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Privacy @lemmy.ml

1y ago

Is Brave Browser currently as privacy disrespecting as some say?

I care about my privacy, though I like it's UI. Is it really as bad as some say?

108 comments

Stop using chromium.
- Yea I don't think it's bad for privacy, just there are better options out there which get you the same privacy while also addressing other issues? Issues like Chromium, history of controversies and shady behaviour (crypto, replacing ads with their own), the business model, and issues with the CEO.
  Instead, why not just use standard Firefox? The only downside I've heard is that the default settings don't do what Brave does when you first install each browser, but that's a weak argument considering we all modify the settings anyway. Someone should just outline which Firefox settings should be flipped to match default Brave, and we can be done with the weekly 'Why not Brave' discussions
  I use Firefox as my daily browser, and run Mullvad browser when I need to be cautious with a task.
  
  Easier option is to use Librewolf since they do a lot of work for you
- Any suggestions for someone who has multiple clients who solely support Chrome-only for their products so I have to do all my testing in Chrome (or Brave, Vivaldi, etc.)?
  In some cases their apps straight up don't function in Firefox or look substantially different and I'm not really allowed to bill for the time to address that.
  
  Just use something vanilla like Ungoogled Chromium. Don't use it for everything, only for working on projects that require it.
  
  And it is because of these lousy developers that live inside a Google world that people don't want to use Firefox.
- Can't, i need chromium extensions
  
  Like what?
- I'll do it when Firefox gets a UI that looks modern.
  edit - fine
  
  Here you go:
  https://github.com/Neikon/Fox11
  
  There's nothing wrong with Firefox's UI. I've been using it for years, along side Chrome and whatever else my work makes me use. For home stuff, I use Firefox, and I don't notice any difference except they don't incessantly track me.
  
  Boy, that's a hot take
  
  Bruh you’re on Lemmy
  
  Dark theme on most Linux distros looks clean with breeze or... whatever dark theme gnome users use. Quite nice, really. I'm cool with the angular look.
  
  I didn't notice anything very different style wise when I switched. You can also add different themes like you can in chrome too.

Be careful, Brave marketing team is well known for disguising themselves as users and promote their bloated crapware via comments.
They overdid it in 4chan and ended up alienating the entire community.
Then they moved to Reddit but people already started seeing Brave for what they really are, a scummy company that has been caught redhanded way to many times to be trusted.
Now they are here on Lemmy, desperately trying to get more chumps under their ad machine before BAT hits 0 and their advertising partners lose all interest.
Just say no to Brave, there are way better browsers out there, with real privacy, that won't make you look like a hateful brainwashed-by-politics piece of shit.
- Any examples of their stuff on 4chan?
- Bloated. That really nails what Brave is

YES, IT IS!
You should NOT trust Brave to not play fast and loose with your privacy. They already operate an advertising network (it operates on those stupid little BAT tokens) and they DO inject ads and affiliate links.
I strongly recommend Firefox¹ or Librewolf.
¹ - You must install plugins and apply user.js fixes yourself to properly harden Firefox completely against tracking; but this is doable.
- Hey, I use Firefox but I've never heard of making edits to the user.js config. Could you point me in the direction of some information about this?
  
  Check arkenfox: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/
  
  it's the same as about:config
- Someone on the last Brave thread suggested using Floorp and honestly I've been loving it. It comes with Tree Style Tabs support but I much I prefer Sidebery so I use Floorp's built in sidebar with Sidebery instead. It works fantastic, and using Firefox color theming to tweak everything also works well.

Why does this topic keep coming up?
Anything. 👏 Chromium. 👏 Based. 👏 Is. 👏 Bad.
If you give a shit, you'll suck it up and change to Firefox or Mull. If your excuse for not doing so is UI based, your convenience is more important than your privacy.
- Is there a better alternative on Android? I've tried switching to Firefox a few times but it feels way too slow. Scrolling and zooming (I do a lot of zooming on mobile) feels unusably choppy.
  
  Looks smooth to me. In fact, as the only Android browser afaik that has support for ublock origin, Firefox is the only usable mobile option IMO.
  
  Firefox typically is pretty smooth even on my tablet that has 2gb of ram and a quad core arm processor.
- How do you think about iridium?
- Shh, nobody mention that half your apps are probably rendered in chromium.
  
  yeah I have 2 apps on my computer that use electron
  discord and balena etcher
- bros using ff🤡. if you're not literally using a terminal based text only browser on linux from scratch on a vm whose bare metal is disconnected from the internet and in a faraday cage in an underground bunker, your convenience is more important than your privacy.
  Anything. 👏 Internet. 👏 Based. 👏 Is. 👏 Bad.
  
  God you write like a obnoxious bitch
  
  Begone, thot.
  
  only useful part of this comment is it reminded me that I forgot I had qutebrowser installed

f i r e f o x.
i mean cmon
- It’s always been weird to me how people use Brave. Like there’s a big class of Brave users who seem like people who would just be better off on Firefox? I guess it’s some of the best evidence I have seen that marketing works.
  
  The problem is, that Firefox Android can't group tabs. That's VERY important for me, and is the only reason I don't use Firefox (it's messy using different browsers in PC/Phone).

It has an opt in option to sell ad space for some of its crypto. Some people just are offended that the option is even there.
- because that effectively make them an advertising company.
  Advertising online is incompatible with privacy, there's no reconciliation between the two. And whoever tells you otherwise, is an advertiser.
  
  Some people dont see it as a black and white issue.
  Does firefox lose its privacy status if it takes google money and makes the default search engine google search?
  
