this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023

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Privacy

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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] 18 points 1 year ago

@eya I made sure I’d never use brave when I found out that the ceo is a massive homophobe

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I dont use Brave and will never use it. But this sounds not logical.

Their ad system and affiliate URLs are not anti-privacy per-se. Its not as easy.

I will not use it as its

99% controlled by Google
dependend on Google Addon store
bad UI
bad OS integration
not Arkenfox

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

For a lot of people, way too many people, using Brave is a political statement that is paradoxically supposedly against political statements. It's a spite choice that justifies the cryptogrifting, spyware, and the horrid political views of its owner.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even worse for privacy, it uses the Chrome engine.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Just disable the ads, crypto and telemetry and suddenly none of those things are a problem anymore, just like Firefox.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (14 children)

It still uses chromium and it's susceptible to the Google's Web integrity protocols. An website using the new protocols can refuse to load on your browser if you don't accept the ads. Why is it so difficult to comprehend?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Firefox + Startpage is really cool. I like how their searched don't include the search parameters in the url + the built in proxy

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Honestly, even the crypto part of Brave was a cool idea. Back when it was in beta, I was sending various websites and GitHub users 'tips', and they were able to cash out. It was genuinely supposed to be a new way to monetize the web (they later made the tips automatic based on how long you spent on each webpage), but, yeah.. Too many people didn't see the vision, and they got too much hate, so I'm pretty sure that whole program is axed now.

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