The easiest way to stop spam bots (and also spammers), I saw in the past in an Forum, where simply on creating an account, the activation mail was delayed for an hour. So a bot or an spammer, which always work with an disposable mail, which last normally less than half an hour, never recieve it. A normal user for sure can wait for it. The Forum never had problems with spam with this time filter.

Buster works fine for me, but it don’t really solve the image Captcha, but the auditive one, it’s a modified speech recognition. But I think that currently Captchas absolutely obsolete, they can’t avoid bots anymore since long time ago, because with the existing AI out there, a bot can resolve these better than a human. To avoid spam bots there are way better methodes (eg.Honeypots). Captchas are currently only data collection apps.

A whole collection of several games to play in the browser or download them.

https://studiohammergames.itch.io/

Nothing new, never thought that Bluetooth is a safe connection, this is why I always use devices with cable (keyboard, mouse, headphones…). It’s somewhat less comfortable as with Bluetooth, but way more safe and stable.

Meta shares data in every country where it works, the same in China as in the US, somewhat less in the EU

That of Mozilla is enough clear, although not much better with several external links that must be checked separately. But in general it is a fairly valid rule that the site has things to hide if it puts a very long legal text. A normal user does not bother to read a text of 2 or more pages in a difficulty legal jargon.

Honest sides don’t need to do it, good examples are the PPs of the SSuite (the shortest ever) or Andisearch, which are between the bests I know.

Yes, but this is a different thing. It’s clear that you are not private, even using TOR, if you use Google for search, post on Fakebook or use another page/service which logs and profile your activity, but it’s different if the browser itself or/and its company is tracking you, sharing it with third parties. That is the point. GDPR limit this to an minimum, but don’t avoid it completely. More than ever is important that you ALWAYS read TOS and PP of every app/service before using it. A good rule is: longer and more written in a legal jargon, difficult to understand and many external links, it is a sign that the app or service is trying to hide its activities and dark patterns by boring the user. A honest app/service don’t need this tricks, using a short and clear text.

Yes, naturally to create an account for Sync, they have to store your data. But it’s not the same if they also share these with third parties.

Yes, you can opt out, you simply send an request with your data to Alphabet INC.

Yes, but the problem isn’t really the browser itself, it’s Mozilla which has turned in an advertising company, supported by Google and another ad company. If you need to sync your data and want to stay private, you have to do it with an third party or selfhosted cloud service, independend which FF fork you use.

That is the point, it’s not so important that a few % of the UI source of an browser is proprietary or not, way more important for the user are the ethics and transparency of an company

Because it’s an independent employee owned cooperative from Norway, without any extern investors. It don’t need to share data to make money. It’s business model is different from sharing userdata.

PP

At Vivaldi Technologies AS (“Vivaldi AS”), protecting your privacy is a top priority. We strictly protect the security of any and all personal information you provide to us while using Vivaldi products and services. We do not share or sell information to any third party and we proactively protect all user data from disclosure, with the only exception being if requested by legitimate law agencies with a court order.

Tests (Webbkoll, Blacklight)

It is currently much more important to promote EU products to break the hegemony of the great US corporations. Vivaldi (Norway), along with Mullvad (Sweden) and Konqueror (Germany) are the only relevant browsers in the EU, after the disconinuated since some years UR Browser (France). As said, Vivaldi also include an inbuild Mail client and Feed reader, so are no need to use Thunderbird or other extern app.

The only alternative is the Konqueror browser (KDE) for the Linux user, it has it’s own KHTML engine by KDE (Grandfather of WebKit and Blink)

The Vivaldi browser has an inbuild Mail client, which share nothing to third parties. Vivaldi is complete independent from third party investors and share nothing with other companies.

Thunderbird May Disclose Information To: Mozilla Affiliates: Thunderbird is a project of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation and an affiliate of Mozilla Corporation, and as such, shares some of the same infrastructure. This means that, from time to time, your data (e.g., crash reports, and technical and interaction data) may be** disclosed to Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation**. If so, it will be maintained in accordance with the commitments we make in this Privacy Notice.

