Spyware Watchdog
spyware.neocities.org · Personal blog · on HN since 2018
Spyware Watchdog is a site run by privacy-minded volunteers that rates browsers and apps like Brave, Firefox, and Discord as spyware.
What HN saysCommenters point to it for a hardline view of browser privacy, noting it labels even Firefox and Brave spyware and some may find it paranoid.
45HN people shared it
28linked it in comments
17stories submitted
103story points
2 years agolast shared
2018people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Brave – Spyware Watchdog (2018)8 people · 1 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 2Discord Is Spyware7 people · 40 points · first shared 2018 · 3 comments on HN
- 3Mozilla Firefox7 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 4Privacy Comparison of Web Browsers6 people · 47 points · first shared 2018 · 13 comments on HN
- 5Vivaldi – Spyware Watchdog4 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 6Online Spyware Watchdog3 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 7Index3 people · first shared 2021
- 8Firefox3 people · first shared 2019
- 9Spyware Watchdog – Online Spyware Classification Project2 people · 1 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 10Vivaldi2 people · first shared 2023
- 11Opera – Spyware Watchdog1 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 12Is Discord a Spyware?1 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · 4 comments on HN
- 13Spyware Watchdog1 people · 1 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 14Palemoon1 people · first shared 2024
- 15Brave1 people · first shared 2023
What HN people wrote when they linked it
AyyEye · 2025-02-28
Librewolf seems to be the best. https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/
efilife · 2024-08-22
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/palemoon
This article is 5 years old and I'm not sure whether it's accurate anymore, but might be worth checking to be sure we are completely private.
I also remember some drama about pale moon's author despising TOR and not wanting uBlock to work
piaste · 2023-06-02
> Looking at it now, it seems to have an identity crisis now.
Opera was sold to a Chinese company in the mid-10s and introduced suspicious stuff like a built-in free VPN. It is basically ignored nowadays.
The original CEO started Vivaldi, which is an excellent browser in terms of features - tiling tabs [0] were a favourite of mine. Unfortunately it is closed-source and chatty [1], but I still like on devices where privacy is not a concern.
[0] https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tabs/tab-tiling/
[1] https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi
hda2 · 2021-12-10
.. or firefox*
* https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/firefox.html
Off the three, brave seems the least worse one in terms of telemetry and the best in terms of respecting it's users' wishes. All are considered spyware by that site.
bejelentkezni · 2021-04-03
If you want as hardline a view on privacy in web browsing as possible, I recommend browsing through the Spyware Watchdog[1] and this article[2] from one of its main contributors. Many will find that their standards are too high for them, and may seem paranoid or such, but it is notable that both Firefox and Chrome have existing forks that even these hardliners deem clean, so for a browser to be guaranteed spyware-free is not only possible but a present reality. Brave is not private.
1: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/index.html
2: https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/browsers.html
minewastaken · 2020-01-27
https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/mozilla.html
This article, along with some other sites and my own digging made me leave Firefox for good. It's a good read if you value privacy and think Mozilla is the good guy in a field dominated by evil corporations. At first it might seem biased, but the author makes very good points and backs them up with tons of sources that can't be really argued - most of the article is reviewing privacy policies and terms of service agreements that are available publicly to check.
For now I stuck with Pale Moon, but I'm considering some other browsers like Ungoogled Chromium for my daily private and work use. Pale Moon feels kinda janky and old-school in a not good way. But it's fast and (with some minor tweaking: https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/palemoon.html) respects your privacy 100%.
neighbour · 2019-08-01
Firefox with custom user.js from [1]. In addition to this, Multi-Account Containers, HTTPS everywhere, NoScript, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger.
[1] https://spyware.neocities.org/
geowwy · 2018-12-17
Brave is a little better than Firefox in terms of trustworthiness: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/browsers.html
Neither is great though.
oweiler · 2018-08-27
Required reading regarding Discord: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord.html
TL;DR
Discord explicitly confirms in its privacy policy[1] that it collects the following information:
IP AddressDevice UUIDUser's e-mail addressAll text messagesAll imagesAll VOIP data (voice chat)Open rates for e-mail sent by Discord
boycott-israel · 2023-06-11
Fast and plenty of keyboard shortcuts - but absolutely not privacy-oriented (https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi).
