# Sphere Browser

Sphere Browser is a privacy-focused web Browser made by Tenebris.

## Spyware Level: Possible Spyware

This program was tested with MITMproxy on Linux. Sphere Browser itself does not contain any telemetry and really has removed all of the spyware from the chromium codebase that it is based on. However, it has two red flags- the default homepage has analytics, and you have to run analytics on your browser to download it. The software is fine. Just the settings and the way you have to download it and the lack of source code hold it back from the title of "Not Spyware". You can easily configure it to not connect to the default homepage, at least.

### Tracking pixel on the default homepage

Sphere Browser is based around an "identities" feature that lets you change how your browser appears to the rest of the internet in a rather easy way- and then it by default loads the site `f.vision` which can identify your new identity in a pretty centralized way, and even includes a tracking pixel from the getclicky analytics service. If you want to use this browser, you really should not be using this default homepage. It contrasts with the privacy features of the browser rather poorly.

### JavaScript from an Analytics company on the download site

Another problem is, you need to load JavaScript to download the browser itself at sphere.tenebris.cc/, which tries to load JS code from Tenebris as well as JavaScript from the same analytics company that has the tracking pixel on `f.vision`. Why are these analytics here if the browser is so focused on privacy?

This article was last edited on 12/12/2018

If you want to edit this article, or contribute your own article(s), contact us on XMPP over in spyware@conference.nuegia.net, or visit us at the git repo on Codeberg. All contributions must be licensed under the CC0 license to be accepted.

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