Programs that respect your privacy

Author: Soren Stoutner

  • URL Modification

    Privacy Browser includes the following URL modifications, which are enabled by default. Each of these queries are stripped out as well as everything that follows them. An example URL looks like this: Privacy Browser strips out anything from the first ?utm_ forward, turning the URL into: Tracking Queries Privacy Browser blocks all the trackers listed…

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  • Privacy Browser Design Guidelines

    From time to time I receive feedback from individuals regarding the layout of privacy browser on small screens. Usually this feedback relates to eliminating an element that they feel is not important enough to warrant the space utilization or diminishing the size of the fonts so that more information can fit on the screen. I…

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  • WebView

    As part of the Android, Google ships WebView, which is used to render HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This is one of the standard views in Android Open Source Project (some others being TextView, EditText, Spinner, and ImageView). Privacy Browser uses WebView to render websites. If you do not have WebView on your system, Privacy Browser…

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  • Search Engine Syntax

    Privacy Browser has the ability for the user to select a custom search engine. The purpose of this page is to explain the search engine URL syntax. Privacy Browser expects to be able to append a search term to the search custom URL. What this URL looks like varies based on the search engine, but…

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  • Privacy Browser 2.11

    Privacy Browser 2.11 has been released. The major new feature is a Requests activity that shows how many requests were made and how many were blocked. Tapping on an individual request displays further details. The Requests entry in the navigation menu displays the number of blocked requests. I have written some information about how the…

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  • Privacy Browser Android on Windows 11

    Windows 11 has the option to run a Subsystem for Android, which is still fairly new but has reached the stage of general availability. Microsoft has partnered with Amazon to list apps from the Amazon Appstore in certain countries. There are a number of websites with instructions for setting up the Windows Subsystem for Android…

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  • Privacy Browser Android 3.15.1

    Privacy Browser Android 3.15.1 was released on 26 June 2023. The main purpose of the release was fixing a bug, introduced with duplicate bookmark folder names in 3.15, that caused the app to crash if a bookmark was moved to the home folder in the Bookmarks Activity. The rest of the items were ready to…

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  • Increasing Privacy Browser Android’s Pricing

    I have made the decision to increase the price of Privacy Browser Android from $1 to $5 USD on Google Play, the Amazon AppStore, and the Galaxy App Store. Ever since Privacy Browser Android was first released it has been available for $1. Privacy Browser Android will always be available from F-Droid or similar repositories…

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  • Minimizing Privacy Browser’s Attack Surface

    Every piece of software as complex as a browser that receives unsanitized information from the internet will eventually be compromised. How often that happens and how damaging the compromises are can be mitigated through a careful design process. Some information about decreasing the damage that a compromise can inflict is discussed on the Core Privacy…

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  • Privacy Browser PC 0.4

    Privacy Browser PC 0.4 was released on 13 June 2023. A setting was added to enable or disable spatial navigation, which is the ability to navigate between links and input fields using the arrow keys. There is some discussion about this feature on Fosstodon. Given that some people find this feature annoying, I decided to…

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