Qwant VIPrivacy: protected browsing, enhanced privacy

In a world wide web where we are permanently tracked, the solution is Qwant VIPrivacy
3 features that protect you during your browsing, in 1 single product

Qwant.com | Twitter | Telegram

• Installation
  • Chrome and Chromium-based browsers
  • Firefox
  • Microsoft Edge
• Reporting issues
• Development
  • Requirements
  • How to build
  • Linter
  • Localizations
• Minimum supported browser versions
• Fork
• Privacy
• Protection Level
• License

Installation

Chrome and Chromium-based browsers

You can get the latest available Qwant VIPrivacy Extension version from the Chrome Web Store.

Firefox

You can get the latest version of Qwant VIPrivacy Extension from the Mozilla Add-ons website.

Microsoft Edge

The latest stable version of Qwant VIPrivacy browser extension is available in Microsoft Store.

Reporting issues

GitHub can be used to report a bug or to submit a feature request. To do so, go to this page and click the New issue button.

Note: For filter-related issues (missed ads, false positives, broken pages etc.) open an issue in the dedicated repository.

Development

Requirements

• Node.js LTS
• Yarn v1.22

Install local dependencies by running:

yarn install

How to build

Building the dev version

Run the following command:

yarn dev

or

yarn dev:watch

This will create a build directory with unpacked extensions for all browsers:

  build/dev/edge
  build/dev/chrome
  build/dev/firefox-amo
  build/dev/firefox-standalone

Dev with Firefox

• Start by running yarn dev:watch:ff in a separate terminal.
• In another terminal, execute yarn start:firefox.

Building the beta and release versions

Before building the release version, you should manually download necessary resources: filters and public suffix list.

yarn resources

You will need to put mozilla_credentials.json file in the ./private directory. This build will create unpacked extensions and then pack them (xpi for Firefox).

How to run tests

yarn test

Linter

Setup eslint in your editor to follow up with .eslintrc. Linting runs on every commit.

Or you can validate linting rules manually:

yarn lint

Localizations

To validate translations run:

yarn locales:validate

To show locales info run:

yarn locales:info

Minimum supported browser versions

History of the codebase

Qwant VIPrivacy is based on the excellent Adguard Browser Extension. We chose to fork Adguard because it provides a solid basis for blocking trackers. We felt that it is a good starting point. It allows us to focus on providing a clean user-interface and curated defaults.

Thank you to Adguard for providing a fantastic foundation for this project.

Privacy

Qwant VIPrivacy uses APM (Application Performance Monitoring) to report bugs, catch errors and perform basic stats. Qwant VIPrivacy does not collect any PII (Personally Identifiable Information).

TL;DR This is the dashboard we use to observe general, anonymous trends and help keep an eye on the health of the extension.

APM is optional and can be completely turned off during the onboarding or at any time. Enabling APM allows Qwant to resolve technical issues and bugs faster and provide a better user experience.

The basic information that goes through APM:

• Browser Type (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, etc...)
• Extension version (v1, v2, etc...)
• Basic stats (Do people prefer the "standard" or "strict" level of protection, etc..)
• Technical error reports (Did we make a mistake and how can we fix it)

Protection level

Qwant VIPrivacy relies on a number of well-known and community-trusted lists.

These lists include rules used to detect and block trackers. Changing protection-levels essentially changes which lists are used.

We hand-picked the lists in Standard Mode to offer the best tracking protection with the least impact on the browsing experience. On the other hand, Strict Mode offers a more advanced tracking protection, however some pages may not display properly (social-media login, certain cookie banners, etc).

Qwant Browser Android

Qwant VIPrivacy is available on Qwant Android application.

Since QwantBrowserAndroid is based on the Firefox browser, we maintain a dedicated production-android branch for it.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0