For Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux
It is not possible to completely remove telemetry from firefox by changing preferences, because telemetry is built-in or hardcoded in the binary installer and executables provided by Mozilla. The ONLY way around is recompiling the source code after removing or altering some parts. This is the main reason why Icecat exists.
GNUzilla is the GNU version of the Mozilla suite, and GNU 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 nonfree software as plug-ins and addons.*
We’ve seen that with massive data sets collected through online surveillance, governments and corporations can use their knowledge about us to manipulate public opinion. Highly targeted campaigns using this data, especially those using fake news or hate speech, have driven nations towards decisions that affect global society. The campaign for the Brexit referendum in the UK, Trump's election campaign in the U.S., and Bolsonaro’s election campaigns in Brazil all explicitly used these tactics.**
These are unofficial builds of GNU Icecat. While I made people at GNU well aware of this site and they are OK with it, at same time they cannot endorse it because they cannot verify the source.
*https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
**https://blog.torproject.org/tor-in-2023/
Icecat respects the Users
No spyware
The source code of Gnu Icecat is always available to everyone.
No Phone-home
Icecat does not Phone-Home nor contact third parties services.
No Mass-surveillance
It's best for everyone. We fight mass surveillance from companies and governments.
Bundled Extensions
Icecat comes with some preinstalled extensions, in order to protect your privacy and reduce bigdata access to your habits, loving preferences, political views, religion etc.
Here are some examples of Bundled Extensions
Search Engines
Icecat comes with Duckduckgo.com html version as default search engine. However I invite
you to
look for and configure SearX or LibreX, now LibreY.
Icecat does NOT replace Tor Browser
Icecat is not a replacement for TorBrowser. If you need to be completely anonymous, then TorBrowser is your best option. Never use a regular browser over Tor/Onion Network as it may very well make things worse. There are though some cases where you configure Icecat with an external tor box like: Here
News:
21 nov 2023 18:45:16 CET: Version 115.5.0 is is out available for download
23 nov 2023 08:03:00 CET: The Apple Silicon version is not working properly and needs a new buid (thanks Minos for testing it), sorry about that. I'll update this very page as soon as I manage to build and test it again.
23 nov 2023 10:24:00 CET: after installing GNU IceCat in trisquel 11 I get an error when executed that GLIBC_2.36 not found. That is because Trisquel 11 (like latest ubuntu LTS 22.04) ships with libc2.35. Thanks Nikos for letting me know. I will look into this asap.
28 nov 2023 17:45:00 CET: The problem with libc on Trisquel should be solved now, in the download page an archive for Trisquel can be found. It is not packaged yet as i only tested it on a vm and I will package it as soon as i have some feedback. Thanks, sorry for the delay...
30 nov 2023 08:31:00 CET: Version 115.5.0 is on winget.
19 dec 2023 10∶32∶36 CET: Version 115.6.0 is out.
05 jan 2024 10:00:00 CET: Version 115.6.0 is on winget.
16 jan 2024 10:00:00 CET: The release for Mac with an ARM CPU (a.k.a. Apple Silicon) is giving some troubles because I'm building it on an Intel macbook pro leftover from a previous job and everytime I build a new release, in order to test it, I need to drive to mediamarkt or an apple store. It would be great having someone testing these build(s) (they are in the Download page). So if you have an ARM M1/2/3/n Mac and some time to spare, try the builds in the Download page and let me know if/or which one works. Thanks!
23 jan 2024 23:03:09 CET: Version 115.7.0 is out.
25 jan 2024 08:28:00 CET: Version 115.7.0 is on Winget
31 jan 2024 18:43:47 CET: New and simplified website
8 feb 2024 11:56:00 CET: Fail2ban for http scanners (404, 403, 400 etc), needs full ip in the logs. So I moved from anonymized (x.x.0.0) to combined format. The anonymization will happen later on when logs are parsed by Goaccess or Matomo, sorry about that. I'll try to preserve everyone privacy as long as it does not impact on security.
20 feb 2024 20:00:00 CET: Version 115.8.0 is out
28 feb 2024 09:43:32 CET: Microsoft and another user (thanks) told me this windows installer is not working. Turned out it was corrupted during transfer. The correct file has been uploaded and a new shasum generated. Sorry Windows Users, this is now fixed.
19 mar 2024 18:51:46 CET: Version 115.9.0 is out
23 mar 2024 18:31:36 CET: Security update 115.9.1 is out. Mac version is late. Apologies.
20 apr 2024 10:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.10.0 is out, Windows and Mac version are a bit late, apologies.
14 may 2024 15:17:00 CET: Icecat 115.11.0 is out, Mac version is a bit late.
15 may 2024 08:17:00 CET: Icecat 115.11.0 for Intel Mac is now available.
16 sep 2024 12:26:00 CET: Icecat 115.15.0 is now available.
30 sep 2024 12:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.16.0 is now available.
11 oct 2024 12:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.16.1 is now available.
02 nov 2024 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.17.0 is now available, windos and mac will follow soon.
27 nov 2024 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.18.0 is now available.
11 jan 2025 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.19.0 is now available.
07 feb 2025 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.20.0 is now available.
05 mar 2025 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.21.0 is now available.
31 mar 2025 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.21.1 is now available.
1 apr 2025 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.22.0 is now available.
29 apr 2025 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.23.0 is now available.
20 may 2025 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.23.1 is now available.
28 may 2025 07:00:00 CET: Icecat 115.24.1 is now available.