Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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What's the recommended Android browser for privacy in 2025, that is also usable for day to day tasks?. (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As open source as Android is, it is very difficult to find a decent browser, let alone one that is privacy focused and also usable on daily.

Almost all web searches point to site that shows stuff like : Chrome, Edge, Opera....etc. So this doesnt help.
Play Store is full of shitty browsers. If you skip the usual DDG, Chrome, Edge, Opera...etc then you will see either:

a) browsers from random Chinese company (Via, UC Browser)

or b) browser that is coupled with other products, e.g. a video downloader with built in browser.

After the recent fiasco with Firefox and their ToS, I saw a lot of posts saying IronFox / Water Fox is better. I've never heard of these Foxes variants before.

So I tried the following on Android:

DDG: only good if you do basic search. It lacks a good adblocker. So very annoying if you are on a site with shit tons of popups.
Brave: not a fan of the in your face AI tools. Overall it works ok though
The Foxes variants: IronFox seems to be very good on privacy. It has its own DNS and most of the security is on by default. However, same as all Foxes, IronFox just doesnt play well on Android. There is a slight lag when you try to switch tabs.
TOR: This would be the safest. But the poorest in terms of usability.
Chrome w/o account or Chrome run from private space. Surprisingly, Chrome is still the one browser that runs the smoothest.....

Any input is appreciated.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Glad to hear Brave isn't awful. I haven't tried it as I'm trying to avoid Chrome entirely for now.

I've been using IceRaven/Mull on a very old (out of support) LG phone, and I'm not sure I entirely understand the "pauses" thing? I don't see meaningful pauses when I switch tabs, other than the page reloading if it was purged from RAM. But like. That happens in Safari on iOS on a brand new phone, too, so it's not entirely an Android-specific complaint.

Honestly, all mobile browsers are UI train-wrecks of one kind or another. For me it was this exact process of elimination to decide which I like least, and then from there deciding which inflict the fewest paper cuts. For me, FF sync (settings mostly, but also tab sets) was more important than whatever memory problems Mozilla rebrands might have. :(