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What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
I liked the interview with Mozilla’s pres, but it didn’t do anything to dissuade my fears about the company’s future. The browser wars are over and they lost, I’ve made peace with that. I wish it would change but shy of a technological breakthrough the 3 main engines are where they are. Although maybe their views around AI will shape some user protections that could win people back.
Although, and I don’t know why I have such a bug up my ass about this, the whole “You can’t block ads in Chrome” thing is a lie that needs to die. “Firefox blocks the most ads” is a truth I’ll defend, because the facts are there. At this point however I challenge anyone who thinks you can’t block ads in Chrome to install uBO Lite and see for yourself. Do things slip through? Yes! But would the average user think that their Chrome ad blocker doesn’t work? Look no further than Firefox’s marketshare (and the trends over the last 5 years) for your answer.
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I used to use Firefox, I first started using it back when it was called Phoenix, but it became unreliable and stopped working with LastPass on Android, which pretty much killed it for me. I still keep it around for some sites that don’t work with Chrome (mostly internal corporate sites that can’t use TLS 1.2 or 1.3). I have donated to them on occasion as well.
I will take another look at it. I am currently using Safari and Brave, both of which, along with NextDNS, provide very good tracking protection without needing any add-ons. These days, I just use 1Password as my only add-on.
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I use Firefox on my PC for anything that doesn’t require a special account. Like I still use Chrome for account creation because it’s one of my password managers. But I use Firefox as my day to day browser because I value the full uBlock Origin. Sites get around uBlock Lite on my iPad with Safari.
I really hate when Chrome’s UI got bigger, that was ultimately was moved me to Firefox. I could live with uBlock Lite (because it would push me to setup a pihole situation)
Why don’t you consolidate to a single, real password manager that will work in all browsers? Proton and BitWarden even have free tiers. I would recommend Proton or 1Password.
It seems like a big hassle. I’ve thought about going Apple Passwords full time but I’m skeptical of using it in Windows. I’d never get involved in a paid password service, and the idea of trying something new scares me.
BitWarden seems cool & good, specially because its free tier seems fine, and it’s open source. But I don’t know…. I’ve never really gone through the import process, plus I have a lot of really old stuff in Chrome / Apple where I’d like to eventually go through and clean everything up…. I just don’t think I”ll ever get around to it
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Maybe that is the thing to kick you into doing some spring cleaning…
If you use BitWarden or Proton Pass (and its companion Authenticator), you get a lot of additional help. They create new passwords for you and you can use them on any platform, iPhone, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux etc. plus you have all the passwords in one place, so no duplicates and wondering why you suddenly can’t log in, because you are using the wrong database.
I paid for 1Password for years, and before that, LastPass. I now get it free as my employer started using 1Password for users and when you get a business license, you also get a free family license. If I didn’t get it though the company, I would still pay for it.
The family plans also mean you can share passwords with the family (E.g. Netflix or Wi-Fi passwords). It makes things a lot simpler.
You also get things like Watchtower (1Password, the others have similar features), which check your passwords and accounts against Darknet data breaches and warn you if you need to change a password. For common sites, they will even automatically go in and change the password for you.
If you have a lot of old accounts in Apple and Google, I would also use the switch to a real password manager as an opportunity to change all your passwords to something more secure.
1Password has also just added a new feature, if you go to a phishing website, all password managers will refuse to autofill your username and password, but if 1Password sees you are trying to manually enter your username and password, it will no pop up a warning that you are on a phishing site (E.g. trying to manually log onto faceboook.com).
I’d say making one simple mistake with a password (as Leo had happen with his CCs) is A LOT more hassle than learning a new habit. 
been using Apple Passwords for some time and no problems (so far 
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I used Firefox on my Linux machines for a long time – now I’m all in on Chromium