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Somebody does: SRWare Iron

Chromium still phones home to Google. Chromium based SRWare Iron strips that out. Used it happily for years before moving back to Firefox myself.

Is there a Fork of Chromium in the wild that won't follow this lead?

We could ask the Iron developer to keep the plugins UI? Would be in keeping with their philosophy. (builds for other platforms are in their forums - including 64 bit).

Try Iron: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Been using it happily for at least six years now. Only drawback is no auto-update, but that is kind of a good thing, I can go read about the new version before installing it. I skip the odd version that has issues (such as 47, but 48 quickly followed ).

And I'm not interested in giving Google every piece of info about my browsing habits.

SRWare Iron

The nicest thing I can say about FF is that it opened the floodgates, before Firefox/Phoenix/Mozilla Suite you had crappy IE, broken NS, and adware Opera.

Today there is Comodo Dragon (what I use, better security features and no phone home to Google) Chromium, SWIron, and Opera which my oldest boy swears is the greatest thing ever (hates the new version, went back to using presto) and on the gecko side there is PaleMoon (the other browser I use, I prefer the UI over IceDragon and it seems snappier), SeaMonkey, IceDragon, if you need really low resource there is always Kmeleon which runs really well even on a P3 running Win98SE and if you want to avoid BOTH the Chromium and Gecko engines you can go with QTWeb which is just what it says on the tin, a cross platform browser that uses Webkit and the QT framework...quite nice actually and of course Safari if you are into Apple.

I was using FF before it was called Firefox, and the Suite before that and....yeah, its just not very nice now. The UI feels like a bad Chrome ripoff and it still has "senior moments" where the entire UI can just "hang" for several seconds, which when you have 8 fricking cores and 16GB of RAM? is just inexcusable. I don't know what went wrong with Moz, but for the past few years they seem to have gone out of their way to just ruin the browser, do they no longer care? Has the UI team been taken over by Google? All I know is If I wanted Chrome I'd use Chrome and the current FF feels like a really bad Chrome knockoff, its the "Hipad" that looks kinda sorta like the real thing but once you use it? Yeah its just a knock off.

Luckily this isn't the bad old days where it was just IE and netscape, today you DO have options! There is Comodo Dragon (what I use, better security features and no phone home to Google) Chromium, SWIron, and Opera which my oldest boy swears is the greatest thing ever (boy is he still pissed they quit using presto) and on the gecko side there is Firefox, PaleMoon (the other browser I use, I prefer the UI over IceDragon and it seems snappier), SeaMonkey, IceDragon, if you need really low resource there is always Kmeleon which runs really well even on a P3 running Win98SE and if you want to avoid BOTH the Chromium and Gecko engines you can go with QTWeb which is just what it says on the tin, a cross platform browser that uses Webkit and QT.

More specifically SRWare Iron which also can be loaded and run from a flashdrive. My brother turned me onto this, I confess.

Maybe you meant to say "Iron Browser" rather than Chrome. The official Chrome or Chromium from Google scoops up more data than Firefox even dreams about.

http://www.srware.net/en/softw...

Yeah, I like Iron pretty well, but I'm growing to like Pale Moon better.

https://www.palemoon.org/

And, if those don't suit you, you can always go with this one.

http://lynx.browser.org/

The memory footprint for that last one is almost invisible on a 4 GB system!

SRW Iron https://www.srware.net/en/soft... is touted to be a secure browser [Warning: Demands Java after install]. I don't think it is.
In fact, playing around with FF shows that the problem isn't the browser, but the reliance on 3rd party cookies as 1 example of the way websites are constructed.
If you load FF's Lightbeam and check all the 3rd party sites, block access to them, they often stop the parent website from operating properly or at all. Typically, Google and most banking sites won't work without 3rd party links or cookies.
Then there are routers that claim security but are still running buggy old firmware. AV software like Bitdefender also have issues. AV software still refuses to scan for pup, browser addons and other malware that the UAC allows! I mean if you download an app, UAC asks for permission which you give for that instance, but it automatically gives permissions for all the other installs that come with the package. Why?
I reckon half of the security issues can be fixed if some clever plug-ins, better AV database and a trusted installer with UAC can be done. EG Spoofing 3rd party links and cookies within the browser.
I went here http://alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ and downloaded the app a few days ago. It installed on Vista and a Win 7 machine (with MS Defender) I was building. The payload installed as well (Trovi) - I wasn't paying attention btw but the 2nd time I installed it on a Vista machine I had an option of opting out. As a test, I Installed it on another Win 7 box with an updated Kaspersky. It installed (without the payload or opt out!) and when I checked the reports, there was no log or trace that there was any payload at all. Weird, but my respect for Kaspersky has increased and/or the UAC was working properly.
We all talk about security but there are fundamental, easily fixable things we can do right now. I don't think that this has to do with the OS as most of these issues are external.

http://www.srware.net/en/softw...

https://code.google.com/p/chro...

