Isn't brave supposed to be "private"?
from TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz to privacy@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 12:32
https://sopuli.xyz/post/34181023

Saw this in my adguard home query logs.

blocklist

#privacy

threaded - newest

that_leaflet@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 12:42 next collapse

This comment should be deleted soon

BaroqueInMind@piefed.social on 24 Sep 13:38 collapse

I’m a grown adult and can check for updates my own damn self. This phone-home telemetry in the guise of updating bullshit needs to stop

Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk on 24 Sep 13:49 next collapse

Then use an actual private browser and not some techbro cryptobrowser.

BaroqueInMind@piefed.social on 24 Sep 18:49 collapse

Name them.

Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk on 24 Sep 19:40 collapse

They have already been named in other comments. you’re a grownup, you could probably read them yourself.

BaroqueInMind@piefed.social on 24 Sep 22:05 collapse

Only one other was named and its not sufficient because its not truly private. Please name them

[deleted] on 24 Sep 15:58 collapse

.

dajoho@sh.itjust.works on 25 Sep 07:28 collapse

Wait a minute. How did they collect those statistics?

[deleted] on 25 Sep 10:23 collapse

.

Solumbran@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 12:45 next collapse

Not so much no

Roidecoeur@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 14:13 collapse

Can you suggest a better alternative browser for android?

luxliminal@piefed.social on 24 Sep 14:19 next collapse

IronFox

Mikina@programming.dev on 24 Sep 15:16 collapse

How does IronFox compare to LibreWolf?

Am dumb, missed the “for android” part.

splendid9583@kbin.earth on 24 Sep 14:32 next collapse

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/mobile-browsers/

chisel@piefed.social on 24 Sep 15:05 collapse

The first browser on this list is Brave lmao

splendid9583@kbin.earth on 24 Sep 17:15 collapse

There is at least one more 🙂

kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 24 Sep 14:33 collapse

I use IronFox too, but I’d say depending on your goal even Fennec+uBlockOrigin is a pretty good setup.

If you want to go chromiun-based then Cromite (similar in scope to IronFox).

Kiuyn@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 18:00 collapse

Fennec and Cromite is always outdated compared to their upstream. If you care about security it is quite problematic. I recommend just install UBlock on Firefox then use Arkenfox, or Betterfox on it. It is a bit more complex to do on android, but it is possible. If anyone is interested here is a tutorial

SwooshBakery624@programming.dev on 24 Sep 12:51 next collapse

Why I recommend against Brave - Luca Bramè.

This article is a pretty good breakdown of why you shouldn’t use Brave.

simpolomeo@piefed.blahaj.zone on 24 Sep 12:55 next collapse

the crypto browser? it’s not private and never was

Scavenger8294@feddit.org on 25 Sep 13:26 collapse

better than stock chrome or edge. Not better than Mullvad Browser.

0xtero@beehaw.org on 24 Sep 13:35 next collapse

Brave (the company) has a long history of doing dodgy stuff. They are just trying to do what Google did (directing clicks to their own shit), but they’re using privacy as their marketing spiel.

url@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 14:19 next collapse

Librefox then? Or what are you guys using?

kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 24 Sep 14:35 next collapse

IronFox, or WebLibre which is pretty new but promising in my opinion

Samsy@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 18:18 collapse

TIL, weblibre exists. Thx stranger.

For the lazy ones. github.com/FaFre/WebLibre

418_im_a_teapot@sh.itjust.works on 25 Sep 05:30 collapse

Vivaldi. The tab management is unparalleled, and the chrome extensions I depend on still work. I’ve been using it for many years now and have no regrets. I also use NextDNS and see no signs of it doing anything unexpected.

sun@slrpnk.net on 24 Sep 15:14 next collapse

You can disable it in settings.

Blackfeathr@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 15:16 next collapse

That’s the lie they try to sell you.

I swear Brave ran a very successful guerrilla marketing campaign and it succeeded on Reddit. If you so much as question it or suggest an alternative, you get dogpiled on by Brave bros. I don’t trust it one bit. I’ll stick to FF and its forks.

Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml on 24 Sep 15:55 next collapse

Apparently Brave’s got some cryptocurrency components, so I guess that’s where the cult-like following is.

barnaclebutt@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 16:51 next collapse

Yeah, haven’t they done a ton of shady shit? I always cringe when people recommend the Brave browser. It’s like recommending a free VPN.

grue@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 17:02 collapse

Brave is a protection racket wrapped in a cryptocurrency scam, created by a bigoted fuckwit. It is fractally shit.

Rose@lemmy.zip on 25 Sep 09:10 next collapse

PrivacyGuides being among those bros.

hietsu@sopuli.xyz on 25 Sep 09:28 collapse

Exactly. Same with Opera GX whatever, which is just a weird chinese spying chrome, with nothing to do with Opera from the good old days when it was still Norwegian (Vivaldi is made by those guys still).

