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Functionally, read this guide here: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop-browsers
Philosophically, Brave does a lot of shady user tracking and crypto shit of their own, and I choose not to use it for that reason. Better than Chrome. Worse than Firefox. In my opinion.
The one founded by the guy who got fired from Mozilla for supporting hate groups?
The one that integrates support for NFTs, the stupidest form of cryptocurrency scam?
That browser?
Apparently they sell user data to train AI models.. search for "brave controversy"
Apparently you need to follow your own advice and do a search because it takes 30 seconds to see they are collecting data from their search engine not the browser. So if you don't use their search (which is pretty shit anyway) it's not relevant to the browser side of things. The browser is completely open source and everyone can see what the code is doing.
And isn't using search data to improve search results a pretty reasonable usecase for AI? Seems like a nothing burger. For the record I use librewolf but I find the constant Brave hate to be undeserved.
https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409406835469-What-is-the-Web-Discovery-Project-
If you opt in, youβll contribute some anonymous data about searches and web page visits made within the Brave Browser (including pages arrived at via some, but not all, other search engines). This data helps build the Brave Search independent index, and ensure we show results relevant to your search queries. By βdataβ we mean search queries, search result clicks, the URLs of pages visited in the browser, time spent on those pages, and some metadata about the pages themselves.
My emphasis.
So just don't opt in then? They're not selling the data, it's completely optional, and they explain exactly what they're collecting, how they're collecting it, and what they're using it for. This is all completely reasonable. They have to get this information for to improve the search somehow. Even the actual collection component is open source. I'm not sure what the issue is.
My reply was purely to get to the accurate information versus your reply which says that they are "collecting data from their search engine not the browser" as it's important that people reading know what's actually going on.
I'm not here to argue about whether they should or should not do that and I'm not going to (and when I used Brave I consciously went into the menu to opt into this to improve their search engine so we could have a competitor).
Ahh yeah I actually remember that now that you mention it, I used to be a heavy brave user since then I've moved to ARC, is pretty cool also built on top of chromium just like brave.
Used it for a while years ago, hated all the crypto stuff it tried to push but could still ignore most of it. Then saw the CEO sharing antivax propaganda and decided to try different options, ended up finding much browser options out there. These days I'm running Vivaldi. I think I would only put brave ahead of chrome itself now.
It's shady AF. Anything with that much crypto bs baked in shouldn't be trusted.
Why?
My biggest problem with Brave is it installs VPN Services without without telling you. Here's a Brave developer talking about it on the Brave subreddit.
If you need a Chromium browser. Just use ungoogled-chromium, Windows version. If you just need a browser use Firefox.
In OP's case it sounds like the VPN service is the whole reason they're using it. Not that I would recommend it, as their corporate IT likely has a policy against exactly this sort of thing
I just discovered this on a relative's computer. Any trick to removing the VPN service?
The VPN services are installed but do not run unless/until you activate Brave VPN. This is such a non-issue.
At work I use firefox, but to be fair we don't have any firewall or restrictions. Home I use librewolf for privacy reasons.
Crypto scam scum
All evidence points to it being a very technically sound browser but with a terrible leadership. I used to use Brave but have since switched back to Vanadium.
If you so much as mention a browser on reddit you'll get 5 replies telling you to try Brave
Haven't seen it mentioned once. Most of the time, it's to NOT use brave as it's sketchy, and to use Vivaldi, or even better Firefox.
Brave is in the same business model as google. Selling ads. First drive adoption. Then flip the table to serve ads.
It works for you due to the firewall restrictions and such, great, use the tools that work for you.
But as far as using it as a default, nope; Firefox (and any non chromium browser if I can help it) all the way.
Brave sucks ass. They sell your data
It's a good browser. I used it for a really long time then switched to Firefox. Now I'm switching back, because Firefox has bizzare issues with rendering some pages and apps.
It's a great browser. The mobile version is packed with features not found in other browsers and the desktop version is the best chromium based browser imho.
A lot of people here trash talk brave because of the CEO but there are bad apples in every corporation.
