6 ms·

This is exactly what I've been doing last few days. Both phones and laptops. Switch the default browser to Firefox and change the default search engine too. Fi

This is exactly what I've been doing last few days. Both phones and laptops. Switch the default browser to Firefox and change the default search engine too. Firefox will protect them from all the third-party, cross-site tracking. It's faster too. And if this causes an issue for something in the next day or two, you're still there to help them out plus the previous default browser is still there too.

samstave 7y ago
Do you know if FF is better w/ out-of-the-box settings than Brave?
Austin_Conlon 7y ago
Curious, do you switch the default from Safari to Firefox if they're on a Mac?
- izacus 7y ago
  I do, because Safari has the same limited AdBlock functionality as Chrome team wants to implement. Firefox adblockers are thus more powerful.
- johnpowell 7y ago
  My sister has 18 year old twins. They got MacBook Pros as graduation presents. They both got ones with 128GB drives which has turned into massive frustration. But we will ignore that for now. But they both used Chrome. Today I switched them over to Firefox with uBlock Origin. And with some wankery you can make firefox look like a reasonable Macintosh application. https://i.imgur.com/VaMnux3.png https://i.imgur.com/VaMnux3.png But so far so good. And, as I have commented in the past about the pihole and when people leave the wifi at home they worried their phones were compromised because ad people have lost their fucking minds. So now the twins can can have a reasonable internet on their computers.
  - scholia 7y ago
    > They both got ones with 128GB drives which has turned into massive frustration. But we will ignore that for now. Please can you un-ignore that in one sentence? ;-)
    - realityking 7y ago
      Aforementioned sister or one of the twins?
  - rosybox 7y ago
    Will your family members know how to deal with sites that break because of ublock? I've learned to not "help" people in this fashion, even people I care about, because unless they understand the software it turns out that this kind of help just makes using a computer more frustrating for them and they probably don't even care about these things you're trying to help them with. I'd ask yourself if you're doing this more for your own sake than for theirs.
    - labawi 7y ago
      If some sites or features are broken with tracking blocked, maybe it's a good thing? Why should malicious sites/services get a free pass siphoning off and/or infecting devices? This way they are directed towards more respecting services. On the other hand, too much frustration is just too much, so you definitely need to balance.
      - rosybox 7y ago
        They could be sites for work, for government business, a school website, or their doctor's website that is broken when they needed to schedule surgery or something and they wont have any idea it was ublock that broke it and wont think to ask you. Ublock has broken all kinds of sites for me, and I don't know if it's because these sites used a third party JavaScript library or some video provider or what, but I know to turn off all the privacy tracking things I have in my browser when a webpage looks broken, and often that fixes it.
- briandear 7y ago
  Why? Safari is far better for the Mac.

samstave 7y ago

Do you know if FF is better w/ out-of-the-box settings than Brave?

Austin_Conlon 7y ago

Curious, do you switch the default from Safari to Firefox if they're on a Mac?

izacus 7y ago
I do, because Safari has the same limited AdBlock functionality as Chrome team wants to implement. Firefox adblockers are thus more powerful.
johnpowell 7y ago
My sister has 18 year old twins. They got MacBook Pros as graduation presents. They both got ones with 128GB drives which has turned into massive frustration. But we will ignore that for now. But they both used Chrome. Today I switched them over to Firefox with uBlock Origin. And with some wankery you can make firefox look like a reasonable Macintosh application. https://i.imgur.com/VaMnux3.png https://i.imgur.com/VaMnux3.png But so far so good. And, as I have commented in the past about the pihole and when people leave the wifi at home they worried their phones were compromised because ad people have lost their fucking minds. So now the twins can can have a reasonable internet on their computers.
- scholia 7y ago
  > They both got ones with 128GB drives which has turned into massive frustration. But we will ignore that for now. Please can you un-ignore that in one sentence? ;-)
  - realityking 7y ago
    Aforementioned sister or one of the twins?
- rosybox 7y ago
  Will your family members know how to deal with sites that break because of ublock? I've learned to not "help" people in this fashion, even people I care about, because unless they understand the software it turns out that this kind of help just makes using a computer more frustrating for them and they probably don't even care about these things you're trying to help them with. I'd ask yourself if you're doing this more for your own sake than for theirs.
  - labawi 7y ago
    If some sites or features are broken with tracking blocked, maybe it's a good thing? Why should malicious sites/services get a free pass siphoning off and/or infecting devices? This way they are directed towards more respecting services. On the other hand, too much frustration is just too much, so you definitely need to balance.
    - rosybox 7y ago
      They could be sites for work, for government business, a school website, or their doctor's website that is broken when they needed to schedule surgery or something and they wont have any idea it was ublock that broke it and wont think to ask you. Ublock has broken all kinds of sites for me, and I don't know if it's because these sites used a third party JavaScript library or some video provider or what, but I know to turn off all the privacy tracking things I have in my browser when a webpage looks broken, and often that fixes it.
briandear 7y ago
Why? Safari is far better for the Mac.