Ramblings of an old Doc
Published on April 30, 2014 By DrJBHL In Personal Computing

 

Browsers are pretty important. You run your on line life through them, finances, etc. So, using a very secure browser is a pretty important thing, as you can imagine.

“Jeremiah Grossman and I have been publicly discussing browser security and privacy, or the lack thereof, for many years. We’ve shared the issues hundreds of times at conferences, in blog posts, on Twitter, in white papers, and in the press. As the adage goes, “If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.” Browsers are no different, and the major vendors (Google, Mozilla, Microsoft) simply don’t want to make the changes necessary to offer a satisfactorily secure and private browser.

Before I go any further, it’s important to understand that it’s NOT that the browser vendors (Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft) don’t grasp or appreciate what plagues their software. They understand the issues quite well. Most of the time they actually nod their heads and even agree with us! This naturally invites the question: “why aren’t the necessary changes made to fix things and protect people?”

The answer is simple. Browser vendors (Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft) choose not to make these changes because doing so would run the risk of hurting their market share and their ability to make money. You see, offering what we believe is a reasonably secure and privacy-protecting browser requires breaking the Web, even though it’s just a little and in ways few people would notice.” – Aviator Blog

OK, so it removes ads…so does Adblock (to some extent).

Aviator has been designed for folks who like their privacy. Here’s what it does in default mode:

  • Aviator is bundled with Disconnect to remove ads and tracking
  • Aviator is always in private mode
  • Each tab is sandboxed (a sandbox provides controls to help prevent one program from making changes to others, or to your environment)
  • We strip out referring URLs across domains to protect your privacy
  • Flash and Java are click-to-play – greatly reducing the risk of drive-by downloads
  • We block access to websites behind your firewall to prevent Intranet hacking

That’s pretty good.

Aviator will run on every Windows OS from (and including) Windows 98 through W8.1, as well as Mac OSX.

You can download it here: https://www.whitehatsec.com/aviator/

One thing, though…even white listing WC in the bundled “Disconnect” won’t enable commenting in Galleries (although it will in Forums). I wouldn’t suggest running IE Tabs extension because that enables IE to render pages and might (I’m not sure) make you vulnerable to the newest security flaw in IE –I just don’t know if enabling Protected Mode is enough to guarantee your security. The folks who discovered the IE vulnerability have said that disabling Flash is enough to prevent the remote code execution malware from getting on your computer, but I don’t know enough to say, one way or another.

Source:

https://blog.whitehatsec.com/introducing-whitehat-aviator-a-safer-web-browser/


Comments (Page 3)
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on May 25, 2015

Aviator is great browser. I have mine set up to match my desktop. 

 

on May 25, 2015

JuniorCrooks

Aviator is great browser.

I liked it too but I grew concerned regarding their lack of updates and switched to Chrome proper, using the links moshi kindly provided in reply #25 here to tighten up Chrome's security:

https://forums.wincustomize.com/462278/page/1/#replies

 

If you do decide to switch to Chrome you might get their "New" Favorites/Bookmark manager arrangement, which is quite a bit different from Aviator's and the old Chrome.  If you want get the old version back, you can do it as detailed in Reply #7 here:

https://forums.wincustomize.com/463654/page/1/#3539343

 

on May 25, 2015

I've been using aviator for over a year.  Seth turned me on to it.  Its fab....

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