IceCat is the GNU version of the Firefox browser. Its main advantage is an ethical one: it is entirely free software. While the Firefox source code from the Mozilla project is free software, they distribute and recommend non-free software as plug-ins and addons. Also their trademark license restricts distribution in several ways incompatible with freedom 0.
Privacy-Protection Features
- LibreJS: GNU LibreJS aims to address the JavaScript problem described in Richard Stallman's article The JavaScript Trap
- HTTPS-Everywhere: Extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure
- SpyBlock: Blocks privacy trackers while in normal browsing mode, and all third party requests when in private browsing mode. Based on Adblock Plus
- AboutIceCat: Adds a custom "about:icecat" homepage with links to information about the free software and privacy features in IceCat, and checkboxes to enable and disable the ones more prone to break websites
- Fingerprinting Countermeasures: Fingerprinting is a series of techniques allowing to uniquely identify a browser based on specific characterisics of that particular instance (like what fonts are available in that machine). Unlike cookies the user cannot opt-out of being tracked this way, so the browser has to avoid giving away that kind of hints
- Open-source internet browser based on Mozilla's Firefox, that comes with already installed (three) extensions to protect your privacy
- Link to DL a LangPack add-on other than English for IceCat
- Unstable release of IceCat
- And the link to the LangPack add-ons (other than English) for the unstable release of IceCat
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