SWIron = Scamware?

SRWare Iron Browser – A Real Private Alternative To Chrome?

https://insanitybit.wordpress.com/2...wser-a-real-private-alternative-to-chrome-21/

 

That would be my article, just FYI. Nothing I haven't stated here as far as I know.

 

I'll take Iron or Dragon over Chrome any day

 

Ah, I found it on Malwaretips and shared the post that was made there.

 

Iron is a good browser. It is fast, has a smaller footprint than its big sister and uses less memory.

The article is old, from 2009. If its author wants to argue that 'disclosure and integrity' are good things while at the same time claiming that SRWare/Iron is/are 'pulling things out of his ~ Snipped as per TOS ~', 'a scam', 'using you', 'snake oil' and 'dangerous' - well, that discredits the author but not necessarily the subject of his critique.

Iron's concept made sense when it first came out. Whether and to what extent these arguments are still valid today would be an interesting subject for further discussion. I look forward to reading the developer's response in this thread.

 

I haven't studied the features commented on to assess the potential consequences for myself, but reading over the list they all appear to me to be reasonable things to remove from a privacy build. In a privacy build there should be no reporting that an installation occurred, no reporting about how the user acquired the browser, no metrics, no remotely provided auto-complete, no malicious URL lookups, no remotely provided error pages, no update checking, no non-local preset home page content, etc. A core objective is to eliminate non-essential to browser operation communications and information passing of any kind. Although some developers of privacy enhanced browsers would choose to disable all such features by default and allow users to selectively enable what they want, it is perfectly reasonable to simply remove them entirely in order to reduce the possibility that a bug could cause something undesired to occur and to provide the user with surety.

In addition to considering that chat from 2008 (http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/chromium-dev-2008-09-17), perhaps it is also reasonable to consider what has transpired since then? Judging from a very quick glance at the SRWare forum it appears that there have been ongoing releases, responses to questions, etc. Is the same person involved? If so, have they matured and become more professional? Have they done a good job maintaining the product? Is it stable and working well? Have any privacy problems come up? Those sorts of things. Answers to which I don't know, but perhaps there is someone here who has been following the project(?).

 

Nothing's changed.

How? That's like saying if I insult a hacker then they're actually doing a good thing.

Take the information in the article as you will. Everything on the "Iron v Chrome" page is what the author of Iron cites as being different. I go through every single one and explain either that the 'issue' isn't an issue at all, the 'issue' can be disabled in vanilla chromium/chrome, or both.

The insults are just for fun since I don't like people who use fear to push their products, especially when those products provide only a false sense of security/ privacy.

There's no need to study them, you can read that all of them can be disabled in the blog post or elsewhere. If you do consider them to be a privacy issue (none of them really are) it's a matter of a checkbox in nearly all cases. I did leave some sources at the bottom that go over each feature in detail.

Comodo is a much better project in that it has historically had features before Chromium and it isn't complete snake oil. They actually do provide something different from Chrome/Chromium.

This information has all been presented before and some people still don't see it so I don't expect that to change. Checking referrer information I've actually found this particular article linked often and there's been a surprising amount of people who have a positive response ie: no longer trust Iron.

 

Which is why I don't take your musings seriously. I don't know where your anger comes from but you have a rather peculiar way of expressing it

 

I never by into the hype of the fastest and the most private and secure browser.when it sounds to good to be true it usually is.

I use Dragon and IE9 on windows and tried chrome on OS X and went back to safari as it is faster at rendering web pages.

 

The anger comes from someone releasing a product that does nothing but spread unjustified fear while leaving users far behind on patches and a false sense of privacy.

I doubt I'm the only person who shares the sentiment.

 

*

The SRWare forum looks like a tightly controlled venue with few actual posters relative to page views. So let's have that discussion here instead: What is the rationale for the Iron concept today? Wouldn't it be better to move away from this one-man show and open up the project - or start a new one - such as to enable transparency and more frequent updates?