Melody@lemmy.one on 24 Sep 16:03 next collapse

No.

It sold out on it’s privacy promise years ago. Brave Browser CANNOT be trusted if you are someone who must ensure Privacy Preserving featurs must remain on at all times.

I recommend the Tor Browser. DO NOT USE THE TOR BROWSING CAPABILITIES OF BRAVE! YOU WILL BE DEANONYMIZED! Likely anything you’d be using Tor for, you don’t want your browser slipping up and leaking anything.

Personally I use a blend of hand-hardened Firefox (Via plugins), Librewolf and Ungoogled Chromium (for very rare cases where the site is actually trusted and requires Chrome to function predictably)

goatmeal@midwest.social on 24 Sep 16:58 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://midwest.social/pictrs/image/dc0d98c4-f687-4864-ad19-7240163d80f5.jpeg"> Idk what the first two are, but you should be able to disable the usage ping at the bottom of privacy settings

irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 24 Sep 17:41 next collapse

No. At least not in the way most people expect.

It does block some tracking and ads that Chrome alone allows or explicitly adds. But it simply shifts that tracking to Brave. The idea was that you’d still get the benefits of that tracking by giving all of your data to Brave instead. I honestly never was convinced by this considering your data is still being sold, just by a different company so it doesn’t sound much better to me. Supposedly, according to them, Brave is more trustworthy and gives you more control over what they track and sell, but I don’t trust that business model. There’s no real incentive for them to do what they said they would.

BakerBagel@midwest.social on 24 Sep 17:54 collapse

Isn’t Brave just a crypto scam? I have no clue why people trust it so much

BCBoy911@lemmy.ca on 24 Sep 19:33 collapse

It gets pushed often by reactionaries as an “anti-woke” browser LOL its a complete piece of shit. It’s got crypto, tracking, NFTs, AI and ads baked in. Literally everything I hate about the tech industry rolled up into one package. I’d rather use Chrome, even.

irmadlad@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 02:49 collapse

anti-woke

I find it quite interesting those who protest being woke. The word ‘woke’ has a long standing meaning to the Black community. The usual suspects using the word ‘anti-woke’ are almost always American Republicans, and their track record of racial animosity has preceded itself for generations like the stench of a rotting corpse. Given the choice between being woke or asleep, I’ll take woke any day.

artyom@piefed.social on 24 Sep 17:54 next collapse

You can disable this in the settings. Nobara ships with Brave now but with all of the telemetry and crypto BS turned off out of the box.

dajoho@sh.itjust.works on 24 Sep 19:48 collapse

It’s a shame this is necessary, to be honest. It’s the same argument with Windows users: “you can just run a debloater and fiddle with the registry to disable tracking”. It shouldn’t be needed in the first place.

funkycarrot@discuss.tchncs.de on 24 Sep 20:27 next collapse

Yeah, Zorin did this recently too. They made some good arguments on why Mozilla’s trustworthiness has nosedived these past few years, but awkwardly centered on a ToS change that didn’t really amount to much.

They didn’t make a case for why Brave is more trustworthy, though… (and I’m not sure one can)

artyom@piefed.social on 25 Sep 05:07 collapse

I don’t think you can say the same as MS plays shitty cat and mouse games and is constantly patching the workarounds. And the changes required are much more involved than just toggling a switch. And Brave won’t randomly toggle it back on after an update or just blatantly ignore it altogether.

BCBoy911@lemmy.ca on 24 Sep 19:31 next collapse

Just use Firefox for gods sakes, Brave is a complete joke of a browser especially when it comes to privacy.

donalonzo@lemmy.world on 24 Sep 20:28 next collapse

Firefox is great. Librewolf if you’re extra keen on privacy.

mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 24 Sep 20:54 next collapse

Yeah, doing any kind of digging into Brave will immediately send up warning flares that the privacy claims are pure fluff. Just use Firefox or Librewolf.

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 13:13 collapse

Yes, a lot of people believe it, FF devs discuting in Google groups, Vivaldi in a own Mastodon instance. Mozilla since time is an Google pet which can’t survive without the support from Google.

It’s not the engine which use a browser, all engines are 100% FLOSS, it is important what you do with it.

pound_heap@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 24 Sep 20:31 next collapse

Depends on what you mean by “private”. I would not trust it much, but it’s not a bad Chromium based browser when you need one. Use something like LibreWolf for much more privacy out of the box.

monovergent@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 00:47 collapse

For the best privacy when you do need a Chromium-based browser, the ungoogled-chromium flatpak is an excellent choice.

pound_heap@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 25 Sep 21:40 collapse

I vaguely remember some issues with extensions in ungoogled chromium. Maybe I should give it another shot.

