Psylo browser takes aim at digital fingerprinting
www.theregister.com
: Gotta keep 'em separated so the marketers and snoops can't come out and play

Psylo, which bills itself as a new kind of private web browser, debuted last Tuesday in Apple’s App Store, one day ahead of a report warning about the widespread use of browser fingerprinting for ad tracking and targeting.

It was a fortuitous coincidence.

Psylo for iOS and iPadOS was created by Mysk, a Canada-based app biz run by software developers and security researchers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk.

“Psylo stands out as it is the only WebKit-based iOS browser that truly isolates tabs,” Tommy Mysk told The Register. "It’s not only about separate storage and cookies. Psylo goes beyond that.

“This is why we call tabs ‘silos.’ It applies unique anti-fingerprinting measures per silo, such as canvas randomization. This way two Psylo tabs opening the same website would appear as though they originated on two different devices to the opened website.”

    • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
      22·
      1 day ago

      You still lose access to notifications, and some apps straight up don’t work (those using Play integrity, but not only)

      To be fair i’ve not tried fucking up with this too much but I know it’s implemented in a lot of apps

      • Cyberwolf@feddit.org
        21·
        14 hours ago

        To be fair i’ve not tried fucking up with this too much

        We could tell.

        Sorry, but what you are dismissing as “They only… You still… You lose…” is very ignorant.

        What the GrapheneOS team has achieved is technically impressive, sandboxing Google Play is something no other project has done yet, and now with Private Spaces you can essentially split your profile in two and decide which apps you want Google Play to run through, and which you don’t.

        I put all the privacy intrusive apps in the private Space and installed Google services there, and I only open that space about once a week to keep in touch with some friends. The rest of the week I’m enjoying a fully degoogled phone using only FOSS apps and a bank that doesn’t require Google services to be installed.

        The team deserves all the praise they get for building the most secure (and ironically, private) OS in the market right now, even with Google being so antagonistic to them. The phone is fully functional and we’re definitely not living 10 years in the past.

        You should give it a proper try and form a facts-based opinion, or stop talking about it altogether.

        • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Private spaces aren’t perfect, can’t run two version of a same app on different profiles

          What the GrapheneOS team has achieved is technically impressive

          Sure but it’s not nearly enough for me

          The phone is fully functional and we’re definitely not living 10 years in the past.

          Not my experience with it

          You should give it a proper try and form a facts-based opinion, or stop talking about it altogether.

          That’s what I did and I hated it. So many small problems, things that took time:

          • Android carauto thing not working well or requiring specific permissions without really telling me how private this all is
          • having to install apps for basic things because the default provided ones are… really not great, including a keyboard that actually works with password managers and credentials auto completion
          • phone taking quite some time to start after updating because it’s optimizing apps or something, then optimizing apps again in background which eats the battery
          • having things not work because of play integrity
          • mobile NFC payment not working (Google Pay)
          • super frequent Android bugs when switching Google play accounts (is this specific to graphene or is it Google play that is fucked? I don’t know)
          • no way to reset or cheat the profile/unique advertising ID used for apps, so they can track you even after a reinstall (this really should be implemented. Advertising a privacy phone without that is sad)
          • google play having deep integration in most apps, like wtf I get a rating popup from google play? Was expecting better privacy, they essentially know most apps I’m on at all time
          • play store seems to know all apps on my phone, even those not installed through it?

          I probably forgot a lot. And yes, many problems are not specific to graphene but to custom ROM but that was my experience with it

          Also, I must stress that it was also my first experience with Android. Always have been an iOS user. I switched back.

          So yea, while having sandboxed is good, it’s still phoning home all the time

          • Cyberwolf@feddit.org
            1·
            56 minutes ago

            Hold on, you think GrapheneOS isn’t perfectly private (and you’d be right, it isn’t, and their main focus is security anyway) but you think iPhones are better?

            Why, because Apple told you it is? Because they have some gimmicks that sound good on paper but don’t actually protect your data in any real way?

            Okay dude. Reach out to me whenever cus i got a bridge to sell you.

            Also, everything you said is incorrect, and so is your conclusion. But I don’t think we’ll ever see eye to eye on this so why bother.

            • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
              1·
              7 minutes ago

              I’ll check the video, thanks for sharing

              Hold on, you think GrapheneOS isn’t perfectly private (and you’d be right, it isn’t, and their main focus is security anyway) but you think iPhones are better?

              I think Graphene without play services is a lot better than iPhones, and with play services, it’s worse

              Why, because Apple told you it is?

              Because play services are deeply integrated into many apps, and Google is known for not E2EE anything and being an advertising company. They have an enormous interest in gathering as much data as possible for commercial purposes, while Apple likely only have a statistical interest for their business decisions

              A lot of what apple offers is wind and I’m aware of it, but having even a small thing is better than giving out your data to the monster that is Google.

              If you manage to sell me Android then congrats, because I fucking hate Apple but hate Android even more because of Google

              Do you believe a Samsung phone (or any authorized ROM with relatively good price/performance ratio) running with their provided OS for example would be better than an iPhone?