privacytools.io VS user.js

FYI, Privacy Guides is a shitshow. It was formerly privacytools.io[1], and in 2019, the creator[2] of privacytools.io stopped contributing[3] and a new contributor[4] immediately focused on donations[5], became the admin[6] and took control[7] of most assets, including donations but excluding the domain and Twitter account[8]. In 2021, the creator of privacytools.io launched a new privacytools.io[9] and added affiliate links[10], and the Privacy Guides team shut down r/privacytoolsIO rather than return it[11] to the creator. Like I said, a shitshow.

[1] https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io

[2] https://www.reddit.com/user/BurungHantu

[3] https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/commits?auth...

[4] https://github.com/jonaharagon

[5] https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/commits?afte...

[6] https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/commit/4b60a...

[7] https://redd.it/tuo7mm

[8] https://twitter.com/privacytoolsIO

[9] https://redd.it/pxtw2y

[10] https://www.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/raftz6/i_made_...

[11] https://redd.it/qk7vn0

Yes, we know you're still mad we won't add Threema. It was thoroughly discussed in our old organization.

en 2019: Signal has copious privacy issues making it unfit for privacytools.io endorsement.

Signal is just another walled garden and has a lot of other problems too: https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/issues/779

Or the fork which is much more active these days https://docs.searxng.org/

In the past it Lukol served Google Ads: https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/issues/1557#...

Never heard of it. Fastmail apparently never made it on to the privacytools.io list for its geographical location. See here for some other recommendations. There are also malifence and posteo. I use posteo and mailbox.org. The main two weird things about posteo is that there is no spam folder (detected spam is rejected with no option to change this), and you can't use a custom domain (because they don't want to have any information on you/your name). Mailbox.org can optionally reject spam and lets you use your custom domain. I like it a lot so far.

The correct link is https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/pull/657

Worth noting the "admins" of that site wrote the content for it, check for yourself https://github.com/privacytools/privacytools.io/commits/master BurungHantu hadn't written anything really since 2016.

Re: firefox and privacy, if you want to use firefox for privacy, consider using https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js . There is a case to be made that Firefox (with arkenfox's user.js) is one of the best privacy-respecting but still fairly usable browsers.

For extensions, I recommend people follow the recommendations[1] in the arkenfox repo and either harden their firefox or use librewolf. Umatrix is unmaintained since 2019.

[1] https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions

For macOS : Thunderbird and you can harden it even more with this : https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js

only arkenfox

This article is shit. https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/ is what you want.

If you make time to dig through settings and change them away from their official use (99% of users don't), then you should use a customized setup (in this case, a user.js). That way, you're good to go no matter what Firefox fork you use.

> Firefox remains a stable option to come back to everytime

Don't get me wrong, I've been using Firefox for the last decade and I don't intend on using anything else for the foreseeable future, but Mozilla has no idea what they're doing with Firefox nowadays. Firefox View is the most useless thing I've ever seen, that expiring "independent voices" theme picker was some weird hippie stunt[1], the latest UI redesign which split the tab from the window looks hideous, and it's not like Firefox doesn't have things you can tweak for a more private experience[2]. I miss Firefox Test Pilot where they tried out different new features, I found a lot of them to be very useful but sadly lots of them didn't make it.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/in...

[2] https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/

Like others have said you can customize the browser to the point that it doesn't even look like the default anymore. Or customize it to maximize privacy.