Recently stumbled across this very aggressive online user privacy and security site: Better Web Browsing. It’s part of the RiseUp thing rooted in Seattle, generally leftist. While I’ve not done any detailed research on them, I’m sure you can find lots of ugly gossip and rumors about them from their political opponents. My initial assessment is that they are akin to the Occupy folks but better organized. There’s room for libertarians, I’m sure.
The point here is their recommendations for online privacy and security. I see several examples of misguided zeal and radical “scorched earth” policy. I suppose it works well enough for the stuff they do, but if you have a blog on any of the major free providers, you’ll run into trouble. For example, you simply must allow third-party cookies for all of the services I know about. Also, RiseUp still supports use of Tor, but I’ve found that to be a trap and easily compromised.
Still, there is good stuff, too. They warn you about the four most popular browsers. Then they forget to point out there are alternatives. Off the top of my head, there’s Opera (old line and new line, quite different), Pale Moon, Lynx, Links2, SlimJet, and dozens of others still in development, each with their own privacy and security advantages.
I’m especially pleased with the recommendation that you replace the various version of AdBlock and Ghostery with uBlock. Even AdBlock Edge has endorsed uBlock as a better replacement. I wish I had known about that before I released my most recent books on Debian.
At any rate, it’s typical of the half-way savvy new Networked Generation of folks. Very aggressive in certain things, but lacking a full range of experience us older security folks could share with them. There’s a lack of nuance in their work. For example, we agree Flash is bad, but there are Open Source versions in development that might solve some of the problems. Meanwhile, Flash is not fully retired from the scene, so if you don’t install some way of playing Flash, you’ll miss out on some of the stuff offered by those who haven’t seen any reason to change their practices. There’s not really wrong with their recommendations, but it seems they didn’t perform due diligence.
Overall, not too bad. It’s a decent quick reference to make you think about what you might do to improve security online.