For most intents and purposes, there is little real difference. SRWare clearly states here, http://www.srware.net/en/softw... that they hack Chromium - but on other pages, they compare Iron to Chrome.

If you're working from the same source code, the only real differences are those features that you might enable/disable when compiling. Am I right? If so - then it might be argued that Chrome is the more intrusive, more invasive version of Google's spyware. Chromium would be less intrusive spyware. And, Iron is an attempt to turn off all the spyware.

http://www.srware.net/en/softw...

https://code.google.com/p/chro...

For most intents and purposes, there is little real difference. SRWare clearly states here, http://www.srware.net/en/softw... that they hack Chromium - but on other pages, they compare Iron to Chrome.

If you're working from the same source code, the only real differences are those features that you might enable/disable when compiling. Am I right? If so - then it might be argued that Chrome is the more intrusive, more invasive version of Google's spyware. Chromium would be less intrusive spyware. And, Iron is an attempt to turn off all the spyware.

No, you're not SOL - there is a thriving community of Chrome hackers who change anything and everything they don't like about Chrome.

http://www.srware.net/en/softw...

I haven't even looked to see why Chromium needs to make a kernel call that no other browser needs to make. But - I'm rather skeptical of TSYNC before I even look at it. TFS already suggests that it might be spyware. Glad I no longer run Chromium - SRWare Iron is the same as Chromium, but stripped of all the intrusive bullshit.

http://www.srware.net/en/softw...

There are some really great distros that are based on said sources:

Pale Moon is an open source alternative to FireFox:
http://www.palemoon.org/

SRWare Iron is a Chromium project:
http://www.srware.net/en/softw...

Luckily this isn't the bad old days where it was just IE and netscape, today you DO have options! There is Comodo Dragon (what I use, better security features and no phone home to Google) Chromium, SWIron, and Opera which my oldest boy swears is the greatest thing ever (boy is he still pissed they quit using presto) and on the gecko side there is Firefox, PaleMoon (the other browser I use, I prefer the UI over IceDragon and it seems snappier), SeaMonkey, IceDragon, if you need really low resource there is always Kmeleon which runs really well even on a P3 running Win98SE and if you want to avoid BOTH the Chromium and Gecko engines you can go with QTWeb which is just what it says on the tin, a cross platform browser that uses Webkit and the QT framework...quite nice actually and of course Safari if you are into Apple. There is one other....what was it? Oh yeah the big blue E thing. ;-)

So if you don't like the direction Google is going? Don't use their products. After they started getting nasty with the TOS and trying to ram G+ down our throats I dropped Google like a bad habit, I set up a throwaway Gmail I never use just for my Android phone (so they can't tie my desktop and mobile together) and use my main Gmail for a spam dump, switched to Bing for my search and Yahoo for my mail so no one company has access too all my online data and ya know what? couldn't be happier. What DOES really piss me off about Google is how they have become a drive by spammer, you have no idea how many Chrome "infections" I've had to clean off of customers PCs because some "freeware" had Chrome tied into it. We used to get seriously pissed at how McCrappee and Horton used to dump their stupid scanners onto us with freeware so why isn't everyone mad at how Google is spamming Chrome? An unwanted install that takes over defaults...hmmm...if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck?

Well the great thing about today is you don't HAVE to take Moz's shit, you DO have plenty of choices.

I use Comodo Dragon and Pale Moon, but if you don't like those there is Comodo IceDragon, Waterfox, SWIron, hell if you don't want to use anything Chromium or Gecko based there is QTWeb which is webkit and QT. Cross platform and works pretty nice IMHO, works great from a flash too. And if your machine is needing an ultra light browser or which will run on really old Windows versions there is always Kmeleon which by following their docs and adding a couple of files can run on Win98 if you need it to and which flies on anything newer.

So as you can see you DO have more choices, hell I left off plenty of others like Safari and Opera and Chrome but I figured it would be better to list some you may not have tried. Give 'em a go, I bet you'll find one you like. Oh and FYI but nearly all the above? MUCH more conservative when it comes to UI changes. I've been on Dragon since V4 (currently on V31) and the only UI change of note was moving the option button from the right edge to the left. Oh and the reason I use Pale Moon over ICeDragon? I like its UI better and the way its built with the browser targeted at newer CPU features. Nice thing about choice, I can go for the browser with the little things I like..

Sounds a lot like SRWare Iron* to me - that's a long existing Chromium-based fork altered for enhanced privacy.

At a first glance, I cannot make out any advantages of Epic over Iron. Aside from the removal of all user tracking which Chrome brings, they only provide a 1-click-proxy functionality. Which, if I used it, would leave me and my privacy at the mercy of an India based startup. Instead, I'd also rather suggest JAP** which is also long and well established.