  Unfortunately there's ads in Firefox too, and they're opt out instead of opt in. I'm certainly not a fan of it, but outside of LibreWolf until servo becomes a thing I think should be right but we're stuck choosing lesser of multiple evils.

You're on Lemmy. Lemmy hates Brendan Eich. Take the top comments with a grain of salt.

It's literally just a coat of paint on google chrome. You might as well install internet explorer toolbars until an unknown browser appears on your desktop and use that.

Brave is an alternative. There are better alternatives but its better than chrome or edge

Yes.

Just read their privacy, it is good. If you do not turn reward and sync on they won't have any personal data at all. Even if you turn sync on, it does everything accountless, it is more private and secure, than common accounts way. Rewards are about cryptoshit, just do not turn them on, not worth it.
You can read Mozilla privacy as well, because it is bad. They will collect a lot more data, but most could be turned off. Sync requires an account, and your email will be shared to 3rd party. In case of bankupcy (or other financial procedures) Mozilla can sell or transfer your data to 3rd party. Yes it sounds weird and bad, but that's how it is.
Anyway you should not listen to "they say" on Lemmy or anywhere. Not even this post. Go and read it yourself! You will be surprised.

No, brave is not bad for your privacy. There has been some controversie but no dealbreaker so far imo.
If you're on mobile I think brave has hands down the best UX (not necessarily UI but I like it a lot), on desktop I recommend firefox, which has a lot of custom themes to choose from (https://firefoxcss-store.github.io).
I personally like and use https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
- I like Firefox mostly because it's cool to have engine competition. I mostly use the default dark theme. It looks good enough for me. I don't look much at the top when browsing.
  On android it's still lagging behind the chromium competition. And having mismatched browsers isn't great for syncing. So I just use Firefox on android too, good enough.
  Tho, if miss matching wasn't an issue, personally I think I would use Kiwi browser. It's an open source chromium browser which supports chrome extensions.
- It's less about whether any individual thing they've done has been bad, more that they keep doing things and keep doing thm in sneaky ways. Every time something happened the CEO went on a marketing campaign and drummed up a bunch of new users to drown out the news story. They come across as shady, which gives the impression that it would take a relatively small sack of money for them to sell their users up the river.
  Brave is better than some out of the box, but far from the best. I'd say Mull is better for mobile, which is a Firefox fork. It has a companion Android System Webview called Mulch.
- https://www.ghacks.net/2023/10/18/brave-is-installing-vpn-services-without-user-consent/
  Enjoy.
  
  Oh for fuck's sake brave

They had their ups and downs.
There was that thing where some domains where whitelisted from blocking, don't know whether it was cookies or something else. Not great, but easily explained by not wanting to break stuff for unexpecting users, maybe bad communication. Shouldn't happen when you go privacy first, but that was resolved quickly after being discovered at least.
There was the time when they injected affiliate links when visiting some sites, to generate some revenue of course. They overdid it and replaced affiliate links of other people I think, but again they changed it after the community complained. I don't know whether that's optional now or completely gone. In any case, no harm was done to the users in this instance.
One thing you can definitely hold against them to this day is their CEO. He supported anti-queer legislature in the past and was dismissed as Firefox CEO (CTO? Something very high up at least) for that reason. He did apologize for it and afaik didn't continue supporting that kinda stuff, but you never know.
Imo the browser as it is right now is pretty good and unique in what it has to offer. The biggest issue really is a lack of trust by the community.

And... why aren't people / you using ungoogled-chromium?
- Because it still supports a monolithic browser engine culture. But that’s not a privacy thing.
- Should not be used on Android as it's 1.5 years out of date.
  https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium-android/releases/tag/99.0.4844.51-1-webview
  
  Okay that's fair, but for Desktop they've regular updates. For Android Vanadium (from GrapheneOS) is probably the best pick.

It's not entirely open source, just use Firefox with uBlock.

They don't like the guy.

AFAIK no, but if someone has to say something about privacytests's results (bad methodology? inconclusive?) I'm interested to know
- the page and the tests are run by a brave employee. That's what I have to say.
  Not saying the tests are false. The code is available. I'm just saying that the factors that the tests evaluates and the page layout, is heavily biased towards Brave. Is that a coincidence with the author being employed by Brave? I don't know.

It isn't. Brave doesn't track you

Not at all.
The brave criticisms you see are mostly hot takes about crypto(icrypto jokes are super coool as of '20) but brave(foss) is as good or better than Firefox, IE or safari in terms of privacy.
Firefox can nearly match that privacy with their options, but if you like brave, easier to stick with that.
- Part of it comes down to trust. I just don't trust Brave Inc long term - it may well be a private browser now but I don't trust that in to the future. I don't trust a company that Peter Thiel invests in. I don't trust a company that has already been shady and caught redirecting traffic secretly for referrer codes. But I also don't trust Google or Microsoft either.
  I trust Firefox and Mozilla. I don't like that they are dependent on Google revenue but I trust that they're open and transparent about what they do, and not motivated or compromised by a desire to maximise profits for their venture capitalist investors.
  
  Ah, thank you, distrusting Peter thiel is at least tangentially relevant and certainly understandable(thiel-creepy brave-trustworthy?)
  I would choose Firefox before ie or safari, but Firefox also sells personalized ads and tracks your keystrokes.
  I like foss, and I like smaller companies. When another privacy-based browser comes along after brave sells its soul or gets too popular, I'll support them too.
  Until then, brave is doing pretty good privacy-wise, especially compared to the mainstream alts.
- it has a lot of sketchy business practices and is a mediocre browser at best
  
  You make a vague, boring claim with neither evidence nor sources.

108 comments