Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

It's significantly better. Basically, Microsoft added the tracking protection features[1] Firefox and legacy Edge have to Chrome. Yeah, in terms of sending data to Google vs. Microsoft, that footprint is similar, but third party tracking differences are huge. Edge sends a fraction of the requests to third party services while web browsing as Chrome does.

Google has decided to implement third party cookie blocking in Chrome recently... solely in incognito mode[2]. Firefox, Edge, Safari, etc. all do it all the time in normal mode too. This renders Chrome the least privacy-minded browser, primarily because Google heavily values ad tracking as a business practice.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/with-its-new-edge-browser-micr... [2] https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/19/google-chrome-83/

Is it different than using ublock origin

Generally ad blockers end up blocking ads whether they track or not: There are people out there who believe they are entitled to not see advertising or something. Tracking protection is generally close to an add blocker, but won't do anything to prevent display of first party ads or ads that do not attempt to track you.

Generally, I'd argue the latter is better than the former, as it encourages websites and the ad industry to behave better: Stop invading my privacy and your ads stop getting blocked.

I would agree. I use Privacy Badger (always) and NoScript (most of the time). If an add happens to not get blocked by these, great!

I'm perfectly fine with viewing an add that is not doing bad things.

Indeed. I'm a big fan of Firefox + Privacy Badger. It predated most browser tracking prevention features, and I've found more and more is getting caught by the browser before it even makes it to Privacy Badger. I suspect eventually Firefox will be good enough at it to render the extension mostly obsolete.

What about Opera? it's also based on chromium these days.

Considering Operas current ownership (Chinese private equity) I would not use it.

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