Have been using firefox for a couple of years now, but because of the recent changes over there i wanted to explore other fish in the sea.
Brave seems to be praized a lot, but i’m a bit skeptical (just healthy skeptisim so to speak) how much it is praized… Don’t have enough knowledge to figure out myself if they collect data and in general how privacy oriented it really is, so would be nice to hear from more knowledgeable people.
Thanks for the input in advance!
I dont really now much about it, but used it a while.
It is slow to start, but not bad if you keep it running.
They collect your browsing data, but I am not worried, as I believe they do anonymise it.
Then they can offer the “attention tokens” to websites.
Not sure their stance on advertisements; I think they blocked the ads from sites, and replaced them with their own?
How does that line up with your initial / past thoughts?
Just spitballing here.
I went back to FireFox, as it’s lighter, easier, and has extensions more to my liking.
Even chromium has some good extensions.
Does Brave take chrome(ium) extensions?
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Brave is probably the only good Chromium-based browser alternative to Firefox. IIRC it has better sandboxing and better profile isolation (and switching).
Brave search is surprisingly decent and is a good alternative to DDG. Couple that with their LEO AI and it seems something to look out for.
Brave token is sh*t and i couldn’t care less.
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i started to use it on ios for now, as firefox has been a bad experience overall due to apple limitations, since i live in europe - it is getting better rn, but apple is being anti-consumer to the worst degree with compliance rn - though it doesn’t seem that they’ll let em get away with it much longer.
But coming back to the browser - i don’t really have much thoughts on it for now, it looks very nice, it’s the hype that makes me suspicious - that’s all, since I don’t use the browser for work - I can get away with using Firefox only with no problems, but I know that for web dev it’s quite behind in usability for many.
The main reason for switching to brave is as I mentioned in the post - just finding alternatives to the ff - in case their recent announcments (they’re planning to pivot the business somewhere or smth along the lines) - makes me cautious of planning to use it in the future.
With the recent launch of duckduck go browser - it seems a good potential option as well - but when I looked last time - there was no extentions and brave without extentions is blocking adds much better, at least for now.
PS I normally cut down as much ads as possible - cause a lot of the time the user experience is much worse with them - but with brave - i’ve enabled their ads - in case that it is a decent browser experience - could support the development without caring for their stupid tokens lol
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Hey, thanks a lot for the response - though i still use duckduck go - as in most cases it provides the info that i need…
Any thoughts on the new ddg browser from the privacy perspective?
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Okay, so safari then
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for now yea, but they’ve opened up the browser - so it should chenge with the next couple of updates🤷
Did they? I thought all browsers on iOS need to use the WebKit engine.
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they opened it like a week ago, so i’m impatiently waiting on updates to the browsers, although i’ve heard firefox dev team stated that apple still managed to make the implementation hard, so it might take some time…
So the projects now need to scramble IF they want to
maintain two different versions of their apps on the same OS.
because it will be possible only in the EU and not world wide?
iOS 17.4 introduces new capabilities that let iOS apps use alternative browser engines — browser engines other than WebKit — for dedicated browser apps and apps providing in-app browsing experiences in the EU.
Back on topic. I used Brave briefly and stopped once they pushed their crypto thing hard. I distrusted it back then and I distrust it now. I am on FF on all my PCs. I am using Safari on the phone.
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malicious compliance as always, BUT i hope that the fact that us gov sued apple yesterday for market monopoly or smth along those lines - will move the situation to 1 version (a better one) in the near future;)
I’ve had same set up as you for the past couple of years and i use syncthing to sync all the ff settings between my laptop and pc.
Anyway, thanks for sharing;)
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Brave browser is mainly focus on the security and privacy features. Here are some key features of this, built-in ad blocker, brave rewards, open source, privacy and security.
I have no problems with their security, or anonymity features.
But anonymity, is not always the same as privacy.
I’m pretty sure they keep detailed telemetry, but they anonymise it.
Which I am cool with, but I do see it as different.
And smart people, may still value the data enough to de- anonymise it
If you want privacy and not use firefox, check out ungoogled-chromium. Brave and ddg collect your data altho they claim to anonymize it (as does google), but can you trust that data can’t be de-anonymized at will?
Also leaving uncommon identifiers in the metadata might actually make you more indentifiable compared to drowning in the noise of the common mass.
But you can still use something like ungoogled-chromium not because of privacy, but security reasons.
With no account sync, telemetry or ‘features’ allowing all access to your personal files you’re left with less potential access vectors.
Also with no access to the chrome web store, google can’t bork your addons with an update. Malicious ads are the nr1 way to infect consumer machines anyway.
uBlock can achieve the same results as googles safe browsing feature.
Brave is alright, though I’m not a fan of the UI on desktop. Also it’s still a chromium mod, so I use Firefox, as I don’t want to contribute to Google’s stranglehold on the web. I’d recommend Brave to people who aren’t as tech savy because of the built in adblocker. In regards to search, I’m glad they are building their own search index, but the brave crypto and tracking still sketches me out.
On iOS, I use brave because apple didn’t allow Firefox extensions. Given the EU and DOJ investigation, I might be able to swap to Firefox like my other machines.
On my desktop I switched to librewolf recently. I made the jump because I got tired of Mozilla’s development choices (working on ui changes rather than the engine) and the lack of updates the community’s request for container tabs on mobile.
It took 2 years of constant requests to get an acknowledgment.
Librewolf has tweaks to harden security/privacy. Though to make day-to-day more usable, I re-enabled some previously disabled features such as Firefox sync and saving browsing history for profiles.
On android I use mull for my personal browsing, fenenc for work, and brave when I am at restaurants.
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This is also an important reason why I use FF or rather FF based browsers for the web.
I actually use Mullvad Browser for general web browsing:
Its basically the Tor Browser without the Tor Network under it. You also run it the same way: no mods and minimal tinkering on the settings.
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Can the mullvad browser do addons? Obviously this would fingerprint oneself…
Edit:
You don’t want to use ‘too many’ extensions as it could be the one thing that identifies you. That’s why we only use uBlock Origin.
Okay, noscript is my go-to, but unlock is good, and much better in a lot of ways.
I’d be fine with that
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And here I am using edge. I never had a issue with it and don’t need much really. As long as it works well that’s good enough for me on a browser.