this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
1520 points (91.2% liked)

Privacy

32165 readers
199 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

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.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
1520
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.

(page 13) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] gasull@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you need a Chromium derivative, then Brave is probably the best choice. It's open-source, and includes ad blocking. Just don't use its crypto token.

I prefer Firefox over Brave, but sometimes I might need a Chromium derivative for a particular site.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Number1SummerJam@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Why should I trust Mozilla over Brave? Just because Mozilla is a nonprofit subsidiary doesn't mean that they don't have an incentive to make money for their profit handling corporate division, the Mozilla Corporation. I tried playing around with Firefox and not having the option to directly add a less-used search engine than the ones given without extensions was pretty sketchy to me. All of the complaints people have about Brave like ads and the weird crypto thing are very configurable in the settings, and I have a lot less compatibility issues compared to Firefox. Also, the source linked claiming all of this is a sketchy Neocities site that anyone could have made that doesn't even prove why Brave isn't private. I get that people are loyal to their favorite browsers but this is silly. If you really want to be private, use the Tor network, but all browsers and extensions need to track you in some degree to function.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] amir_s89@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 year ago (9 children)

How about the Opera Browser?

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] hottari@lemmy.ml -3 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I hate Mozilla more than whatever Brave has been accused of in the past. Brave makes it easy to configure a private browser, this is not an opinion. There's no browser that will ever have a monopoly on privacy.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] Stahlreck@feddit.ch -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Does this all matter though? Afaik the browser if fully open source, even the crypto stuff so all the shady stuff would be detected (and has as in your examples). Like all of the issues you linked at this point are years in the past. I don't use Brave personally but it being completely FOSS is a huge plus even if the company itself might be weird. On the other hand you have something like Vivaldi that looks like "the good guys" but you'll always have to trust them as well because they're not fully open source.

I use FF but you just cannot deny that using a Chromium based browser has many security advantages over Gecko, especially on mobile. I takes Mozilla seemingly years and years to implement security features like Chromium. They don't put the necessary priority behind this.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] Gooey0210@sh.itjust.works -3 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  1. I use brave on android, because there's not much choice. I really-really-really loved bromite, but noupdatess for like a year Recently I found out there's cromite so I think i will check that one out
  2. On desktop I use librewolf, only
  3. For any people using google chrome/yandex/edge/opera I install brave and disable all the crypto/advertising/crap. It would be nice to have a script that does it automatically. Or another browser that just doesn't have that
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] DigitalJacobin@lemmy.ml -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There are many, many good reasons to not use Brave. Being spyware is not one of those.

Boycott Brave for real reasons like their CEO and owner being a raging anti-gay reactionary or because of their cryptocurrency bs.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] nothingness@lemmy.world -4 points 1 year ago
[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml -4 points 1 year ago (13 children)

All you need to know is the Brave guy is a pedophile who is 100% using your ad revenue to buy csam.

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] meiko60@lemmy.sdf.org -5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Brave support PWA. but, Firefox don't. So, here is the answer

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›