Voxel

I’m not from Brazil, but thanks for opening this informed discussion, I think this matters.

You’re welcome, I encourage you to check out my latest reply.

But if you check the source you’ll notice that they don’t add any code themselves, they simply take Chromium and apply patches from Vanadium (Helium is commented for now) and build an apk.

Quote from the README from the repository it sources the Vanadium patches from:

It depends on hardening and compatibility fixes in GrapheneOS rather than reinventing the wheel inside Vanadium. For example, GrapheneOS already provides a hardened malloc implementation so there’s no need for Vanadium to replace it. Similarly, it can deploy security features causing breakage on other operating systems due to the ability to fix compatibility problems in the OS.

However, there may be other people like me out there who think it’s a good value proposition.

I’m sorry, but it’s an objectively bad recommendation. Vanadium is currently held intentionally exclusive to GrapheneOS by its team because of the reasons quoted above. Taking Chromium, applying Vanadium patches and extension support, and having one stranger maintain it is not a viable option. Even when he doesn’t write code himself, regular updates are a must, and if he discontinues or can’t keep up with updates for one of many possible reasons, all the people who relied on it will experience a massive security decrease if they don’t migrate to another browser. Real examples would be: Mull, Mulch and Bromite.

It’s something fun to check out and play around with, but no one should use it as a daily driver unless they fully understand all the risks and can act accordingly.

TL:DR: Yes. Long answer: It’s complicated.

Would be nice if you could correct it in your original post too.

From the linked GitHub webpage:

All builds are experimental, so unexpected issues may occur. Helium Browser for Android only attempts to improve security and privacy where possible. For better protection on Android, you should instead use GrapheneOS with Vanadium, which additionally integrates patches into Android System WebView and provides significant kernel and memory management hardening on the OS level.

I wouldn’t recommend browsers in an experimental state developed by a single person; this is partly why I don’t recommend Cromite.

The original Vanadium is great, but the lack of proper content-blocker integration is a big privacy trade-off, in my opinion. Vanadium only provides a per-domain blocker solution, which is based on the very small EasyList.

A good Chromium-based alternative is Brave, as it has a solid content blocker that attempts to recreate the full feature set of uBlock Origin.

I recommend Fennec by F-Droid, a FOSS fork of Firefox out of the options listed. I would adjust the settings within the GUI, such as setting tracking protection to Strict, and install uBlock Origin.

IronFox is, sadly, somewhat extreme and not suitable for non-tech-savvy users and those who don’t want to deal with regular breakage.

Vanadium sadly lacks a proper content blocker integration.

IronFox is not formerly Mull Browser; it uses a different basis (Phoenix instead of Arkenfox), is maintained by different people, etc.

To be honest, they will all land on radars as more their usage grows.

You may want to reach out to support, and let them know that you don’t feel okay about them doing this and (if you do) therefore switch to another service provider that doesn’t reject alias emails.

Samsung rejects them.

It’s a paid service, not a donation plan.

You’re delusional (saying this as a long time tech support for various new Linux users)

I think your search engine is more than alright. Regarding the rest, I believe it requires no change aslong as you feel satisfied with it.

I don’t think so, while the impact wasn’t as great as he and other people wished, it nonetheless had a big impact, many people started to care, just because of what he exposed.

I felt weird about some of their practices, e.g., making so-called “Whois Privacy,” which hides your personal data in RDAP requests, a paid extra feature when you register or move a domain to them (basically making you pay them to not dox you).

I never spend time too look deeper into their service at that time, as I was only looking for a domain registrar. Their apps are available on F-Droid which is cool.

https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

No, thanks.

Paying is basically antithetical to privacy

💀