft's version of Chromium, And it's just, it's basically just chromium with Microsoft stuff on top. So in many ways it is a worse version of Chrome. It's got Google's. Spyware built into it and Google's data collection as well as Microsoft's data collection on top of it And From what I've been able to to gather it's no faster and it doesn't provide any extra features I think it's just a Microsoft branding thing.

That's really the only um, Advantage you get. So you're a big fan of Microsoft branding, maybe you want to go with edge, but I wouldn't recommend it. So we talked about what browsers not to use. Let's talk about what we actually do want to use. The first browser I'm gonna recommend is actually a [00:23:00] chromium. fork. It's built on top of Chromium. So you're gonna get a lot of the speed 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 that it comes with a lot of, Brave branded Shitcoin stuff and it's very crypto focused and if you're not interested in that, very easy to disable it. But just be aware that outta the box you are gonna see buttons and settings that give you easy access to web3 crypto stuff

And Braves Brave has a, A token, the bat token, BAT, basic attention token. 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 more interesting if [00:24:00] they had just used SATs, Satoshis, uh, the, the internet money that we all know and love. But, um, in any case, you don't have to, I, I use Brave a lot.

I just go into the settings and 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 out that Brave has a great search engine. uh, search.brave.com.

I. And it's, I mean, it's the default one that Brave is gonna use you install it, but you can use this search engine on any browser. It's not limited to Brave. So you can use this on Firefox, Chrome, et cetera. But I find it to be, it. it uses a completely different. search algorithm and index than Google or any of the other major providers.

So it's not like just a re-skinning of it. You're actually getting unique search results. I [00:25:00] find the search results to be pretty good. And on top of that, Brave has a little AI blurb at the top of the search results page. So Stephen's gonna do a a sample search for The Sovereign Computing Show. And above the search results it's a quick little blurb that says, The Sovereign Computing Show. There is no specific show called The Sovereign Computing Show. Ah,

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

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

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: Any comments on brave?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah. I mean, I'll just echo everything you said. I mean, it's like the, I I think what they were trying to do is kind of noble with their token thing. Not that I, I would agree with making tokens, but just from them trying to be like, okay, if we're gonna make a browser that cuts out advertising. [00:26:00] Like, How does the web economy?

Like the website, um, web content economy work in a world, um, where all ads are blocked. And I, I disagree with their answer that they came up with, but I do agree with them asking the question to begin with. Um, that, yeah, it is, it is an interesting, uh, kind of problem if you do advocate for ad blocking, how you, um, You know, incentivize uh, websites to uh, publish and host uh, great content that you wanna see.

Um, and I suspect the answer would probably have to do uh, more with Bitcoin and Bitcoin micropayments and and, and all of that. But yeah, I mean, that's a whole other topic.

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

Stephen DeLorme: Yes.

Jordan Bravo: were to go to a website that has a [00:27:00] Tor onion address, it will actually load in Brave, which is pretty cool.

Stephen DeLorme: 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 their search 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 see a browser that has a tor integrated as, uh, a first class citizen.

I'm actually opening it in a browser, Um, but you probably can't stay on the screen share 'cause it opened it up in a new window. But. That is pretty cool. Um, you know, usually people have to download, you know, historically, you had to download a whole nother browser uh, for tour. So it's nice to have another one just that it has it built in, and, you know, with the same ease that you would make an incognito window, you can make a to window.

So that's really cool.

Jordan Bravo: All right. Next we're gonna talk about Firefox. Firefox is a product of Mozilla and something interesting about Mozilla is that, and with [00:28:00] Firefox in particular, the way that Mozilla makes money from Firefox is via Uh, getting paid by Google to make Google the default search in the Firefox browser. So that's kind of interesting. They have, that's a weird incentive for them, right? Cause they're supposedly the competitor, the more private version. Um, and that's how they market themselves. But at the same time, they're getting paid by this trillion dollar corporation. Who's Got basically a monopoly on the browser market to have a token competitor. And if it sounds like I'm implying some 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 were a part of, it was sort of like what Microsoft went through, but basically the government said, you have a monopoly on the browser market and that's not good. [00:29:00] and I think what, I think what Google does is they pay Mozilla a, a fair amount of money, like we're talking tens or hundreds of millions of dollars here in order to have, Token competition to 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 Google giving them that money as part of their strategy, I don't think Firefox would still exist just competing in the market based on how few people use it. That being said, use it. I think it's great. I, I hope that we continue to have a competitor,

