After having used Google Chrome for quite a long time, I now decided to quit it’s usage wherever possible. That is all the computers I regularly work on and of course my mobile devices.
While I had originally been a fellow user of Firefox and its predecessors, I decided to move to Google Chrome mostly because its Linux support was much better in terms of “new” standards (WebGL, CSS3, …) and in terms of performance.
Now, PRISM and Tempora have been unveilled and one can only speculate, how many other countries have similar Tier-1 programs to spy out anything and everything that happens in the internet.
What has this to do with Google’s Chrome browser, you might ask. The explanation is simple: The confidence that I had in Google’s browser has declined much, because some parts of the browser are not open source.
There have been so many speculations about the NSA or other agencies having built in back-doors into various pieces of software, ranging from Microsoft Windows to Internet browsers. Without software being fully open source, I cannot be sure that my very human right for privacy is safe before those self -proclaimed “protectors” of the “free world” (that is typically reduced to only a few countries).
In terms of pure usability, Firefox has improved at least a bit on Linux as well. It is still not as fast as Google Chrome, but I rather live with that than being monitored by some jerks.
Thank you. I share your concerns on privacy. Can we be sure there are no back doors built into the firefox browser? It is open source after all.