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 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.

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[–] WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I used to use Firefox but have been using Brave cause I was getting tired of having to open Edge every time there would be an addon or tool that was Chrome exclusive. So unless there's other options for privacy focused chromium browsers I'm just gonna stick with brave.

[–] eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What addons are you using that are Chromium exclusive? Also, Ungoogled Chromium exists.

[–] Daryl76679@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ungoogled Chromium doesn't have a lot of the security features that Brave, Mullvad, Tor, Librewolf, or even Safari have.

[–] M137@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What addon or tool that's chromium exclusive do you mean? I never need to open any other browser than Firefox. And use Opera with privacy addons instead? Better than supporting brave at least.

[–] oij2@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Firefox dropped support for PWA a while ago (a really sad decision, because PWA are an amazing idea... ) so just any webpage that needs to function more like an app is often more functional under Chrome. Microsoft Teams is one example.

[–] Lucky@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Seems they have PWAs, here's a guide by Mozilla for installing them on Firefox

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Guides/Installing

[–] roro@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

It's really not that amazing. PWA is a glorified bookmark, and most people don't use them. I've built support for them for the businesses I worked on, and we'd get <1% usage on it

[–] eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

Firefox killed SSB, not PWA, no? As far as I'm aware it was a buggy mess, and I don't think PWA has been standardized yet.

[–] Stahlreck@feddit.ch 1 points 1 year ago

Why would you ever use Opera vs Brave if you care about privacy? Brave at the end of the day is fully open source. Yes that is a huge plus even if you yourself cannot review the code.

[–] Caboose12000@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Vivaldi is chromium and way way better than brave

[–] oij2@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Vivaldi!! - the company is also actively supporting the fediverse by hosting and aggressively promoting their large Mastodon server ,switch to Vivaldi!

[–] eya@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] abbenm@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] oij2@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

The commenter I replied to was specifically asking for chrome based.

[–] oij2@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

but better than Brave