Hey guys, just stumbled onto this today and had no idea it exists.
Okay first of all, by default browsers like Chrome / Chromium leaks a lot of data to google's servers or in other words "
calls home" to Google. In the past I've installed a lot of different privacy oriented plugins on plain vanilla chromium and changed the default settings, but still data got leaked in one way or another and I could see that with network sniffers like Wireshark.
That's where this
Inox browser comes in.
Inox goal is to provide a minimal chromium based browser with focus on privacy by disabling data transmission to google.
based on patches:
Disabled Google's Instant Extended API, this has the effect that the old "New Tab" is in place. (See disable-instant-extended-api.patch)
DuckDuckGo as default search engine. (See add-duckduckgo-seaarch-engine.patch)
Disabled AutoFill data transmission (See disable-autofill-download-manager.patch)
All Browser Extensions are now visible (See modify-default-prefs.patch)
Enabled user-modification for ALL extensions (See disable-default-extensions.patch)
Removed following default extensions: (See disable-default-extensions.patch)
-> Hotword (incl. Shared Module)
-> Google Now
-> Google Feedback
-> Cloud Print
-> Google Webstore
-> Network Speech synthesis
-> Google Hangout
Disabled URLTracker data transmission. I know this class has a bad naming, but nevertheless it connects to Google. (See disable-google-url-tracker.patch)
Disabled promo-notification fetching (See disable-notification-promo-fetch.patch)
Disabled ipv6 probes to google servers (See disable-google-ipv6-probes.patch)
Disabled Google Cloud Messaging status check (See disable-gcm-status-check.patch)
Modified default settings: (See modify-default-prefs.patch)
-> DefaultCookiesSetting: CONTENT_SETTING_SESSION_ONLY
-> EnableHyperLinkAuditing: false
-> CloudPrintSubmitEnabled: false
-> NetworkPredictionEnabled: false
-> BackgroundModeEnabled: false
-> BlockThirdPartyCookies: true
-> AlternateErrorPagesEnabled: false
-> SearchSuggestEnabled: false
-> AutofillEnabled: false
-> "Send feedback" checkbox if user triggers settings-reset: false
-> BuiltInDnsClientEnabled: false
-> SignInPromoUserSkipped: true
-> SignInPromoShowOnFirstRunAllowed: false
-> ShowAppsShortcutInBookmarkBar: false
-> ShowBookmarkBar: true
-> PromptForDownload: true
-> SafeBrowsingEnabled: false
-> EnableTranslate: false
based on build flags:
Disabled google now: enable_google_now=0
Disabled WebRTC: enable_webrtc=0
Disabled Remote service: emable_remoting=0
Disabled safe browsing: safe_browsing_mode=0
Disabled RLZ Identifier: enable_rlz=0
Disabled google hangouts: enable_hangout_services_extension=0
Disabled wifi bootstrapping: enable_wifi_bootstrapping=0
Disabled speech input: enable_speech_input=0
Disabled pre backups on sync: enable_pre_sync_backup=0
Disabled print preview: enable_print_preview=0
Disabled Chrome build: google_chrome_build=0
You could argue that perhaps you can manually disable those advanced settings or find extensions to do so. But then again it would be a tedious task and from what I've read on the Arch forums you can't disable some of the settings like WebRTC until it's modified / patched at build time. Therefore to save all the hassle it's better to just get it off Arch user repository by typing "yaourt -S inox".
At the moment I'm kind of excited to try it out, let's see how it goes.
Also here's a link to the official thread on Arch forum:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=198763 I wanna know your feedback / suggestions / ideas, etc.
What do you typically use? Or are you like me and just realized what a big privacy nightmare chromium is!
That would be an interesting topic for discussion I think.
Update:Well I had a lot of interest in the features of Inox browser, but it seems like the project was formed a long time ago and is probably not maintained or haven't been updated in a while which is why building from scratch especially on the newer versions of chromium fails since a lot of features in chromium have changed compared to the past. I'm pretty sure it's not just me cos I've seen some bug reports on the forums as well as on the project site reporting that build fails.
Have you guys tried it out? Or do you have recommendations to something similar? Feel free to let me know.
