• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Foliovision

Main navigation

  • Weblog
    • FV Player
    • WordPress
    • Video of the Week
    • Case Studies
    • Business
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Meet the Team
    • We Support
    • Careers
    • Contact
    • Pricing
  • Products
  • Support
    • FV Player Docs
    • Pro Support
  • Login
  • Basket is empty
Affordable VAST/VPAID for Wordpress has arrived. Serve ads with your videos starting today!

Privacy: Iridium, unGoogled Chromium, Brave Browser face off

10 December 2021 / Alec Kinnear / Leave a Comment

All of Iridium, unGoogled Chromium and Brave Browser make bold claims for privacy. Talk is cheap and fortunately the EFF is here to referee.

The EFF has created a test called Cover Your Tracks which tests browsers for their ability to block tracking ads, block invisible trackers and prevent browser fingerprinting. The latter deserves explanation: by gathering information about your computer, your monitor, your browser extensions, your IP, your time-zone settings, companies like Google with their Chrome browser are effectively able to identify an individual down to one in a million. Of course a surfer’s extension profile changes and s/he may change something about his or her computer (RAM for instance or storage or monitor) but it’s pretty easy to track an individual even without cookies.

Only a browser which is on your side, pro-actively blocking these measures can (partially) protect your privacy.

Here’s how these top privacy browsers score on my Mac Pro running Big Sur 11.6.1.

Iridium (Version 2021.10)

Fail on all counts:

Iridium fails on all counts

Starts by opening up Google’s About Chrome page, bringing down Google on your head before you even have time to add any extensions to block Google.

unGoogled Chromium (Version 95.0.4638.69)

Partial success/failure.

Partial success for Ungoogled Chromium in vanilla configuration

Ungoogled Chromium could be made much more robust by adding a few extensions and tweaking it a bit. One serious issue though with protecting via extension is that Ungoogled Chromium allows Googles machine ID technology which means your profile is reset every time you move between computers or even sneeze.

Brave Browser (Version 1.31.88 Chromium: 95.0.4638.69)

Success, albeit imperfect.

Brave scored a pass on all three tests

Straight out of the box, Brave Browser does manage to block tracking ads and invisible trackers, while randomising your browser fingerprint. There’s some caveats.

  • Brave did not have any additional privacy extensions added but I had set Brave preferences to be as anti-tracking as possible.
  • The randomisation was not entirely impressive (most of the information was accurate and non-random).
  • Chrome’s machine ID raises its ugly head again. Every time you reopen Brave on a new computer (using the same disk or migrated data (including using Apple’s Migration Tool), Brave disables all extensions.

Machine ID and browser portability

All of these “privacy” focused browsers should not be allowing hardware ID and forced preference/extension zeroing. While simple users may need nannying to make sure they don’t accidentally move their browser profile onto their friends’ computer with all the logins intact, the kind of users which unGoogled Chromium and Brave attract know better. It’s all well to dream of a world in which no surfer leaves the house on anything except a privacy-respecting browser, that time is a long way off. Eloton and Brave should be catering to their customer, not a fantasy world in which everyman is their customer.

Resetting users’ browsers whenever they move from one machine to another or migrate machines is extremely unfriendly to power users or people who practice portable computing.

unGoogled Chromium or Brave

In the meantime, if you’re in a hurry but would still like to block ad-tracking and protect your privacy Brave would be the browser train on which to jump. Setting up and managing privacy on unGoogled Chromium is just too much trouble and probably weaker than what Brave builds right into the browser.

If you’re wondering why I didn’t test Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge, it’s because they would all fail these tests. With Firefox and some elbow grease, it’s possible to pass these tests. The other browsers fail by design: they are not meant to be private and are beholden to either advertisers or Google. As no browser developers are able to charge for the browser (a tradition brought into play by Microsoft with its Internet Explorer built and released for free to destroy Netscape Navigator), almost all browser developers owe their living to the bad guys.

Eloston (unGoogled Chromium) does what he does as a matter of principle. Brave Browser makes its living on cryptocoin affiliate links. Frankly I wish Brave would just charge for the browser and drop all the other somewhat hare-brained, “innovative” schemes to make money.

Extensions

If you’d like to add some additional privacy-focused extensions, here’s a few with which to start.

  • ClearURLs, which prevent tracking parameters from being added to URLs. Can break some sessions when using advanced websites. Sessions are a privacy-friendly alternative to cookies.
  • PrivacyBadger, which anonymously tracks your browsing habits and finds and blocks trackers as you come across them. PrivacyBadger from the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) so unlike some commercial ad-blockers (contradiction in terms) like Ghostery, we can trust them.
  • Decentraleyes. Should keep Cloudflare and Google Hosted Libraries at bay, as well as other tracking CDN’s.

Ironically installing these extensions requires a trip to the Chrome Web Store which is already a step away from privacy! For myself, I believe I will start downloading .crx files and installing them manually. Manual installs of a folder of .crx files will also easier to deal with during the (endless) Chromium-based browser resets.

Alec Kinnear

Alec Kinnear

Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.

Categories: IT Tags: brave, browsers, chrome, chromium, iridium, privacy, tracking

Related Posts

  1. How to set up your browser for user privacy (Firefox, Brave, Edge, Safari, Chrome, Chromium, Icecat): a step by step guide for each browser

  2. Google Chromium Binaries: Here’s where Google hide the nightly builds of Chrome without the spyware

    Google Chromium Binaries: Here’s where Google hide the nightly builds of Chrome without the spyware

  3. Apple’s Privacy Policies look more and more like Microsoft

    Apple’s Privacy Policies look more and more like Microsoft

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You can click here to Subscribe without commenting

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Business
  • Camera Reviews
  • Case Studies
  • Design
  • FV Player
  • Internet Marketing
  • IT
  • Life
  • SEO
  • Slovak
  • Video of the Week
  • WordPress

Footer

Our Plugins

  • FV WordPress Flowplayer
  • FV Thoughtful Comments
  • FV Simpler SEO
  • FV Antispam
  • FV Gravatar Cache
  • FV Testimonials

Free Tools

  • Pandoc Online
  • Article spinner
  • WordPress Password Finder
  • Delete LinkedIn Account
  • Responsive Design Calculator
Foliovision logo
All materials © 2025 Foliovision s.r.o. | Panská 12 - 81101 Bratislava - Slovakia | info@foliovision.com
  • This Site Uses Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Tel. ‭+421 2/5292 0086‬

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in .

Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie allow you to log in and download your software or post to forums.

We use the WordPress login cookie and the session cookie.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Support Cookies

Foliovision.com uses self-hosted Rocket.chat and self-hosted Freescout support desk to provide support for FV Player users. These cookies allow our visitors to chat with us and/or submit support tickets.

We are delighted to recommend self-hosted Rocket.chat and especially Freescout to other privacy-conscious independent publishers who would prefer to self-host support.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!

3rd Party Cookies

This website uses Google Analytics and Statcounter to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

We reluctantly use Google Analytics as it helps us to test FV Player against popular Google Analytics features. Feel free to turn off these cookies if they make you feel uncomfortable.

Statcounter is an independent Irish stats service which we have been using since the beginning of recorded time, sixteen years ago.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!