User Questions Answered

We get a lot of questions from users and here we answer some of them that might be relevant for a broader audience. We really appreciate the interest in privacy of our users and are always open for suggestions and feedback.

It is too long to wait six months for a new version to have an update for the lists and I already have a VPN provider. Can you do an option to only buy the list updates? Also do you limit bandwidth for non-premium users?
We give updates more frequently than every six months. This year we had some technical difficulties to deal with, so we had an exceptional longer time span between updates. From what we hear from our customer base there is too less of a need for the list updates only. We don’t limit bandwidth neither for premium nor for non-premium users.

Can I open a link in a new tab?
Apple doesn‘t allow to change the menu that pops up and to add this feature. Technically it is easy to do and several other browsers have done it, but this is against Apple‘s policies. With 3D Touch devices, you can Force Tap and drag upwards to open links in a new tab.

I noticed that the user agent switches randomly but not for every site. How does the choice of user agent work?
The user agent is set for every new tab and is chosen randomly from the user agents selected in the settings. The user agent is then set for that tab until the tab is closed. An open tab keeps the same user agent for its entire open time.

When having all fingerprinting protections turned on, some sites do not work in SnowHaze but do so in other browsers with all protections turned on. Why?
The fingerprinting protection in SnowHaze and in other browsers is a collection of many different technologies to protect from fingerprinting. Currently, SnowHaze has compiled the most fingerprinting protections in its free private browser and this wide range is not available in other browsers. This lead to different website behavior when this option is active. Should your favorite site not load properly, send us an email and we can guide you to set it up properly.

The site list is huge. It is misleading on the actual size of the app. Can you add the lists to the App Store version of the app?
We chose to provide the app with a reduced list in the App Store and to load the site lists separately. The advantage is that the size for the App Store version is reduced under 100MB. Apple blocks downloading apps larger than 100MB when using mobile data. Many users wouldn’t be able to download SnowHaze while on the road. The list update happens only when connected to WiFi as default.

I read that some data is not always permanently erased or gets uploaded to iCloud. How does SnowHaze store/delete data?
Temporary data is never stored on the disk but remains in the RAM and is discarded upon ending a session or restarting the app. Other data is saved in a database. This data exists only locally and is not uploaded anywhere. No data from SnowHaze is stored in your iCloud or our severs.

When a warning pops up there is the choice to tap “Cancel” or “Continue”. If tapping “Cancel”, why does the site still load?
When tapping “Cancel”, loading of the blocked content is stopped, but the rest of the page is loaded. When chosing “Continue”, you accept to load the entire site. It’s up to you to decide if you want to load the content or not.

The warnings are annoying, please find a different way to handle these.
We noticed that sometime there are just too many warnings. We improved the handling of the warnings for our next update. Also, since SnowHaze is here to make online privacy easier and more accessible, we will turn off some notifications by default. You can manually turn on/off the warnings like you want them to be such that they won’t be affected with an update. If you never touched the warnings settings, the new defaults will be applied.

We would like to thank all the privacy-devoted users and encourage everybody to help us find flaws and improve SnowHaze. Do not hesitate to contact us for questions, feedback or bug reports. You can contact us through our webform, by email or use our Wire support. Download Wire on all your devices and connect with us @snowhaze!