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webapps are a privacy nightmare. No thanks.

by nojito 5y ago

piaste 5y ago
Webapps are much better sandboxed, but harder to keep offline. Native apps can be easily denied internet access, but the sandboxing is not as strong. For this reason, I prefer webapps when the application needs to operate online to work, and native apps when they don't.
choward 5y ago
Mobile apps are a privacy nightmare. No thanks.
Anthony-G 5y ago
While they often are, there’s no rule that web apps have to be a privacy nightmare. Thanks to Hacker News¹, I recently came across Learn systemd by example². The site itself is hosted by Hetzner, a German hosting provider that take user privacy seriously³ and uses Cloudflare as a privacy-conscious CDN⁴. The only third-party resources it uses are Google fonts. Users of uMatrix⁵ or uBlock Origin⁶ can easily block these resources and the web app works perfectly fine without them. I’d also use Wordle itself as an example of a reasonably user-privacy friendly web application. The only third-party resources it uses is Google Tag Manager (which is blocked by default by uMatrix). I use Firefox with a number of web extensions (Firefox Multi-Account Containers⁷, Decentraleyes⁸, uMatrix, uBlock Origin, Privacy Redirect⁹). These all provide me, an end-user, much greater control over my online privacy than I’d have with a mobile app. I’ve also recommended Decentraleyes and uBlock Origin to non-technical friends as extensions they can install and not worry about configuration. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30071240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30071240 2. https://systemd-by-example.com/ https://systemd-by-example.com/ 3. https://www.hetzner.com/legal/privacy-policy https://www.hetzner.com/legal/privacy-policy 4. https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ 5. https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix 6. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#ublock-origin https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#ublock-origin 7. https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers#readme https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers#readme 8. https://decentraleyes.org/ https://decentraleyes.org/ 9. https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect
ccouzens 5y ago
Just about anything that can connect to the internet is a potential privacy nightmare. I assume that by specifying "webapps" you're making a comparison to native apps. Configure your browser to block 3rd party cookies and you'll be fine. It's nice to have the private window privacy feature. That's a standard feature of web browsers, but I don't know of any consumer operating system that makes this easy for native apps.

webapps are a privacy nightmare. No thanks.

by nojito 5y ago

webapps are a privacy nightmare. No thanks.

Webapps are much better sandboxed, but harder to keep offline. Native apps can be easily denied internet access, but the sandboxing is not as strong. For this reason, I prefer webapps when the application needs to operate online to work, and native apps when they don't.

choward 5y ago

Mobile apps are a privacy nightmare. No thanks.

Anthony-G 5y ago

While they often are, there’s no rule that web apps have to be a privacy nightmare. Thanks to Hacker News¹, I recently came across Learn systemd by example². The site itself is hosted by Hetzner, a German hosting provider that take user privacy seriously³ and uses Cloudflare as a privacy-conscious CDN⁴. The only third-party resources it uses are Google fonts. Users of uMatrix⁵ or uBlock Origin⁶ can easily block these resources and the web app works perfectly fine without them. I’d also use Wordle itself as an example of a reasonably user-privacy friendly web application. The only third-party resources it uses is Google Tag Manager (which is blocked by default by uMatrix). I use Firefox with a number of web extensions (Firefox Multi-Account Containers⁷, Decentraleyes⁸, uMatrix, uBlock Origin, Privacy Redirect⁹). These all provide me, an end-user, much greater control over my online privacy than I’d have with a mobile app. I’ve also recommended Decentraleyes and uBlock Origin to non-technical friends as extensions they can install and not worry about configuration. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30071240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30071240 2. https://systemd-by-example.com/ https://systemd-by-example.com/ 3. https://www.hetzner.com/legal/privacy-policy https://www.hetzner.com/legal/privacy-policy 4. https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/ 5. https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix 6. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#ublock-origin https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#ublock-origin 7. https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers#readme https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers#readme 8. https://decentraleyes.org/ https://decentraleyes.org/ 9. https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect

ccouzens 5y ago

Just about anything that can connect to the internet is a potential privacy nightmare. I assume that by specifying "webapps" you're making a comparison to native apps. Configure your browser to block 3rd party cookies and you'll be fine. It's nice to have the private window privacy feature. That's a standard feature of web browsers, but I don't know of any consumer operating system that makes this easy for native apps.