# firefox vs chromium vs others: security

## LoTeK

hi all,

I have used firefox for several years now and I want to try something new.. I've seen chromium and I pretty much like it, but then I've read about stuff like: the browser sends private data to google and so on.. and that google chrome is based on chromium, so google shouldn't have anything to do with the opensource project chromium, or am I wrong? 

I've installed chromium and in the settings appears many "google stuff" for example settings with gmail and so on..

additionaly I've seen "swiftweasel" and "GNU icecat" which are sympathic to me  :Smile:  but they aren't in the portage tree...

so I'm wondering which browser you use, and why, and if chromium is more "unsecure" and "unrespectfull to privacy"..

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## Gusar

What you've "heard" is pretty much FUD. Yes, stuff is sent to Google by default. But, hold on to your hat, Firefox does that too!! I'm not kidding. By default, if you use Firefox's search box, everything is sent to Goggle. To deactivate that you need to right-click the search box and untick "Show suggestions". Not much different in Chromium, except the stuff you need to untick is in the settings. And that's it - go to settings, untick a few options.

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## LoTeK

 *Quote:*   

> What you've "heard" is pretty much FUD. Yes, stuff is sent to Google by default. But, hold on to your hat, Firefox does that too!! I'm not kidding. By default, if you use Firefox's search box, everything is sent to Goggle

 

 :Smile:  ok, thats what I thought... So I'll try chromium a little..

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## anyNiXwilldo

 *Gusar wrote:*   

> By default, if you use Firefox's search box, everything is sent to Goggle. To deactivate that you need to right-click the search box and untick "Show suggestions". Not much different in Chromium, except the stuff you need to untick is in the settings. And that's it - go to settings, untick a few options.

 

Just add ixquick & duckduckgo as search engines, then delete the search engines you don't want. You can also go into about:config, search the term 'google' and delete anything you find there that is phoning home.

What I do for security & privacy when browsing, is use the Konqueror browser, but with the webkit backend. I turn off javascript, java and all plugins. Konqueror proxy settings point to privoxy, which points to tor. If you edit /home/username/.kde4/share/config/kio_httprc with the following:

UserAgent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:10.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0

the konqueror user agent can be spoofed exactly as the tor bundle is from the tor project. It works for me, quite well actually.

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## LoTeK

 *Quote:*   

> ust add ixquick & duckduckgo as search engines, then delete the search engines you don't want.

 

I use duckduckgo already and I like it, but it is not always as good as google...sometimes on google appear better results (but maybe because the search-algorithms use my saved data and provide better results for what I search..?!) 

 *Quote:*   

> What I do for security & privacy when browsing, is use the Konqueror browser, but with the webkit backend. I turn off javascript, java and all plugins

 

I have a gtk-openbox system and I don't like konqueror (purely subjective of course!!)

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