For a browser that claims to be privacy focused, it's not trustworthy (as indicated by the other commentors). I've ditched it myself some time ago
If you think the company isn't trustworthy that's completely understandable by why does that affect the browser? It's fully open source. If they're doing something shady with it people would instantly become aware of it.
We are aware of their involvement in crypto shit, and are therefore negative to them. Open source does not mean good (as in not evil), nor good (as in not bad).
You mean the crypto shit you can disable in a couple of clicks and completely ignore? Firefox doesn't have that good of defaults either. You also have disable things like Pocket and change some settings to make it good. It's why Hardened Firefox and Librewolf exist.
And where did I say that open source = good? I just said it being open source makes it easily to see if they are doing something shady. It's how they were caught changing the referral URLs a few years ago. If they try to pull anything they would be caught the same way they were before.
If they try to pull anything they would be caught the same way they were before.
They were caught. My problem is that you think being caught deceiving your end users should go unpunished. Betraying your customers in that way should mean the end of the product.
The fact that they do crypto shit is a general argument against them, that your arguments might counteract. The fact that they did SECRET crypto shit should be 100% nuclear.
The fact that they did SECRET crypto shit should be 100% nuclear.
It wasn't a secret. By the nature of being open source, it is in the open. They literally can't do anything secret which is what makes trusting the company a non-factor. You just have to trust that the community stays on top of things which is the same amount of trust required for any other open source project. Think about what happened with Audacity, they tried adding telemetry and was immediately called out for it.
And nuclear? They added a variable in a URL. As far as I know it was only for Binance. It's not like that's a privacy concern because all that tells Binance is the user came from Brave... which they could already get from the user agent when you visit.
And you know who else adds variables in URLs? Firefox. Type something in the address bar and hit enter (with default settings). You'll see ?client=firefox-b-1-d in your Google search. Should they have added the referral code? Absolutely not. But it's not that heinous.
makes trusting the company a non-factor
You just have to trust that the community stays on top of things
With your reasoning the latter point doesn't matter, since you believe no action should be taken when the community discovers things.
This is how we are making you aware of it.
As a regular user, itβs fine. I know the controversy around it. At the moment, it doesnβt bother me as much as it does with others. I only use brave, the browser. I donβt use its search or any other of their services.
I would like to go to Firefox but only thing keeping me from switching is its PWA experience is not good compared to Brave/Chrome.
PWA?
Progressive web apps
I've used it on my phone once, and had trouble trying to change my home page. Searching for it, apparently it was because of an option that was glitched. Turning it off solved it. This glitch was present for years, from what I read, and still wasn't solved.
It had the A.I. controversy that people mentioned. So I guess it's not very reliable in the privacy section, even if it's their main "appeal".
I'm using Firefox on both PC and mobile. Only experimented with Brave for a short time. Can't say much more about it.
I agree with the people here. Secondly: Tor is good for some use cases and not so much for others. Mind that you're tunneling your data over some exit nodes you probably know little about. Make sure to use https and only encrypted connections, so your data can't be intercepted. Tor Browser might already come with a https only plugin by default, I don't really know.
I also don't know much about Brave. If it's tunneling your data somewhere to bypass the firewall, the same thing applies. Make sure to understand why this firewall is there in the first place. And the consequences of bypassing it. And the people you trust with your or your company's data. For news and cooking videos, it should be alright in any case.
I use "Mull" on my Android. And some Firefox on Linux.
Assume you are new here? Lemmings suckle at the teet of the red panda. Brave is hated for its pretense of privacy while in reality being perhaps even shadier than the big data boys.
ain't it just chrome for alt-right tech-bros?
I'm against it. Their crypto angle is/was a joke, and now the AI data harvesting pushes it further down.
I also found most Brave users to be some of the must infuriating people I met in real life. Not that brave it self did it, but most people I used to work with that used it was "privacy focused" libertarians with some bad takes.
I use it on PineTab 2 as according to the folks on Discord it has the best benchmarks. On any other device, Firefox all the way.