this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Privacy

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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Please, do not use Brave. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 

I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.

Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.

Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.

After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL's. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.

Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I'd say the answer is a very clear no.

One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.

Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don't mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.

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[–] Clbull@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Newsflash: everything that isn't free and entirely open source is generally spyware these days.

It's amazing how we pilloried RealPlayer and burned its parent company to the fucking ground over two decades ago for far less egregious transgressions than what we now let Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc get away with.

[–] LSNLDN 10 points 1 year ago

Woah, realplayer, you just gave me a hit of nostalgia

[–] RandyButternubs@lemmy.nz 7 points 1 year ago

brave browser is free and open source tho?

[–] Floon@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

It's amazing Canter & Siegel were the most hated people on the Internet at one time...

[–] Historical_General@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I remember using that on windows xp, maybe vista too.