Programs that respect your privacy

Author: Soren Stoutner

  • Privacy Browser Android 3.18.1

    Privacy Browser Android 3.18.1 was released on 22 July 2024. It contains a single fix for a problem with the items in the Navigation Drawer not always displaying if they are disabled. This was a problem with Google’s Android Material library version 1.12.0, which shipped with 3.18. The solution was to update to version 1.13.0-alpha04…

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  • Privacy Browser PC 0.6

    Privacy Browser PC 0.6 was released on 15 July 2024. In terms of features, this is the biggest release since 0.1. The headline feature is the addition of filter lists. Just like with Privacy Browser Android, these are based on the AdBlock Plus syntax and utilize EasyList, but the filter list parser was written from…

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  • The Referer Header

    The referer header is an optional header that informs the website you are visiting of the URL of the previous website (assuming you clicked a link to get to the current site instead of typing the URL into the address bar). It has no good reason to exist, but those who want to track you…

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  • Privacy Browser Android 3.18

    Privacy Browser Android 3.18 was released on 27 May 2024. Initially I was planning to wait for the implementation of fine grained cookie management for the 3.18 release, but a user discovered a bug that caused the file picker to not be able to select desired files on some websites. Being able to upload files…

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  • Proxy Syntax

    Privacy Browser Android 3.3 introduces the option to select a custom proxy in the format of scheme://host:port as described in the ProxyConfig.Builder documentation. There are two preconfigured options, one for Tor which uses socks://localhost:9050 and a second one for I2P which uses http://localhost:4444. Selecting the Tor or I2P options produce an error message if the…

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  • Privacy Browser Android 3.17

    Privacy Browser Android 3.17 was released on 12 February 2024. It adds Android’s download manager as an available download provider. Some historical context is helpful for understanding this change. When Privacy Browser Android was first released it used Android’s download manager for handing file downloads. This was nice because it is built into Android. But…

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  • WebView DevTools

    Privacy Browser Android uses Android’s WebView to render web pages. WebView provides fairly limited controls compared to the upstream Chromium source. However, there are small set of user-configurable controls that Google has baked into WebView. Users can tweak these controls using WebView DevTools. If you are using a pre-stable channel (Beta, Dev, or Canary) there…

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  • 2023 Financial Report

    REVENUE Total Revenue: $2,178.62 This compares favorably with last year’s total of $1,365.86. Google Play revenue comes from selling the standard flavor on Google Play. Stripe revenue comes from Liberapay donations. PayPal comes from Liberapay, sales on Samsung’s Galaxy App Store, and from direct donations. Patreon revenue comes from Patreon donations. Merch Store revenue comes from the Merch Store. Amazon revenue comes…

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  • 2023 Security and Privacy Canary

    BACKDOORS During 2023, Stoutner received 0 requests from governments, organizations, or individuals to insert backdoors into Privacy Browser Android, Privacy Browser PC, or Privacy Cell. During 2023, Stoutner inserted 0 backdoors into Privacy Browser Android, Privacy Browser PC, or Privacy Cell. PRIVACY During 2023, Stoutner received 0 secret requests from governments, organizations, or individuals to…

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  • Privacy Browser Android 3.16

    Privacy Browser Android 3.16 was released on 20 November 2023. It adds the ability to import and export bookmarks in HTML format, which allows importing bookmarks from other browsers. The bookmarks HTML format doesn’t include an option to store a folder icon (folder icons aren’t supported in any other browser that I am aware of…

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