Hi there, I just have a quick (and newbie) privacy related question I’m hoping someone with more knowledge than me can provide a constructive answer on.

If I have installed several browsers on my machine, is using them for different purposes a good way to circumvent data gathering on my browsing behavior? For example, I have chrome downloaded where I do all my Google related work in (gmail, YT, and a work application that requires chrome), but that is the only thing I use the chrome browser for. I do all my personal browsing in Firefox with a litany of extensions meant to prevent trackers. Is it reasonable to assume that Chrome cannot track activity in Firefox?

EDIT: I just wanted to say thank you to this community. There have been some really nice suggestions and no one has said anything nasty which is nice for a change lol. Cheers.

  • tmpodMA
    10·
    3 years ago

    While using multiple browsers can be a good idea, I’d still steer away from Chrome as it can do shady stuff in the background even if not “opened” (don’t have any sort of evidence it does, but still, something to consider), since it is a desktop app.

    You should definitely look into Multi-Account containers in Firefox. These allow you to essentially have separate “browsers” (different registries for cookies, storage, etc), which is not only useful for practical purposes but also for privacy ones, even if they are not fingerprinting-proof solutions.
    I do, however, have a “Firefox Focus” profile that uses the minimum amount of extensions, has all the nice fingerprinting toggles and has Temporary Containers set on strict. It is really really neat.

    Edit: add links

    • fishonthenet@lemmy.ml
      3·
      3 years ago

      a good suggestion would also be to enable dFPI, so that cookies and website data is separated without needing an extension.

      • tmpodMA
        1·
        3 years ago

        Yup, for sure! Forgot about it :)

    • Jedrax@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      3 years ago

      Okay nice, I really like the suggestion here. I had heard about containers in Firefox but never actually looked into them, so will do.

      Unfortunately I can’t get rid of Chrome completely since a web app I have to use requires Chrome (for whatever reason, it’s a bit predatory if you ask me).

      • tmpodMA
        2·
        3 years ago

        Nice! Lemme know how it goes :D

      • SoftBun@lemmy.ml
        2·
        3 years ago

        Unfortunately I can’t get rid of Chrome completely since a web app I have to use requires Chrome

        Have you tried Ungoogled Chromium? I use it for sites that require me to use Chrome (like MS Teams), it’s better than Chrome for privacy.

        • Jedrax@lemmy.mlOP
          2·
          3 years ago

          Oh smart dude! I used to use chromium on Linux way back in the day. Totally forgot about it. I’ll give that a shot and check functionality today.

          EDIT: I’m on an M1 Pro macbook, and while the chromium for intel works fine, the chromium for mac arm gives the warning that the application is damaged and should be moved to the trash. Unfortunately no current working build for Mac ARM.

        • Lynda@lemmy.ml
          1·
          3 years ago

          I dislike how Ungoogled Chromium doesn’t update easily, nor updating the extensions is easy.

    • Baobab@le.honeypot.im
      2·
      3 years ago

      Good suggestions, but I don’t think firejail should be recommended. My reasoning is because firejail requires suid, which can open your system up to privilege escalation holes.

    • Lynda@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 years ago

      When I looked into Flatpaks, depending on the access configuration, it seemed to me they can still have a lot of permissions to your file system. It didn’t look to me that Flatpaks were safe enough.