even if they're like a controlled opposition, because I think it's healthier for the web ecosystem to have more than just one. Main browser. And if people are building on different technologies like Firefox's technology in addition to Google, Chromium and, um, Apple Safari, I think it's just a, a [00:30:00] healthier market for the web in general.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, sure. I think that all makes sense. I, You know, it funny. I remember in uh, like the early two thousands, man, like fire, like Firefox was like so cool. It like. Remember, like, you know, just feeling like a total badass, like, Oh, look, this school computer doesn't have Firefox installed. Let me take care of that shit.

Um, and then, you know, download Firefox and install it. It's like, yeah, I just made this computer better. Um, and, uh, because Firefox was actually faster in those times. in those days, it was like, uh, uh, it was actually was faster and more performant than, Like IE6 and, you know, this before Edge when it was all Internet Explorer.

And so it felt really cool. And that that was actually that time. That was the big draw 'cause we weren't as worried about privacy and the data collection, um, you know, stuff back then. [00:31:00] And, you know, then eventually they kind of got this uh, privacy, uh, you know, narrative or or whatever. But, um, I don't know. It's interesting.

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 an interesting piece of Internet history. I don't know if I'm as bullish on it long term because, Um,

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 could never 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 that we have, I, I put more faith

and more, I shouldn't say faith, but

I guess I'm more, um, excited about brave [00:32:00] as like a chromium fork and all of that, because like, I feel like they're actually trying to have like a business model that's like, been, they're, they're having not only a de-googled browser, but also a de-googled business model.

Um, and I kind of feel Like,

you know, if it's all open source, it's like, 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 better and faster and more performant.

It makes sense for people to just use that code base. So I think I'm personally more interested in a project that's trying to use Blink and V8 and just kind of like maintain that, but build products that are Degod. Um, but I don't know, I'm, I'm uh, digressing a little bit there. But it, you, I mean, I'm glad you're, I agree it's a good that there's somebody else trying something out there.[00:33:00]

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

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah.

Jordan Bravo: about. Go ahead and open up a new tab to ladybird.org. is a new browser that is not ready for, public release yet. It's still in very much like alpha stage, but it's being built from the ground up by a tech guy. And it is completely independent of any large corporation and it's fully open source and privacy friendly 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 in the browser space that's actually viable. Uh, right now, I think said maybe in [00:34:00] late 2025, it might be ready for beta, but it's not ready yet.

However, I'm gonna be keeping an eye 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 is available, I'll let you know how it goes.

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

Jordan Bravo: So let's go back to Firefox and to talk about some extensions that are really useful first for Firefox and really for any Browser you block origin is the gold standard in ad blocking and tracker blocking brave actually comes with their own of this built in as far as I can tell they just took uBlock origin and bundled it with their browser So you don't have to install it on brave but on any other browser, I highly recommend it to me I [00:35:00] can't use a browser without it like that the internet is just the web is just unusable to me without it because of How, uh, I have written it is basically. And this'll, this'll even block YouTube ads. So if you are watching YouTube with this extension enabled, you will no longer see YouTube ads, which is pretty sweet.

Here's another reason you'll wanna stay away from Chrome is that, Google nerfed the, all of the extensions in the web store. They're basically. blocking the functionality of extensions that contradicts their business model of tracking and ads. And you could see this section right here 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 something Google pushed last year, I believe. Or in the last year or so, and they basically said all of the, um. [00:36:00] extensions that are using this Manifest V2 API, we're going to stop allowing, and we're going to enforce Manifest V3 API. And what that means is just, it, it takes away a lot of the power that extensions have and the upshot of it. is, is that for you block origin, it reduces their ability to block ads. So if you are on Chrome and you're using you block origin, it's not gonna be working nearly as well as it was before. You can ditch Chrome though, and you can use it on Firefox, which still works a hundred percent.

