2mo ago

Fennec on f-droid has anti-features, it connects to mozilla services that can track users. Does it HAVE to do that? Should I use it if my trust in firefox is eroding?

With recent concerns about Firefox and the mozilla corporation I am starting to wonder if I should take stock of alternatives. A common recommendation seems to be Fennec, but given what F-droid describes as anti-features, I wonder if I'm essentially replacing the problem like for like.

What do they mean? What services? Optional ones? Can it be used without connecting to any mozilla services at all?

4 comments

What services does it connect to?
Edit: after I posted I saw in the summary that you're not sure whatserviceds it uses either. I wonder if there is a way to get the specifics from f-droid.
You might check out ironfox to see if it also has the same issues.
- Looking at my firewall logs (RethinkDNS) Ironfox doesn't seem to try to connect to anything I don't want it to except safebrowsing. That's blocked anyway by the firewall, and is easily disabled in about:config. You may want to use safebrowsing, and Firefox connects to their own implementation of it before it hits Googles servers.
  Info on safebrowsing and Firefox is here
  https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-malware-protection-work

Even if Mozilla seems to have clarified the TOS for the better, I am already experimenting with Librewolf and Zen on Win11 and Fennec on Android. And I was about to ask the same question...

Ever since Mull was abandoned, I've been using IronFox. It's a privacy and security strengthened fork of Firefox.