003.txt - gopherhole - My gopherhole source code.
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003.txt (2685B)
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1 [jay.scot]
2 [003]
3
4
5 --[ Qutebrowser is amazing but..
6
7
8 **UPDATE** as of version 2.0, these are not an issue now. Time to move
9 back to Qutebrowser!
10
11
12 For those preferring browsers with a minimal GUI and vim-like keyboard
13 controls, Qutebrowser is a fantastic choice. The project can be compared
14 to Firefox add-ons like Vim Vixen but with a smoother and more refined
15 user interface, backed by an active creator. With that being said here
16 comes the but.
17
18
19 And it's a big BUT for me, I no longer use Qutebrowser due to lack of
20 privacy options compared to the likes of Firefox with add-ons. Does
21 Qutebrowser have any choices at all for privacy? It sure does, BUT for
22 the requirements of today's modern web it's just not enough to cut it.
23 This is a list of things that you can do:
24
25
26 * disable javascript
27 * disable geolocation
28 * disable webgl
29 * custom http headers
30 * custom user agent
31 * reject cookies
32 * stop canvas reading
33 * host based ad-blocker
34
35
36 Although the problem is not a poor list of choices, each of these
37 choices has very limited scope. For example, the ad blocker is
38 a primitive host based list from a flat file. You're going to get video
39 ads and page elements still showing. It just doesn't compare to add-ons
40 like uBlock Origin, where all ads traces are just erased. Setting
41 cookies to deny all the time often contributes to a poor user
42 experience.
43
44
45 As an example, I will be constantly be asked to fill in CATCHPA's for
46 every site sitting behind CloudFlare. However, I can install a cookie
47 cleaner on Firefox that manages cookies on a per site basis, deletes
48 them as soon as you navigate off the site, close a tab etc.
49
50
51 I also discovered that Qutebrowser does not function as intended with
52 the option to hide the referrer header. This is currently an upstream
53 issue with the engine Qutebrowser uses, QtWebEngine. In the hopes that
54 this gets resolved, I have opened a bug report directly with the
55 project.
56
57
58 Using the EFF's browser fingerprinting tools might show you as rather
59 unique compared to Firefox with the privacytools.io recommended addons.
60 In order to randomise the User Agent and HTTP Accept headers, I also
61 tried to write a Python script to do this in Qutebrowser. Although the
62 finger printing was improved, it was just not as good as using Firefox.
63 Once the Qutebrowser feature list has plugin support, I would definitely
64 switch back to Qutebrowser once it has been implemented, but
65 unfortunately Firefox and addons are the way for me.
66
67
68 SOURCES
69 -------
70
71
72 >> https://qutebrowser.org
73 >> https://github.com/ueokande/vim-vixen
74 >> https://privacytools.io/browsers/#browser
75 >> git://jay.scot/dotfiles.git
76 >> https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/30
77
78
79 .EOF