And you can, and as far as I can tell, brave put out a statement saying that their ad blocking will work as well, a hundred percent. And, and furthermore, brave is not. Using Manifest V3, they're sticking with Manifest V2, which was the previous version that had more power, um, allowed via the API to the extensions.

Stephen DeLorme: Interesting. I'll need to dig into Manifest [00:37:00] V3 'cause I know like they've made uh, uh, overhauled the extensions a lot. And I know you can now build like extensions that like come out in like little side sheets instead of little pop out windows. Um, But uh, I wonder if that has something to do with Manifest V3 anyways.

Uh,

Jordan Bravo: And you can

Stephen DeLorme: Okay.

Jordan Bravo: the alter, um, uBlock Origin site says alternatives and solutions. One, continue using uBlock origin on 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. Three, switch to browsers committed to Manifest V2 support. That would include Brave. I'm not sure which other ones off the top of my head. then four, explore other content blocking methods.

Stephen DeLorme: Got it. Got it.

Jordan Bravo: Alright. the next extension I want to talk about is called [00:38:00] X Browser Sync. And we're gonna pull that up for those of you viewing. And what I love about this one is right now, uh, the way that a lot of browsers encourage you to sync all of your bookmarks and stuff is by signing into their specific Account. So Brave has Brave Sync, Firefox has Firefox Sync, Google Chrome has its own Google account syncing system, which none of them are compatible with each other. And

Depending on how much you trust these companies, which for Google should not be a lot, they are gonna be using your data for 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 across different browsers, and it works on any browser that allows extensions.

So that would be. [00:39:00] Chrome, Firefox, Brave, et cetera. And it's very ba, it's a very basic app. It does one thing, and it does one 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, and it sinks all my, all of my bookmarks. They do have a, an Android app as well. And unfortunately, they stopped supporting their iOS app. You could see, um, I'm on, we're on X browsery.org and in the FAQ section, they say, What happened to the XB Browsers Sync iOS app. we had to pull the iOS app due to the inability to continue supporting continuous braking iOS updates from Apple. only was this impractical from the goal of having a shared X Browser Sync code base for all platforms, but it also meant to having to purchase newer Apple hardware to develop on, as well as paying 99 a year. [00:40:00] for an Apple developer license. Combined with Apple's extremely stringent App Store submission review process, we couldn't justify the iOS app holding up new releases for the other platforms, so the hard decision was taken, was taken to pull iOS support completely. apologized to all Apple users who want to 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 other benefits over the Apple ecosystem. And it does suck for people who are on iOS that they can't use that. But I do echo the sentiment here, which is consider using a more sovereign operating system on your mobile devices. And unfortunately Apple is just too locked down for that. So, um, there's gonna be a lot of instances where we're gonna talk about various. Open,

Um. [00:41:00] Ways of, of loading apps onto phones. The big one is how iOS doesn't allow side side loading of apps. And in another episode we're gonna talk 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 to consider getting a secondary device and loading up a D googled version of Android on that, like Graph OS or. Calx OS, uh, more to come on that topic. Okay,

Uh, anything you wanted to add, Stephen?

Stephen DeLorme: not really. I look uh, look forward to trying that sometime, maybe on the desktop.

Jordan Bravo: One last thing on X browser Sync is that it is self hostable. You can host your own syncing server, although it does use client site encryption, so, unless you are particularly enthusiastic about [00:42:00] self-hosting, you can just use one of the default servers.

Stephen DeLorme: Nice.

Jordan Bravo: 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've already covered how on iOS, you don't have much choice If, in fact, if you download Grave or Firefox, it's just a a skin over. Safari. However, and here's something that I, I realize now I need to do more research on and maybe Stephen, you have some input here, but if you download Brave on iOS, do you at least get the ad blocking that's built into Brave or no?

Stephen DeLorme: I'm pretty sure you do. Oh, let me verify that by pulling out Brave on my phone right now.