So what am I missing that makes Epic Browser worth a Slashdot post?

[1] https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php
[2] http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/

You could always switch to SRWare Iron.

It tracks all your browsing history and sends it back to Google! :) http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php

Then you need to have a look at SRWare Iron http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

It's sad that so many "smart" people are using Chrome that has so many privacy concerns. The following information is from Wikipedia but you can find this information all over. Google fanboys need not reply.

1) Suggest - All text, searches, and URLs typed into the address bar are sent to Google

2) Downloads - Chrome sends the URL and IP of the host and other meta data, such as the file’s hash and binary size, to Google when downloading files

3) Page not found - All URLs and text typed into the address bar (Upon receiving "Server not found" response) are sent to Google

4) Google Update (Windows) - Information about how often Chrome is used, details about the OS and Chrome version.

5) Bug tracker - Details about crashes and failures (including information about the machine and software being used)

6) clientID - Unique identifier along with logs of usage metrics and crashes.

7) Installation - Randomly generated token included in installer. Used to measure success rate of Google Chrome once at installation.

8) RLZ identifier - Encoded string, according to Google (if you trust Google), contains non-identifying information how Chrome was downloaded and its install week, and is used to measure promotional campaigns. Google provides the source code to decode this string.

This is the reason for products such as SRWare Iron that remove all the privacy concerns from Chromium:

"Google's Web browser Chrome thrilled with an extremely fast site rendering, a sleek design and innovative features. But it also gets critic from data protection specialists , for reasons such as creating a unique user ID or the submission of entries to Google to generate suggestions. SRWare Iron is a real alternative. The browser is based on the Chromium-source and offers the same features as Chrome - but without the critical points that the privacy concern.

We could therefore create a browser with which you can now use the innovative features without worrying about your privacy."

To me, it's just disappointed at the sheer number of sheeple who couldn't care less if Google tracks everything they do on the internet. Which also gives support to them tracking everyone else - including their own family members. Oh wait... but Google can be totally trusted, right? I mean, they would never do anything evil with all that data since they are an advertising corporation who's sole purpose is to make money. Ya, sure.

It's sad that so many "smart" people are using Chrome that has so many privacy concerns. The following information is from Wikipedia but you can find this information all over. Google fanboys need not reply.

1) Suggest - All text, searches, and URLs typed into the address bar are sent to Google

2) Downloads - Chrome sends the URL and IP of the host and other meta data, such as the file’s hash and binary size, to Google when downloading files

3) Page not found - All URLs and text typed into the address bar (Upon receiving "Server not found" response) is sent to Google

4) Google Update (Windows) - Information about how often Chrome is used, details about the OS and Chrome version.

5) Bug tracker - Details about crashes and failures (including information about the machine and software being used)

6) clientID - Unique identifier along with logs of usage metrics and crashes.

7) Installation - Randomly generated token included in installer. Used to measure success rate of Google Chrome once at installation.

8) RLZ identifier - Encoded string, according to Google (if you trust Google), contains non-identifying information how Chrome was downloaded and its install week, and is used to measure promotional campaigns. Google provides the source code to decode this string.

This is the reason for products such as SRWare Iron that remove all the privacy concerns from Chromium:

"Google's Web browser Chrome thrilled with an extremely fast site rendering, a sleek design and innovative features. But it also gets critic from data protection specialists , for reasons such as creating a unique user ID or the submission of entries to Google to generate suggestions. SRWare Iron is a real alternative. The browser is based on the Chromium-source and offers the same features as Chrome - but without the critical points that the privacy concern.

We could therefore create a browser with which you can now use the innovative features without worrying about your privacy."

To me, it's just disappointed at the sheer number of sheeple who couldn't care less if Google tracks everything they do on the internet. Which also gives support to them tracking everyone else - including their own family members. Oh wait... but Google can be totally trusted, right? I mean, they would never do anything evil with all that data since they are an advertising corporation who's sole purpose is to make money. Ya, sure.

I see that they have an Ad Blocker. That's nice, and one reason to use firefox. But ads aren't the real problem, they are just annoying (OK, A real problem, but not THE real problem).

XSS, cookies and local storage is where the most privacy concerns crop up. Mostly XSS. I saw no mention of that on the chrome vs iron page.

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php

If the Chromium base is what you want, you might look into this:
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php
It's basically Chrome with all the tracking stuff stripped out. And they have a Linux version. Last I tried it it was a few versions behind Chrome, though that shouldn't be that big of a deal.

SRWare Iron has become my browser of choice. Essentially, Chrome with all the tracking crap ripped out.

I personally don't use it (because I like my Firefox plugins) but Iron is chrome without Google.

Time to take a serious look at Chrome.

At least consider Iron, where the full source is available and it doesn't force you to have Google Update and its friends.