It's always worrying (and intriguing) when a small upstart decides to go closed-source when essentially the entire market is open-source.
anthk · 2023-02-06
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave
Whatever.
The GitHub repo I posted has sane defaults for both Chromium based browsers (adapt the environment variable for the custom fork, you have it at /usr/bin/chrom file) and Mozilla under *Nix. If something "clean" as Mozilla has a good chunk to be tweaked, just imagine the amount of telemetry Brave has.
I lived the 90's and 00's in computing. I pretty surely know the spyware and adware terms. And Brave it's spyware, period.
btdmaster · 2023-01-05
Note that this may be funded in some other ways...
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/ksp
danuker · 2022-11-10
I would guess Tor, I2P, Freenet, GNUNet.
But also configuring or avoiding certain other software: https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/index.html
jaharios · 2022-06-03
A bit ironic when your default search engine is Google, leading users to the dragon mouth by default.
Also when most if not all telemetry from mozilla firefox is opt out.
Including stuff like phoning home by default when you search, bookmarking something, delete anything from your history[1] and having a unique download token to track each install.[2]
[1] https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/firefox.html
[2] https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-a-unique-i…
EddieDante · 2022-05-24
Discord is spyware. https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord.html
p1peridine · 2022-04-24
Yes and to be able to use discord with a VPN or Tor it requires a phone number. Unacceptable. Privacy disaster.
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord.html
https://stallman.org/discord.html
bigbugbag · 2022-03-18
kome · 2021-12-10
no, false, brave remains problematic, Firefox is the only one with more more privacy potential. With Firefox the user has much more freedom to modify important settings, while Brave remains spyware.
https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/firefox.html
GhettoComputers · 2021-11-02
brnt · 2021-09-10
Last I read [1] Vivaldi was one of the chattier browsers out there [2], generating a unique ID for you, and building from source also was not actually possible. Wonder if this has changed, and how Manjaro handles the building. Much of Vivaldi's components are closed source (the mail client for instance).
[1] https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi.html
[2] https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/
upofadown · 2021-06-18
You can see them listed at the bottom of this page:
* https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/brave.html
... which doesn't really add anything to the original assertion as we don't know what the extensions might do. The statement is all all there is.
approxim8ion · 2021-06-09
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/vivaldi.html
Seems like your bar is low, but not that low.
scoutt · 2020-10-23
> Digital spying and Denying something you know is true
This is very interesting, and the linked page too[1]. As a long-time Firefox user I find this kind of shocking. I trusted no traffic (or no such traffic) was generated from Firefox. I need now to open a session with Wireshark and check it for myself.
I wonder how the TOR browser handles all these requests.
[1] https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/firefox.html
m712 · 2019-11-27
This website has a very thorough Firefox de-bloat and anti-tracking guide: https://spyware.neocities.org/guides/firefox.html
I find that some of those options are excessive, but it's good for the privacy-minded in general. Just change the options based on your threat model.
tahnmozbus · 2018-12-04
I feel a strong need to point out the bad faith Mozilla seem to have for Firefox users and their privacy, eg Pocket, Mr Robot, DRM & binary blobs, dark pattern configs, etc.
As much as I loved the browser in the past, nobody should consider running it today, without being informed of the implications. The ffprofile.com site is something I have been waiting for, but stuff like this should not be necessary and IMO Mozilla Corp. has won. Nobody celebrates a new version of FF anymore.
Also useful resources:
https://github.com/amq/firefox-debloat
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic…
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/firefox.html
https://browserleaks.com/
https://www.howsmyssl.com/
opan · 2018-08-30
Icecat has less tracking.
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/icecat.html
nmbr213 · 2018-07-19
> Mozilla Firefox
The browser that's has Google Analytics integrated, comes with pre-installed third-party tracking app, and that reports home every UI interaction you have? No, thanks, I'll stick with Iridium.
[1] https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/firefox.html