Jordan Bravo: Okay.

Stephen DeLorme: Um,[00:43:00]

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, you know, Brave shields are up, 14 ads and other creepy things blocked. So, yeah, you still get all that.

Jordan Bravo: Okay, great. So even though it's mostly Safari under the hood, it sounds like you still get the benefit of ad blocking outta the box. So I would say brave is probably a good choice on iOS. I'm not sure how much ad blocking and tracker blocking Safari has outta the box. I'm sure they have some, but I don't think it's as robust as a of.

As you block origin, which is what Brave is essentially using. The other option on mobile is Firefox. And I don't think there's a reason to be using it on iOS, but on Android, I do like using Firefox. And the reason [00:44:00] is they are the only browser, the only mobile browser, as far as I know, that lets you use extensions. So Brave on, on Android, for example, does not have the ability to install extensions the way you can on Brave on desktop. However, with Firefox, they do have a select number of extensions that you can install. Again, it's not the full suite. I guess you have, when you are developing an extension, you have to specifically target a mobile but they do have some of the big ones. So for example, have U block origin and they have decentralized, which is one that, uh, I Neglected to talk about earlier, but Decentralize, which is spelled like D Central E-I-E-Y-E-S. That is one that gives you a lot more privacy when you're viewing sites such as YouTube and other [00:45:00] content delivery sites. Uh, The last extension I wanna talk about is a password manager extension. So, for example, if I'm using the Bit Warden password manager, I'm I'm absolutely gonna install that on all my browsers. It's a must have. It just makes a breeze and allows me to store all of my important data in my password manager. I'm sure all the major password managers have extensions. I know, for example, LastPass has one, though I wouldn't recommend them. Um, password is great. that you can think of, Stephen, that you would recommend?

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, proton pass is also a good password manager. It's part of the the whole proton uh, ecosystem. Of course, simple login, of course. I mean, uh. All that kind of stuff. Um. But yeah, I mean, obviously, when once you get [00:46:00] out of the chrome chromium ecosystem, you lose the ability to use like Albee and stuff like that for lightning payments, 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 favorite extensions and you know, I probably don't have a a whole ton to add there.

Jordan Bravo: Okay, um, go back to talking about search engines. We covered brave search. Another one that many people might have heard of is DuckDuckGo. This is another privacy centric extend, uh, excuse me, search engine. And interestingly, they also have a browser. I don't have a lot of experience with the DuckDuckGo browser.

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 [00:47:00] Firefox. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Stephen DeLorme: I've never used it and I don't actually know like what it is. Like, is it a fork of Chromium 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 might be a good time to bring up like, a, why are we talking about search engines and browsers in the same episode?

And it's like, because we we kind of debated it if if this was. You know, if this should be separate topics or the same. And what we've really seen over the past, like, uh, you know, 30 plus years is just that, uh, the search engine and the browser have kind of become really intertwined. And for a lot of people, they're actually, uh, I think they've kind of become inseparable ideas.

Like used to be you, you were on your browser and you actually had to type in yahoo.com or alta vista.com or google.com, And then the next stage was. [00:48:00] Um, having the browser homepage default to a search engine, like Firefox, like having Google on the homepage. And then the next stage was kind of like, Oh, get the Google toolbar for Internet Explorer, right?

Then chromium came out and they're just like, eh, we're just gonna let you, we're gonna turn it into a unified search bar at the top. That's like you can type in a website 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 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, you know, regular folks actually even understand what a search engine is. Because it is so tightly bundled into the web browser.

And so I I kinda wonder what the DuckDuckGo thing if um, [00:49:00] this was like part of that, like realizing, because obviously as a search engine, instead of selling data, DuckDuckGo sells advertising the way that Google used to. But their advertising is not targeted towards you individually. Their advertising is targeted towards um, whatever search term you're searching for.

Right. So And maybe that they're just kind of like, okay, Um, you know, the, the browser and the search engine have become inseparable in most people's minds. So we needed to offer an end-to-end solution browser search engine to get more people to yours or service to sell more ads. Um, Maybe that was part of the thing.

