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Safari

The free content blocker you should be using in Safari on IOS

GeneralEdward Kiledjian
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Apple’s Safari browser on IOS is a a solid browser but there are others that provide more privacy and tracker blocking. One of those browsers is Firefox focus.

“In IOS15, Apple added support for Safari extensions on IOS. Firefox can now be used as a standalone browser or as a plugin for Safari. ”

What does Firefox Focus in Safari do?

Privacy

It blocks known trackers such as

  • ads, analytics and social trackers

  • Other content trackers – this category includes embedded videos, photo slideshows, and news article embeds that could track you.

Speed

Because part of the website is being blocked, pages will load faster and you will consume less bandwidth (especially important when on LTE).

Unobtrusive

Once you enable it, you will forget about it, use Safari as you would normally do and will gain all of the benefit without having to do anything else.

How to enable in Safari

Step 1

  1. Tap on Settings

  2. Scroll to Safari

  3. Tap Content Blockers

  4. Tap the switch to enable Firefox Focus

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Step 2

  1. Open Firefox Focus

  2. Click on the cogwheel to open the settings menu

  3. Tap the switch next to Safari to enable it

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Browsers and privacy

GeneralEdward Kiledjian
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We are going through a browser renaissance. The once stale segment has heated up with offerings from the most prominent players like Google offering Chrom and Microsoft offering Edge, all the way to small niche players like Opera, Brave and the DuckDuckGo Browser.

Browsers are typically chosen for their appearance and plug-in availability, but I believe privacy should be a more prevalent concern.

I am reminded of a 2004 BBC article that proclaimed, "More than 70% of people would reveal their computer password in exchange for a bar of chocolate, a survey has found." hopefully, we have evolved past this now.

1- Google Chrome

Google’s Chrome browser is by far the most popular browser in the world. It has a robust ecosystem of extensions. It should come as no secret to any Chrome user that Google is tracking user behaviours such as location, web activity and other habits. These are then used to present you with relevant advertising across Google and non-Google properties (those amazon boots that keep following you).

We also know that incognito mode isn’t much better.

Recently Google announced, then pushed back, the death of the cookie. This was not an altruistic move to benefit users because they will use a new on device cohort creation model called FLoC. If you use Chrome and are curious about FLoC, check out the well written site by the EFF called AmIFLoCed?

You can ops our of third party cookies right now by clicking on Settings, Privacy and Security, select Cookies and other site data. Finally check the box that says Block third-party cookies.

Obviously anything set by a first party won’t be blocked (Google setting it on a Google property or Facebook setting it on Facebook, WhatsApp or instagram, etc). To block first party trackers, you should be using tools like uBlock Origin, although Google has slightly defanged those tools in newer versions of their browser.

2- Microsoft Edge

Microsoft’s newest version of Edge is powered by the free and open source Chromium project. Microsoft then adds layers of proprietary tools on top of it and some are to enhance user privacy. It is safe to assume that all the build in Google trackers have been removed (think telemetry). If you want a Chrome experience without the Google bits, Edge is a good alternative.

In Microsoft Edge, Tracking prevention is on by default.

Microsoft Edge has 3 pre-configured levels of privacy protection: basic, balanced and strict.

Go to Settings, then go to Privacy and services to choose your level of Privacy.

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I have to remind you that researchers discovered Edge was sending user IPs and location to Microsoft servers. "According to the analysis, from Douglas Leith with the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College in Ireland, Edge sends privacy-invasive telemetry to Microsoft’s back-end servers — including “persistent” device identifiers and URLs typed into browsing pages."

3 - Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla is one of the browsers that still uses its own web rendering engine. Mozilla is a not-for-profit organization that has done a relatively good job keeping users safe on the internet. 

By default, Firefox blocks trackers, cross-site tracking and social media trackers (you may not realize that any webpage that has a Facebook button allows Facebook to track you on that site). 

Like Microsoft Edge, Firefox allows you to choose a basket of privacy settings labelled Strict or Standard.

You can check out the Firefox privacy settings by going to the menu, choosing Preferences, then Privacy & Security. 

4 - Apple Safari

Apple has invested heavily in improving the privacy of its users and changes made to Safari over the last 3 years have markedly helped. By default, Safari blocks cross-site tracking. Apple uses Google as it’s default search engine in exchange for a significant rent check.

The DOJ cites “public estimates” saying that Google pays Apple between $8 billion and $12 billion per year to be the default search engine on Apple products. On one hand Google uses your searches to further build an digital profile about you, on the other hand their search engine ensures you aren’t taken to known bad sides, tries to protect you from phishing and other bad websites.

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Unlike other browsers, Apple’s Safari provides minimal configurability of its browser. Out of the box the product does a decent job protecting users but there are still a handful of settings you may want to check out.

5 - DuckDuckGo browser

I am not writing about Brave because I still consider it a niche browser used by a small subset of my readers. DuckDuckGo browser falls into the same category but because of their privacy first stance, I wanted to include it in this list. On mobile platforms they offer their own browser. On traditional desktop operating systems, they offer extension that are interesting.

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Comparing Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

Image by Iván Rivera used under Creative Commons License

Chrome has been the browser king for many years and many users can't remember a time where Firefox was "the browser".  Chrome overtook Firefox and Internet Explorer(according to StatCounter) in November 2011.

Statcounter browser marketshare

But recently a group of highly technical security experts seem to have moved back to Firefox. Why have technically knowledgeable users left Chrome for Firefox?

Battery life

Users are increasingly choosing mobile devices (laptops and convertibles) instead of traditional always-plugged-in personal computers. This means battery life is important. In a 2016 battery shootout, Microsoft aggregated billions of data points from real world Windows 10 users and found that Microsoft Edge and Firefox were much gentler with battery consumption.