First time I tried Chrome, it read 20GB and wrote 4GB of data. I don't know what it was doing, but it sure looks suspicious to me, and I'm not too thrilled that every cold start of the browser unnecessarily tortures my SSD.

orly? that's why it's on their page you troll

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php

Note:. This didn't even work in Chromium. CHROMIUM!!! I had to get 'Google Chrome' for it to work.

Sure it does. I used SRWare Iron 12, which is built off the chromium source and it worked just fine. Perhaps you are using an older version of chromium.

I notice they're on version 10 since March 27...does that mean this is included in their latest build?

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php

Not a privacy policy, but probably he is talking about this: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php

It doesn't work at all in SRWare Iron.

In Firefox:
7731/50000 rwb points (64-bit Windows 7; AMD Phenom II X3 720 @ 3.20Ghz; 4GB RAM)

Bumper bots 451
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If you're concerned about Google eavesdropping on your browsing habits, you might try the SRWare Iron browser instead. It's Chrome minus the snooping built-ins.

Why would you trust the SRWare people more than Google? Or at all for that matter?

If you get Chromium from say a trustworthy distro, I would rely on that. Or if I compiled it myself. But who exactly are SRWare?

If you're concerned about Google eavesdropping on your browsing habits, you might try the SRWare Iron browser instead. It's Chrome minus the snooping built-ins.

Does anyone have an opinion of SRWares Iron browser?
  * https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SRWare_Iron

Its a version of Chromium which aims to remove all the user tracking information.

Might be wrong but it does not appear to be in any repositories, so its a (albeit simple) manual install.

Direct link to their website:
    * http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Here is what SRWare says. http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php

I'm not fully qualified to comment on this since I will never be a Chrome user until someone forks off a "stainless steel" release where a group of people have poured over the source code to ensure there is no Google data collecting going on and then compiles it themselves for distribution.

Actually, it's called "Iron" not "Stainless Steel". You should check it out. Chrome, but without anything that google could use to identify you (including no automatic updates, no search suggestions, etc)
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Try SRWare Iron. That's what I use when Firefox doesn't work.

In their own words: SRWare Iron: The browser of the future - based on the free Sourcecode "Chromium" - without any problems at privacy and security

I will never be a Chrome user until someone forks off a "stainless steel" release where a group of people have poured over the source code to ensure there is no Google data collecting going on and then compiles it themselves for distribution.

Ever try Iron? There's also a Chromium-based browser actually called Stainless, as you suggest, but I believe it's Mac OS X only. Iron is Windows only.

Does the AdBlock in Iron (a Chromium derivative, if you don't know) do the same, or does the right thing?

You might be interested in SRWare Iron, a Chrome mod that doesn't track you: > Version 5.0380 beta http://www.srware.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1482 Stable version: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php Or you may like ChromePlus: http://www.chromeplus.org/ ChromePlus is built on Chrome Dev builds, so v 1.3.4 will be based on Crhome 6.0.x

You might be interested in SRWare Iron, a Chrome mod that doesn't track you: > Version 5.0380 beta http://www.srware.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1482 Stable version: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php Or you may like ChromePlus: http://www.chromeplus.org/ ChromePlus is built on Chrome Dev builds, so v 1.3.4 will be based on Crhome 6.0.x

So download the version that doesn't tell Google your dirty porn habits.

Iron 5.0.377 for Linux: http://www.srware.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1502

There's always Chromium; I run it on Ubuntu. For Windows there's SRWare Iron. I'm not sure which is the preferred build for OSX; perhaps Crossover Chromium. TFA doesn't say whether Chromium is affected. Some comments under TFA state that the effect lasts only until Chrome is restarted, suggesting that the information is stored only in the memory cache.

Chromium is the exact same code as Chrome. Of course it will be affected, unless you patch it out.

And seriously, people, get a grip. It's not like this tells Google what sites you visited. It just stores it on your computer. It has nothing to do with Google wanting your information, that's a complete non sequitur here. Geez.

Iron works on Linux as well, not just Windows. I run it on Ubuntu 9.10. As I mentioned above, 4.0.275.2 (Developer Build 35171) of Iron is affected by the bug from the article.

Use Iron , which is sort of like Chrome for the privacy-conscious. Note that the bug from the article is present in SRWare Iron 4.0.275.2 (Developer Build 35171) as well, though so this appears to be a Chromium issue(?).

Is there any way to stop Chrome sending the info of the URLs you type into the address bar back to google, yet?

Yes - use SRWare Iron. It's a fork of Chrome, without all the phone-home stuff.

There's always Chromium; I run it on Ubuntu. For Windows there's SRWare Iron. I'm not sure which is the preferred build for OSX; perhaps Crossover Chromium. TFA doesn't say whether Chromium is affected. Some comments under TFA state that the effect lasts only until Chrome is restarted, suggesting that the information is stored only in the memory cache.