But anyways, that's why we are where we're at talking about search engines and browsers in the same episode because they're technically different, but they're, they're for better or for worse, they're bundled as a single unified product to, for most consumers these days.

Jordan Bravo: And you've [00:50:00] reminded me of some conversations I've had with non-technical people. And you're exactly correct Wreck because I would ask them something like, what browser are you using or what search engine are you using? And either way, the answer would be Google. They didn't really have the distinction, like you mentioned.

You know, for them, they just, there's a search thing, search bar on their phone, and they just type in something and then search results come back. It's totally transparent to them. I don't even think they understand the concept of having different browsers and different search engines that can May or may not be coupled with those browsers.

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

Jordan Bravo: 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 you only want Google results. Let's say you're used to Google results or let's say you specifically need the same results you would get from Google, but you don't want, you [00:51:00] want some privacy.

Start page is like a proxy between you and Google. They just hit Google servers for you. but They're not passing your data onto them. So if you want Google results, but without the Google surveillance, try start page.com.

Stephen DeLorme: 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 restaurants near and then you put in your home address, you've kind of, you know, identified probably who you are.

Um, uh, to to somebody somewhere uh, along the line. But having said that, assuming you are uh, searching for something that has a, um, high enough anonymity set, then yes, you have greater privacy.

Jordan Bravo: [00:52:00] Sure. and I would say even in the case where you're searching an area that would docks your approximate location, uh, at least it's not passing on your IP address

and.

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Bravo: fingerprinting and those kind of things. So,

you're still getting some benefits there and something that this is a point that I want to hit on and I will hit, continue to hit on over the course of this show, which is you wanna have multiple layers.

Sort of a defense in depth approach to your privacy. You don't wanna rely on any one tool. For example, just using a VPN, but not changing any of your other behaviors or tools is not gonna give you a lot of privacy. You're still gonna leak your I identity via other means. But if you have multiple tools and, um, private approaches, that's gonna, They're all gonna add up and where one might leak data, the other might cover that hole and vice versa.

So that's why you'll, you'll use a variety of tools to build up a nice [00:53:00] sovereign computing toolbox.

The last search engine we're gonna look at is called cgi. I think I'm saying that right. KAGI. Let's see if

we can.

Stephen DeLorme: dot com?.

Jordan Bravo: I don't know the domain name.

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

Jordan Bravo: So this one, CGI is a newer search engine and they, They market themselves as a private search, but they actually take, you can buy a premium. Account for a price they've got some premium features. Um, I haven't tried the the paid account version, but supposedly it's got some great algorithms and great results.

And it's, it's a good experience. So if you, if you like the idea of paying for a search engine so that you're not paying with your data, [00:54:00] then. tag seems like an up and comer, so I just wanted to give them a quick mention.

Any other, any other comments or you would like to talk about regarding search engines, browsers, or extensions, Stephen.

Stephen DeLorme: Uh, not that I can think of.

Jordan Bravo: All right, let's move on to our boost section. And before we read the boost for this episode, I would like to shout out to all of the listeners that were streaming in last time you guys are Really appreciated all of your sats if you wanna boost in you can do so with fountain the fountain app Or go to fountain. fm and search for the A TL bitlab podcast if you're listening to this You probably already know how to find it. um As of right [00:55:00] now, Fountain is the 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 won't go into too much detail here.

Maybe another episode, but pod verse is one and Breeze is another. Both of these have the ability to 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.

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

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

Stephen DeLorme: Yeah, ditto on [00:56:00] that. All right, cool. Yeah, that's the boost.

Jordan Bravo: That's all the boost for today. I wanna remind everyone that you can go to atl bitlab.com/podcast and you can see all of the episodes there. You can donate to the show, you can boost in and you can get all of the show notes and the video. If you like watching the video of it, we have all of the screencasts recording as we are talking. Um, That's all for today. Thanks everybody for listening and we'll see you next time.

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

Your support really helps us so that we can keep bringing you content like this. All [00:57:00] right. Catch you later.

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

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

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