Image owned by Microsoft Corporation

“These numbers are from actual Windows 10 (version 1511) use “in the wild,” not artificial tests or hypotheses. ”
— Microsoft blog

Privacy

Everyone using Google products should know that the sultan of search is monitoring everything you do on the web, on its search page and in its browser. If you have never visited the Google Dashboard, you really should. It will show you all of the information El Goog has collected about you. Remember that it then uses this data to build a profile about you and we all know how powerful these predictive models can be :

Unlike many unscrupulous sites that track you without your knowledge, Google is a model citizen and clearly, let's users know what it is collecting and why. Most users are willing to trade their behavioural information in exchange for free google services (e.g. Photos, search, Gmail, etc).  I think this trade is perfectly acceptable as long as the user understand what he/she is giving up in exchange for these free services.

Some people believe Google knows too much and where possible, try to use no-Google alternatives (DuckDuck Go for search, ProtonMail for email, SpiderOak One for online storage, etc).

Open Source means anyone (with the right skills) can audit the code and make sure nothing nefarious has been secretly inserted.

The fact Mozilla is not trying to become this massive financial behemoth is a comforting reality.

Browser security

To be clear, Chrome is an excellent browser and has slightly better security than Firefox but on the privacy front, Firefox wins.

There is an annual security competition called Pwn2Own and the 2017 browser compromise competition presented some interesting findings.

The Microsoft Edge browser proved to the least secure browser, having been compromized5 times. Then came Safari on Mac which was compromised 3.5 times (a half point was awarded because they had fixed one of the attacks in a beta build).  Then came Firefox with 1 compromise and Google Chrome had none.

Firefox is certainly a relatively secure browser with a healthy bug bounty program but Chrome is just 1 step ahead.  If you want the most secure browser and are willing to give up privacy, choose Chrome. If you want good enough security with much better privacy, pick Firefox.

Tab handling

There is no perfect browser.

Google's Chrome browser is the king of standards compliance. It is very secure since it has strict sandboxing. Each browser tab creates a new browser thread in the OS, which means a crashed tab doesn't crash the entire browser. These "features" consume a substantial amount of RAM. If you are one of those users that live in your browser and regularly has 20-50 tabs open, you probably live the sluggishness daily.

Firefox is "as fast" as Chrome but much more configurable. It consumes less RAM per open tab thus is often a better solution for users that live the multi-tab life. The flip side is that a bad tab can crash the entire browser but this is very rare.

Extensions

Chrome is the king of extensions. Just browse the Google Chrome store and be amazed at everything your browser can do.

In many cases, your most used extensions will be natively available either platform. As an example, Lastpass and UBlock Origin are natively available for Chrome and Firefox. You can also install the Chrome Store Foxified add-on which will allow you to install Chrome extensions from the Chrome store into Firefox.

In this example, I picked the Google Keep extension. When you visit the Chrome Store with the Google Chrome browser, you see this window to install the extension:

When you visit the same page with Firefox and the Chrome Store Foxified add-on, you see this window and the ADD TO CHROME is replaced with ADD TO FIREFOX

I have tested this functionality with a dozen extensions (HTTPS Everywhere, Ublock Origin Extra, Grammarly, etc) and all of them work perfectly as if they were running in Chrome. Before people start sending me hate mail, I know these have Firefox native versions but I wanted to test the Chrome extension functionality in Firefox.

Interface design

Both Chrome and Firefox have adopted a clean, minimalist approach. From the interface perspective, neither one really pulls out ahead as a leader.

Verdict

When there is competition, the consumer wins. This is true in the browser market. The extreme competition between Chrome and Firefox means both products have improved over the last 12 months. 

Both browsers are relatively secure. The main difference boils down to privacy and tab handling. If you are someone that always keeps several dozen tabs open, then you may find Firefox more responsive and less likely to bog down your computer. Additionally, Firefox is a much better choice for consumers looking for more privacy.

Ultimately I think most users will end up with both browsers on their devices and use different browsers for different purposes. Recently I have started to move more of my day to day browsing back to Firefox and am satisfied. I want to encourage diversity and even chose to donate to Mozilla. Encourage not-for-profit groups powering open source software is an important step in maintaining a healthy diverse and competitive computing environment. I also donate to Tor, Ubuntu, Wikipedia and Whonix.

Safari provides best mobile browsing experience

technologyEdward Kiledjian

Fixya just released an interesting report about mobile browsing experience and declared Safari the big winner. 

The Fixya team combed through 60,000 help requests for mobile web browsers and found that Apple's Safari mobile is the "most usable web browser". In second place came Chrome found in stock Android.

Some of the positive characteristics of Safari mobile, as highlighted by Fixya, were:

  • simple user interface
  • ability to perform multiple actions with a specific webpage (adding bookmark, adding to home-screen, mailing the link, sharing the link, printing the page, etc) 
  • the powerful reading list feature built into the browser. 
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Even though Safari won this fight, it isn't perfect and Fixya shared the top 5 user complaints about it. 

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How to check browser history in Safari for iPhone

technologyEdward Kiledjian

Let's say you just browsed a bunch of pages on Safari for iPhone (IOS 6.0+) and then wanted to jump back to a previously browsed page. Sure you could retype the URL and navigate through the site or you could simply use this trick to see all the sites you browsed and chose which one to jump back to in2 clicks.

 

Let's say I just browsed a bunch of sites and the last one I browsed was Google.ca. To see my browsing history, just click the back button and hold it for about a second.

You will then get a menu like this

Click on the site you want and voila, Safari will take you there in just 2 clicks.