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Ask Slashdot: Most Secure Browser In an Age of Surveillance?
An anonymous reader writes "With the discovery that the NSA may be gathering extensive amounts of data, and the evidence suggesting makers of some of the most popular browsers may be in on the action, I am more than a little wary of which web browser to use. Thus, I pose a question to the community: is there a 'most secure' browser in terms of avoiding personal data collection? Assuming we all know by know how to 'safely' browse the internet (don't click on that ad offering to free your computer of infections) what can the lay person do have a modicum of protection, or at least peace of mind?"
The EFF has provided an up to date list of privacy-enabling tools in the age of Prism. http://prism-break.org/
When the backbone is compromised, you're pretty much fucked unless you run strong encryption everywhere and obfuscate who you are talking to. Irrespective of whether your browser is open source - if it doesn't do the above, you're boned.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
They at least get early Zero-Day access. I'm guessing they have more.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/06/nsa-gets-early-access-to-zero-day-data-from-microsoft-others/
Rising are a Chinese company listed as an anti-virus partner by Microsoft.
Ah.. an anti-ms troll still stick in 1999. _NSAKEY has nothing to do with backdoors. Its understandable that non-technical simpletons would mistake it as such.
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9909.html#NSAKeyinMicrosoftCryptoAPI
... the snooping is done on your ISP's backbone, and the browser you use makes little difference.
If you're just using a stock browser, this is somewhat true. But for privacy you wouldn't do that.
For instance, installing the HTTPS Everywhere extension will get you secure connections to as many sites as possible. That's a direct counter to pervasive snooping. I use it with Firefox and also NoScript, Ghostery, RefControl, and CookieMonster, and that set does a fairly decent job of having a more privacy-oriented (and faster) browsing experience. It also makes the NSA's eavesdropping more difficult, but that's just a nice side effect of not sharing your every move with the commercial trackers out there (I installed them all well before I'd ever heard of Snowden). The nice thing about solid security approaches is that they proactively defend against unknown attackers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)