Privacy

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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

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

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Please, do not use Brave. (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[+] [email protected] -64 points 1 year ago (4 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't mention that the CEO is an asshole because 1. that's subjective and 2. it doesn't relate to privacy in any way. The browser actively monetizing social media creators without their consent (and by extension misleading their users) is much more privacy related (in my opinion).

I don't hate cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency is one of, if not the, best way to pay for something completely anonymously (for example XMR). I don't believe I actively hated on cryptocurrency anywhere in this post, I simply showed how Brave is using it for malicious purposes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

cryptocurrency is not remotely anonymous

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Anyone who knows the climate and environmental cost of one of your bullshit coins is well within their rights to hate the nasty fucking things. Y'all would broil this planet alive just to be able to buy your dark web treats.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not the biggest fan of crypto, but there are plenty of crypto coins that do not rely on mining at all. In fact, I'd argue that the only really relevant coins in the future will not be based on Proof of Work. Staking is problematic for other reasons, but it's far more climate friendly than proof of work

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Crypto is the dumbest hill to die on.

It's tens of thousands of unregistered securities hype bubbles built on half-baked tech. There is nothing of value there.

And Brave is just Chromium with a faux privacy mask.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

What's ironic is that there wasn't crypto hate. Though for me that's why Brave can go diaf, along with crypto. Crypto is dogshit puffed full of birdshit, and I can't fucking stand pro-crypto anything. I actively work against crypto, and am quite pleased that I'm given multiple opportunities to undermine and fuck over the crypto communities. Also it will not stop, until crypto is dead, so you making it seem like a bad thing to be anti-crypto is falling on deaf ears for me.

I'm for whatever is against crypto. The more damage I can personally do to the crypto scene, the better.