do you have any reservations about the qwant search addon?
https://www.qwant.com/
Do you have any reservations about the qwant search addon?
Thank you.
It seems not usable without running JavaScript.
I have reservations about all browser addons, especially since the NoScript scandal.
https://www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/noscript-developer-apologizes-for-meddling-with-adblock
Unless you vet the addon code, addon developers are just another group of people you have to trust, another potential source of hostile software, and addons are an even greater privacy risk than desktop software because web browsers aren't isolated from the Internet.
I'm curious about the advantage this addon has over a bookmark or a link manually added to the browser's list of search engines.
Given adblock plus's acceptable ad policy being on by default following sometime after, I don't think poorly of noscript.
Yes that was bad, but by comparison, I feel like noscript is miles better in todays world then adblock plus.
I assume you were talking about adblock plus, right?
I wasn't talking about adblock at all. Noscript is the only addon I mentioned.
You mentioned this:
https://www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/noscript-developer-apologizes-for-meddling-with-adblock
That very likely was adblock plus noscript was meddling with.
So because of this one incident 17 years ago by an extension that is totally free software and where the developer almost immediately did a public apology and has not been found to do anything similar since - because of that you mistrust all browser add-ons?
Wow, tough crowd.
No. I said I have reservations about addons "especially" since the NoScript scandal, meaning the NoScript scandal is ANOTHER reason I don't trust addons in addition to the other issues I mentioned, not the MAIN or ONLY reason.
I'm pretty sure you can use Noscript without fear, and if you do have fears you can look to the Tor Browser project for assurance. NoScript has been bundled since the first Tor Browser Bundle release in early 2008, predating the 2009 Adblock Plus controversy by about a year. The Tor Project chose to include NoScript before the 2009 incident, kept it afterward, and has continued shipping it for roughly 18 years as a key security component. That sustained inclusion — with Tor developers reviewing and integrating each version into their build pipeline — is the standing institutional review of Noscript that should lead to greater assurance. In addition, Noscript is GPL2 licensed and is developed completely transparently, with source code available for download at https://github.com/hackademix/noscript. Users have raised 530 different issues and have offered 55 pull requests over the last 8 years.
From the perspective of user security and privacy, trusting less is better than trusting more. I'll continue doing most of my browsing with JS disabled, so I can live without noscript.
>"most of my browsing with JS disabled"
And how are you protected during those times when JS is not disabled? LibreJS is also highly recommended.
I'm not concerned about the scripts my bank and protonmail are running. Google and social media scripts are blocked by privoxy. There just aren't many sites I use with JS enabled, and I use them in a dedicated browser profile so my other internet activities can't be tracked by scripts.
No offense, but judging a project based on one mistake they made seems childish.
I don't really understand where you are coming from.
Btw also, you are not more secure without noscript, you are less secure.
Ublock origin and privacy badgers are very trustworthy though anyhow.
Not using addons is a way of being *a lot less secure* not more.
I agree with Andy here.
"I'm curious about the advantage this addon has over a bookmark or a link manually added to the browser's list of search engines."
I just realized that Qwant is listed as an alternative search engine in Abrowser, so I would also assume that the addon is redundant. No idea how much extra security it is supposed to provide compared to the default situation, nor how it would.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/qwant-the-search-engine
I visited the qwant.com page, and read: "The search engine that values you as a user, not as a product". Next was a search box and an ad for live sports streaming services. I had not been exposed to an online ad for so long that I almost clicked on it. Then I realized I may have some reservations about the qwant search engine.
https://about.qwant.com/en/qwant-advertising
I have been using ddg html search for a while now.
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html