 

ot posts removed

 

My thoughts exactly,those are the only two chromium browsers that i use.

 

i am not against patches being applied automatically,the only bone of contention i have with google is its not giving users a say in it !
Its the same as enabling auto-update on windows,it gives us the option to disable it if we want albeit at your own risk which is fine as users understand the risk.
All we want is the option > option to install the program in a location that i want, option to enable disable google service in the installer.
The point is about options and choice.

 

Iron, Dragon and Chrome don't leave the user with an awful lot of choice. As Firefox developer Patrick Dempsey put it:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2522447

 

Although I'm back to using Firefox as my default browser after using nothing but Chrome for the last year. My biggest beef with Iron has always been the fact that is very slow to update compared to Chrome and Chromium.

When Chrome releases a new version which contains security fixes. I have seem Iron take weeks and even a month or 2 to add these security fixes to their browser. When I was using nothing but Chrome I used to monitor Iron for new versions every time Chrome release one because I was considering switching to Iron. I would rather put up with some privacy issues than use a browser that's slow as molasses to fix security issues. And chrome's privacy issues can be fix by changing some of it's setting and adding some extensions.

 

Which is fine. But none of that has to do with privacy.

 

Well Think of the computer as your house, you invite a guest into your house,now would it not be violation of privacy if the guest decides to go to upstairs bedroom instead of the hall where he should be ?

 

Interesting. I know that there's no built-in option in Google Chrome to let the user choose whether or not to automatically apply patches, but doesn't Google Chrome have a built-in plugin related to automatic updates? What happens if you disable it? Otherwise, what happens if you disable Google's Update service in services.msc? Does the browser still work if you disable those?

And, what makes you think you cannot install it anywhere? There are two installers; one install to the user profile and the other to Program Files.

Most users want something simple to use/install. They don't want anything complicated. So, Google gives simplicity.

Other than that, you can extract the contents of the installer and place it whereever you want, and by doing that, you also get rid of the automatic updates and of the service.

Otherwise, why not also have an option in the installer to enable/disable Safebrowsing and every other possible setting? It would be insane, because it would only freak out many users who wouldn't know what to do with those settings.

 

I would be delighted

Back to Iron: Does it have a future? Shouldn't there at least be something like it as an alternative to Chrome?

 

I agree that google does make it simpler for the average non tech savy users, but users who want full control over every aspect of the PC,it would be a hassle.

 

This argument is NULL

+1 for IRON and Comodo Dragon

 

Does there really need to be? Iron is supposed to a privacy conscious browser but given the lack of actual privacy related changes made to the Chromium source code, it seems apparent to me that there really isn't a need.

Seems Srware puts more effort into adding links into the Iron browser that point to their advertisement riddled web sites than they do with actual improvements.

The Iron-start.com homepage
The included bookmarks linking to their web sites
The removal of the link to the official Chrome extensions site and replacing it with their own faux extensions page

 

@Warlockz

Did you actually read the information?

Didn't realize they added these links. I might make a note of this in the blog post. Thanks.

 

Your saying this info in the screenshot from the SRware Iron website means absolutely nothing? and does Chrome really need all those updates it receives? that Iron or Dragon lacks? did you check this? Non Critical VS Critical Updates?

The point of Iron Browser is supposed to be NOT to Connect to any Google Servers unless you specifically ask it to. your saying its just a sham? It is Chrome without Google, whats not to like about it, some settings ill never use?

It does what it says Period. If you dont like what it does why not just move on to something more comparable to your likings, like Google Chrome which is constantly connecting to Google Servers!
Irons Default search engine is set to https://duckduckgo.com, whats the point in having to disable omnibox in Google Chrome, I'm Glad Iron already disabled it for me.

And so what if they use Google Adsence on their homepage or website? somebody has to get payed somehow to pay the bills, and their using Google to get payed, how do you think their are so many free softwares and websites, do they just pay for it out of their own pockets, your gateway to free stuff?