DNS servers, Standard Autoconfiguration URIs, and Mozilla’s Configuration Database: To simplify the email set-up process, Thunderbird tries to determine the correct settings for your account by contacting Mozilla’s configuration database as well as external servers. These include DNS servers and standard autoconfiguration URIs. During this process, your email domain may be sent to Mozilla’s configuration database, and your email address may be disclosed to your network administrators.

Amazon Web Services: Thunderbird uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host its servers and as a content delivery network. Your device’s IP address is collected as part of AWS’s server logs.

Email address providers (Desktop Only Legacy): Prior to version 128, Thunderbird partnered with Gandi.net and Mailfence to allow you to create a new email address through Thunderbird. If you choose to use this feature, your email address search terms are sent to Gandi.net and Mailfence to return available addresses. In addition, your country location is also shared to provide the correct prices. You can learn more about Gandi.net’s and Mailfence’s data practices by reading their privacy notices.

Always good to read TOS and PP of an service.

Apart of Invidious, also FreeTube, which works with Invidious, don’t work well anymore, it listed the searched Videos, but they are not playable. As workarround I set the SMplayer as extern player, so I can watch the Videos, clicking on the little icon down left of the Video Thumbnail, or open the Video direct in the “Open URL” of the SMplayer. This still works fine, also with the URLs from a lot of other streaming sites. SMplayer is the Graphic interface of the Mplayer. Anyway, Google is killing all front-ends which cut of the Video ads. I think, there is a need to search an alternative to YT (maybe Odysee?)

I know, I have stopped using Google many years ago, when it forgot his “Don’t Be Evil.” Since then I have used a huge amount of different browsers in Windows and Linux, to stay 9 years ago with Vivaldi, why, apart was the one that offered the most, I was also impressed by the ethics and respect for the user, which is a European cooperative, owned by its employees, actively fighting for a freer and more private Internet, not dominated by large corporations, against the practices of Surveillance Advertising (initiative where organizations of consumers and companies such as DDG and others participated and where Mozilla shine for his absence). But yes, as you say, it’s hard to change believes, even if you prove that they are wrong.

Agree with this, but sadly there isn’t a way back. Gecko is a marginal engine with only few % in the market. The change to Gecko - Mozilla as Dominant in the market going to have occurred more than 15 years ago, instead of becoming Google’s pet by signing a contract to be financed by Alphabet - Google. There are no corporations or relevant groups using Gecko browsers, Google wins the web, optimized for Chromium. The train has gone for Mozilla since time by own fault, selling their soul and independence. There isn’t not longer a way to go against Google by avoiding Blink, now it’s like trying to combat CocaCola, drinking instead Pepsi. At the end only count, which fits the best your needs.

Yes, the inbuild adblocker, it depends full on the user of Vivaldi, which filters he want to use, not on a third party community.

If you use Gecko too, because Google rules mainly the web standarts, not the engines. Yes, Google put the rules also in the Store, but not the inbuild features in the browser, in Vivaldi most of the extensions from the store are redundant. It has an own customizable ad/tracker blocker, tab, management, screenshot tool, translator hosted by Vivaldi, clock and pomodoro timer, Markdown notes, UI customizations better than any extension or in any other browser… you can use Chrome extensions, but you don’t really need it. Apart permits to install user scripts (eg. from Greasyfork or OpenuserJS) direct as extensions, without the need of an user script manager, if you need functions which are banned from the Chrome Store because Mv3.

Vivaldi use default Bookmarks and search engines (Startpage, DDG, Ecosia, Qwant and some others), which pay an revenue if the user optional use these (anonym), apart accept donations and there is also an Merch Store. So it avoid third party investors, ads and tracking and so it stay independent, no needs to share user data with third parties. You can delete all these bookmarks and Search engines if you don’t use these, using others to your like (easy to add with the context menu). All this permits to support the additional services which has the user with his account, own Webmail (5GB), Blog page, Calendar, Feed, mail client, sync ee2e of all browser data, settings, bookmarks, extensions…, apart permit to participate in the Vivaldi instance in Mastodon.