NinjaTurtle@feddit.online on 24 Sep 22:08 next collapse

Don’t a lot of browsers by default have pings set up to track usage? Check the privacy section. There is usually a check box about sending daily pings to whatever company made the browser to track usage.

Not sure about the variations though

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 15:20 collapse

Any browser does it, it is needed for several reasons, every browser need to know the amount of users it has to calculate it’s market share. But statistical telemetries are not a privacy issue, it’s like an employee which count the amount of cars and trucks on a highway, to know if it is needed to enlarge the highway or not. A browser need to know it for its capacity of servers and sync, if they offer it. Normally the telemetries includes in which OS is used the browser and in which country, all this is legit and not a privacy problem.

Bad only when it also include logs and profiling of user data and activity, as Chrome and EDGE do, and worse if this is sold to third parties. Decent browser don’t do it.

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 01:35 next collapse

I use Vivaldi, it’s IMHO the only decent Chromium browser, apart European, with a good privacy, no logs, no tracking no third party investors. great services and community.

mugita_sokiovt@discuss.online on 25 Sep 04:24 collapse

I think Vivaldi is source-available, but it’s proprietary otherwise due to a BSD license that allows for source-availability.

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 11:56 collapse

Yes, it’s proprietary because some script parts are. It’s not so easy to go full OpenSource for an Chromium browser which is more an online suite than a simple browser, because Google and M$ will kill to be able to fork it for Chrome and EDGE, which will have catastrophic aftermaths for all other Chromium browsers, include Vivaldi. Way easier to be OpenSource for simpler Chromium or Gecko forks. Anyway I think in a market saturated with browsers (over 100 different), beeing OpenSource isn’t in the main interest for the user anymore, prevailing more the ethics and transparency of the manufactor, 100% given in Vivaldi. Apart, as say, it’s the only decent browser from the EU on level eye with the US big Brother browsers. Alternatively there is Mullvad, butit is , apart of the privacy features, a very basic browser, more an platform for the Mullvad VPN, no own sync, only with Mozilla, Konqueror with the KHTML engine by KDE is discontinued, same as sadly the French UR browser. Thats it.

warmaster@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 01:41 next collapse

Brave is a scam.

irmadlad@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 02:37 collapse

I’ve never really had a comfortable feeling about Brave. I have no substantiating evidence, it just seems a bit squirrely. Besides the Tor browser, LibreWolf, Waterfox, and FireFox are the only acceptable browsers as far as I’m concerned, tho I don’t come down on those seeking an alternative to Google Chrome.

luipaard0011@lemmy.zip on 25 Sep 03:25 next collapse

Any alternative to brave in iOS with adblocker? (I know, probably use another OS)

irmadlad@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 03:38 next collapse

General practice, I do not use my phone as a compute platform. I realize others cannot do the same all the time. I do run firefox and a VPN which has an adblocker as part of it’s tool set.

whoisearth@lemmy.ca on 25 Sep 05:17 next collapse

Far as I remember any browser in iOS is a scam anyways because Apple forces any browser in their platform to be based off of the same engine as Safari.

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 12:53 next collapse

AFAIK at least in the EU because have to admit also browsers with a different engine as WebKit. WebKit is same as Blink a fork from the KHTML engine by KDE, butway less advanced as Blink or Gecko, who outscore WebKit in modern webformats. This is why Apple don’t want other browsers which make Safari obsolete. Anyway, sooner or later Safari will be the next IE.

whoisearth@lemmy.ca on 25 Sep 13:24 collapse

Sooner or later? They already are lol

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 15:02 collapse

Yes, but I won’t be so harsh

luipaard0011@lemmy.zip on 25 Sep 20:01 collapse

Yea, fuck webkit

double_oh_walter@sh.itjust.works on 25 Sep 07:19 next collapse

Orion can use Chrome and Firefox plugins. Works great!

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 26 Sep 03:06 collapse

Vivaldi for iOS, it has an inbuild ad- and trackerblocker

erock@lemmy.ml on 28 Sep 02:32 collapse

Librefox has been awesome. Once you get the hang of enabling cookies for specific sites it mostly just works. Although Fastmail keeps logging me out for some reason

mugita_sokiovt@discuss.online on 25 Sep 04:23 next collapse

I think you can disable the telemetry in the Brave settings. Maybe try that. Otherwise, if that doesn’t work, your best bet is something Firefox-based if you’re on desktop (hardened to the nines, with uBO, LibRedirect and an email aliasing service extension like SimpleLogin). If on mobile, there are other Webkit browsers like Snowhaze and Orion that are pretty good.

vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de on 25 Sep 06:30 next collapse

no, brave is just another crypto scam

Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 07:16 next collapse

People sadly believe so. Firefox, a few addons and you are good to go.

FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml on 25 Sep 09:23 collapse

It boggles my mind how people still recommend Brave as a good browser for privacy.
The entire point of Brave from the beginning was their own Crypto currency that they wanted to shill.
In their early days they offered a bunch of Tech YouTubers some crypto (via affiliate links) in return for them shilling brave.

Brave is basically just yet another Chromium reskin with custom branding, extra tracking and crypto bullshit bolted to it.
No, the builtin AdBlocker does not make it “worth it”. Stop recommending this pile of crap.

kepix@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 07:29 next collapse

even tho most low level searches and recommendations gonna point towards brave as the private browser, all you need to just look at the options. its datafarming, its running in the background randomly, its an nftbro chrome.

wolfiedafloof@lemmy.world on 25 Sep 09:48 next collapse

I tend to recommend Brave for the ones who aren’t technically savvy. For that, its good.

For me who is really into privacy, I’ve always felt uncomfortable with brave or any chrome based browser. So I go with TOR and LibreWolf

WilliamA@lemmygrad.ml on 25 Sep 10:21 next collapse

Any decent person wouldn’t use brave.

…com.au/…/former-mozilla-ceo-ousted-for-opposing-… this is who you’re supporting.

dangrousperson@feddit.org on 25 Sep 10:38 next collapse

From Wiki:

Brave Software was founded in 2015 by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and former Mozilla CEO who left the organization after coming under fire for his support of eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry […]

and

In August 2016, the company had received at least US$7 million in angel investments from venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund […]

Should tell you everything you need to know.

I’d say being ‘privacy focused’ is just a stick to get non-tech savy/gullible people that want to protect their privacy to use it, without thinking about it twice. Personally, I believe there is 0% chance they don’t sell (or simply give) all data they can to Peter Thiel and Palantir.

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 25 Sep 12:41 collapse

…also to Facebook, also one of the investors. Brave has good privacy protections, but they are selective.

[deleted] on 25 Sep 12:20 next collapse

.

Scavenger8294@feddit.org on 25 Sep 13:27 next collapse

I trust Techlore. How come you guys are so anti? Idc what the CEO talks about

68silver@beehaw.org on 25 Sep 15:41 next collapse

You can stop it in settings just like any other browser. I still will use Brave as my choice of browsers.

mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org on 25 Sep 16:55 next collapse

Brave is like the ExpressVPN of browsers

FacelessOnes@lemmy.world on 26 Sep 03:35 next collapse

Haha

Xylight@lemdro.id on 26 Sep 03:52 next collapse

What browser should I use on mobile? I use Librewolf on desktop since it runs fine, and the vertical tabs are great, and it looks nice.

On mobile though there’s a lot of problems with the browser space:

  • Chrome: runs great but is obviously not good for privacy
  • Firefox: what most people recommend, but it has terrible performance, looks not great, and doesn’t even have more than basic fingerprinting protection, and literally includes ads by default. It’s also less secure on Android because they don’t do per site process isolation, and the memory allocator is worse.
  • Brave: people tend to dislike brave here, but it runs well (since it’s chromium based) and has at least better fingerprinting protection.

What other options are there?

nonagonOrc@lemmy.world on 26 Sep 06:13 next collapse

Tbh firefox performs great and works for me, and its issues can be fixed with extensions and settings, both on desktop and mobile. I never looked for anything else myself. I also like to use a browser that is not chromium-based, I do not want google to have the monopoly.

maybe I am just not picky, but if you need more privacy than what can be achieved with a hardened firefox config you might be better off using TOR at that point.

starchylemming@lemmy.world on 26 Sep 07:28 next collapse

hmmm

i never get the performance part.

what the fuck are you doing where you can even notice performance differences?

nobody should use vanilla firefox. the extensions are the vital part of it

[deleted] on 26 Sep 09:37 collapse

.

TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz on 26 Sep 09:34 next collapse

IronFox, Fennec Fox

Zerush@lemmy.ml on 27 Sep 03:04 next collapse

Maybe somewhat later the Helium Browser (still not for mobile, in Alpha version), ungoogled Chromium, if not, Vivaldi, for all platforms, even as automotive app, (the only one)

github.com/imputnet/helium

mudkip@lemdro.id on 27 Sep 04:43 next collapse

Safari

Xylight@lemdro.id on 27 Sep 05:05 collapse

yeah lemme just pull out safari on android and linux for its insane fingerprinting protection and great content blocking support

DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml on 27 Sep 21:28 collapse

Brave.

DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml on 27 Sep 21:27 collapse

Try to disable telemetry.