You remember me saying all the praises about Google Chrome being the best browser on the web. That one still remains true, but as I stated in the previous article, all the information that Google collects end up swimming in the same pool of information that will readily be available to our governments to track us. And let’s not mention the hackers and anyone who can obtain those information.
This one is actually the hardest one for me. But the first step in quitting the addiction is going to the root of the problem. The solution ain’t that bad. I have the option between migrating to Mozilla Firefox, which has memory leakage problems on the OS X Lion. So instead I turned to the trustworthy Safari. I believe that all the information that Safari obtains remain on the Safari itself, and it doesn’t share any information with Apple, except for your bookmarks that go in sync with iCloud.
If you are using any other operating system I will suggest that you switch to Firefox. Now there is something that looks like Chrome, but isn’t Chrome. It’s Chromium project that is open source and free for anyone to download and use. But I always had troubles finding it and using it. And somehow since I feel burned on Chrome itself, I want to distance myself completely from it.
I just want to clarify that we do have alternatives. Unfortunately I won’t be able to quit Chrome for the purposes of work. Which is kinda cool, because I am able to distinct the work environment from the private environment. But ultimately I chose Safari as a temporary solution for my browsing needs. In the phase two of my “commercial internet cleansing” I will move away from OS X to Linux if security threat arises.
Now Safari currently holds a lot of benefits within the ecosystem with bookmarks sync through iCloud. Also the added benefit of “Reader” add-on that makes it easy to read webpages, which is consistent with Safari on iPad and iPhone. I still view this as a part of the commercial internet, but for the time being, it’s a good trade of between privacy and productivity in my case.
Now “the Real” alternatives for commercial browsers are only Mozilla Firefox and TOR (The Onion Project). TOR is actually quite interesting and if I ever needed added layer of security for my personal browsing I would user TOR with the SSL. It makes your internet appear like Dial Up modem, but it’s peer to peer transferring of bits of informations on websites and saves lives across the globe. I am sure that people out there are using it to watch pedophiliac phornography and terrorists to access websites without supervision.
But in the end it has a lot of good sides. Like people who are whistling on the oppressive regimes. Strangely I feel as if it’s use will find itself within the USA if Obama keeps it up this way with CISPA, NDAA and similar Police State laws that came to life recently.
Conclusion:
If you just want added layer of protection from Google and have reduced tracking of your browsing habits, switching to Safari will be sufficient. But if you want to go one step ahead and clearing yourself completely from “commercial web” Mozilla Firefox is the way to go, along with some other underground browsers.
