These Mobile Browsers are Spying on You the Most (New Study)

TROYPOINT.com Posts
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Originally published at: These Mobile Browsers are Spying on You the Most (New Study)

A recent study has exposed just how much personal information popular mobile browsers are collecting without users realizing it. The findings should concern anyone who values their online privacy. Table of ContentsThe Worst Browser Offenders RevealedWhat They Do With Your InformationBrowsers That Respect Your PrivacyHow Can You Protect Yourself?Final Thoughts The Worst Browser Offenders Revealed…

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I’ve been Brave for quite some time, PC, mobile, yada yada….and have no problems with them, when I do land on a site that doesn’t like Brave ad blocker , well that’s a site that doesn’t get my bizzness an I simply move on….

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I’ve used Chrome for a lifetime. I did switch my search engine to duckduckgo but maybe I should look into the duckduck browser as well. I just hate having to spend hours relearning all the ins and outs of a new browser.

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I feel ya on that….:+1:

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I use brave as my primary but I do like Vivaldi a lot. Brave is just more secure.

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Brave works just like Chrome, but can be sensitive towards some sites.

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Thanks for the info old friend. Happy New Years to you and yours. Haven’t seen you here in some time. :face_with_peeking_eye: :wink:

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I’m always watching and listening my friend.

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Been using Chrome forever on desktop, tablet, and phone. I know they are spying on me but it really doesn’t bother me. Does it mean I might get a few more emails and such a day that my SPAM filter doesn’t catch? Probably so but a minor issue

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Thanks Troy for bringing this to our attention. Made me feel better about using Brave. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I quit using google Chrome and search years ago. I’m surprised that Mozilla did so poorly on the list. I use Samsung browser and was also surprised that it rated as good as it did. It works well for me.

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So the browsers in the study actually weren’t tested to see what they collect, don’t collect and share but based on what each browser company states in their Privacy Policies?

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@jackkileen , yes they were tested, @TROYPOINT’s article shows a graph right after the first sentence….

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Their results of the study are based on (from what I seen on their website) what each company put down in writing in their Privacy Policies, not actual testing/tracking the browser behavior?

Methodology and sources

For this study, we selected 15 popular mobile browsers and analyzed their privacy policy pages on the Google Play Store. We examined how many data types each browser collects, how many of those data types are shared with third parties, and the stated purposes for collecting this data.

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Not sure what your point is? That it could actually be worse than what their privacy policy says which is probably the case? If they admit to spying on you in their privacy policy, it’s probably true or actually worse.

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Yes, it could be worse than stated but without actually testing the browsers we wouldn’t know.
As far as the browsers that scored high on the study, are they omitting anything in their Privacy Policies? Again, without testing we wouldn’t know.

We do know that many browsers are implementing AI in multiple browser components/systems and not disclosing all the uses in those browsers. AI can be one of the biggest offenders in harvesting and sharing users personal information and can open up browsers to new attack surfaces.

FireFox is one example. The below is a list of AI integrations known but may not be all of them.
FF is promising an AI “off“ button in the future, but these are mostly all enabled by default now.

AI settings turned off…

("browser.ml.enable", false);
(“browser.ml.enabled”, false);
(“browser.ml.chat.enable”, false);
(“browser.ml.chat.enabled”, false);
(“browser.ml.chat.menu”, false);
(“browser.ml.chat.page”, false);
(“browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge”, false);
(“browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge”, false);
(“browser.ml.chat.shortcuts”, false);
(“browser.ml.chat.shortcuts.custom”, false);
(“browser.ml.chat.sidebar”, false);
(“browser.ml.linkPreview.shift”, false);
(“browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled”, false);
(“browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled”, false);
(“browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled”, false);
(“browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled”, false);
(“browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.mlEnabled”, false);
(“extensions.ml.enabled”, false);
(“places.semanticHistory.featureGate”, false);
(“pdfjs.enableAltText”, false);
(“sidebar.revamp”, false);

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