Pale Moon forum

Firstly, Pale Moon is the 'finest kind' in the world of 'browsers'.

When Win 7 finally stops receiving security updates, I plan to move over to linux. After stumbling across this unix sheikh list, https://www.unixsheikh.com/articles/cho ... l#palemoon I have a question.

Is it correct that PM, " connects to Google every time it is started up just like Chromium" ? He doesn't explain how or why. Would that be the case if the home page is https://palemoon.start.me/uk with links to Gmail etc. ?

this may belong in the off topic area I wasn't sure.

If you really like to find out, I recommend running a sniffer like Wireshark to see all the traffic on your system. Run it in a live system and make sure only PM is running.
You can also use F12 --> Network to see the network connects that PM does when loading a webpage.
start.me seems to implement Google Analytics and therefore a connection is made to Google.
If you don't like it, just remove the start.me start page.

EDIT:
Please tell the author of the website about that. I don't call that phoning home. It is opening a webpage and the browser does what the code on that page says.

Perhaps they'll get the browser's name right, too. Hopefully.

I would recommend changing the browser's home page if the Google connection is a concern. The issue is that most websites, including the default home page, implement some kind of Google Analytics. There is no hard-coded connection to Google, though.

On Windows, you would click on the big blue button and go to Preferences->Preferences and then replace the URL for "Home Page." On Linux and other operating systems, I believe the menu bar is still shown by default, so you would go to Tools->Preferences and replace the URL for "Home Page."

athenian200 wrote: ↑

2022-05-16, 19:18

On Linux and other operating systems, I believe the menu bar is still shown by default, so you would go to Tools->Preferences and replace the URL for "Home Page."

True, there is no blue Pale Moon button on Linux. IIRC there is/was an addon that made this button available on Linux.

As people have pointed out, any Google connection made would be due to the default home page, not the browser itself.
Start.me uses advertising to pay for the provided service (servers and staff cost money) and if you are not happy with that fact, then the solution is to not use the default home page, but any of the other options. The partnership with start.me has flowed from user requests as people wanted a configurable page and not something static like I had before. They provide the service to our users, and we provide them with more potential customers in turn.

There is a discussion about the validity of some of the claims in that unixsheikh article on this thread:

https://github.com/Lissy93/personal-security-checklist/issues/144

There was a similar idiot who claimed that the TCP/IP protocol itself was problematic because it is used to make network connections that could compromise privacy.

moonbat wrote: ↑

2022-05-17, 06:28

There was a similar idiot who claimed that the TCP/IP protocol itself was problematic because it is used to make network connections that could compromise privacy.

By that note, any Internet connection would be problematic

*Modifies line 256 of palemoon/app/profile/palemoon.js to make the default of browser.startup.page equal to 0*

Is my browser the most secure in the world, now?

RealityRipple wrote: ↑

2022-05-18, 03:31

*Modifies line 256 of palemoon/app/profile/palemoon.js to make the default of browser.startup.page equal to 0*

Is my browser the most secure in the world, now?

They're going to complain about automatic updates next, because that's phoning home.

vannilla wrote: ↑

2022-05-18, 07:13

RealityRipple wrote: ↑

2022-05-18, 03:31

*Modifies line 256 of palemoon/app/profile/palemoon.js to make the default of browser.startup.page equal to 0*

Is my browser the most secure in the world, now?

They're going to complain about automatic updates next, because that's phoning home.

Homebrew compiles don't have that feature already. And adding extensions or themes is obviously too dangerous.

RealityRipple wrote: ↑

2022-05-18, 10:56

Homebrew compiles don't have that feature already. And adding extensions or themes is obviously too dangerous.

They should build without extension support then.
Oh and while at it, remove blocklists, and dynamic user-agent updates, and captive portal checking, too. Did I miss something? I probably did. Oh right. No sync/weave either, because it's "evil" by storing third-party-unrecoverable encrypted blobs of data.

Well it seems some folk maybe don't understand what a "Home Page" is, or can be; Any website can be a Home Page, ie Google (not in my world), YT, the Washington Post, your Grandmas recipe posted at twatter. Any website, and if not mistaken, even a website you personally created residing on your PC, my HP is whatever search engine I am currently favoring...My 91 yo father had a problem understanding this concept, he thought it was something else... I can't remember what he thought, it was so looney.

Let's make it simple: Put any URL you want in the highlighted field to be used as the home page.

Or, if you want the internal page with search bar to be used instead of an external URL, then empty that field.

Or if you don't want it to do anything, select "use a blank page" from the drop-down above it.

Moonchild wrote: ↑

2022-05-18, 14:18

RealityRipple wrote: ↑

2022-05-18, 10:56

Homebrew compiles don't have that feature already. And adding extensions or themes is obviously too dangerous.

They should build without extension support then.
Oh and while at it, remove blocklists, and dynamic user-agent updates, and captive portal checking, too. Did I miss something? I probably did. Oh right. No sync/weave either, because it's "evil" by storing third-party-unrecoverable encrypted blobs of data.

And for that matter, accessing websites is the leading cause of security risks from websites, so let's force it to always run in offline mode and not access anything online ever. If people want to view websites, they should write them out by hand on their own computers using notepad, the way Tim Berners-Lee intended.