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Psylo iOS browser takes aim at digital fingerprinting (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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Psylo, which bills itself as a new kind of private web browser, debuted last Tuesday in Apple’s App Store, one day ahead of a report warning about the widespread use of browser fingerprinting for ad tracking and targeting.

It was a fortuitous coincidence.

Psylo for iOS and iPadOS was created by Mysk, a Canada-based app biz run by software developers and security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk.

“Psylo stands out as it is the only WebKit-based iOS browser that truly isolates tabs,” Tommy Mysk told The Register. "It’s not only about separate storage and cookies. Psylo goes beyond that.

“This is why we call tabs ‘silos.’ It applies unique anti-fingerprinting measures per silo, such as canvas randomization. This way two Psylo tabs opening the same website would appear as though they originated on two different devices to the opened website.”

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[–] -2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

Private spaces aren’t perfect, can’t run two version of a same app on different profiles

What the GrapheneOS team has achieved is technically impressive

Sure but it’s not nearly enough for me

The phone is fully functional and we're definitely not living 10 years in the past.

Not my experience with it

You should give it a proper try and form a facts-based opinion, or stop talking about it altogether.

That’s what I did and I hated it. So many small problems, things that took time:

  • Android carauto thing not working well or requiring specific permissions without really telling me how private this all is
  • having to install apps for basic things because the default provided ones are… really not great, including a keyboard that actually works with password managers and credentials auto completion
  • phone taking quite some time to start after updating because it’s optimizing apps or something, then optimizing apps again in background which eats the battery
  • having things not work because of play integrity
  • mobile NFC payment not working (Google Pay)
  • super frequent Android bugs when switching Google play accounts (is this specific to graphene or is it Google play that is fucked? I don’t know)
  • no way to reset or cheat the profile/unique advertising ID used for apps, so they can track you even after a reinstall (this really should be implemented. Advertising a privacy phone without that is sad)
  • google play having deep integration in most apps, like wtf I get a rating popup from google play? Was expecting better privacy, they essentially know most apps I’m on at all time
  • play store seems to know all apps on my phone, even those not installed through it?

I probably forgot a lot. And yes, many problems are not specific to graphene but to custom ROM but that was my experience with it

Also, I must stress that it was also my first experience with Android. Always have been an iOS user. I switched back.

So yea, while having sandboxed is good, it’s still phoning home all the time

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Hold on, you think GrapheneOS isn't perfectly private (and you'd be right, it isn't, and their main focus is security anyway) but you think iPhones are better?

    Why, because Apple told you it is? Because they have some gimmicks that sound good on paper but don't actually protect your data in any real way?

    Okay dude. Reach out to me whenever cus i got a bridge to sell you.

    Also, everything you said is incorrect, and so is your conclusion. But I don't think we'll ever see eye to eye on this so why bother.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I'll check the video, thanks for sharing

    Hold on, you think GrapheneOS isn’t perfectly private (and you’d be right, it isn’t, and their main focus is security anyway) but you think iPhones are better?

    I think Graphene without play services is a lot better than iPhones, and with play services, it's worse

    Why, because Apple told you it is?

    Because play services are deeply integrated into many apps, and Google is known for not E2EE anything and being an advertising company. They have an enormous interest in gathering as much data as possible for commercial purposes, while Apple likely only have a statistical interest for their business decisions

    A lot of what apple offers is wind and I'm aware of it, but having even a small thing is better than giving out your data to the monster that is Google.

    If you manage to sell me Android then congrats, because I fucking hate Apple but hate Android even more because of Google

    Do you believe a Samsung phone (or any authorized ROM with relatively good price/performance ratio) running with their provided OS for example would be better than an iPhone?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    No, I don't. Samsung and other authorized OEMs run stock Google services so there's no benefit to using them. Those devices are also substantially inferior to the Pixel in terms of security features anyways.

    The only phone I recommend is a Pixel with a properly set up GrapheneOS install, making use of profiles and private spaces depending on which apps you want to expose to Google Play Services/Framework, and which you don't.

    Ideally your most used profile is filled exclusively with FOSS or privacy-respecting apps that can run without Google services. And I'm talking about going really deep even on elemetary things like using an offline keyboard like Heliboard or FUTO that won't send everything you type to Google/Microsoft/Apple. Or using Gboard but with network access blocked.

    Yes, this set up takes time and some research, but it's the only way you can guarantee your data is properly split between what is just for you to see, and what others see.

    A device that is truly yours and not someone else's to mine for data and spy on you, possibly getting you in trouble in the future when a government demands your data from Google/Apple.

    But if you're not willing to put in the work to set it up, then I don't recommend any other Androids. Stay on iPhone instead.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    Alright, thanks for your answer. That was my reasoning for everything: I didn’t believe running graphene was usable because it wasn’t for my use case, and I assumed it would be the case for everyone (wrongly obviously, although we’re on Lemmy so people here and on this community are probably more tech savvy)

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