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Brave to end 'Strict' fingerprinting protection as it breaks websites
(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Privacy
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Honestly you really should be using Firefox.
The real answer
I've been having a pretty good experience with Mullvad, however I don't hear many people talking about it. I wonder why is that, IIRC it's being developed with Tor Foundation, and is basically a Tor browser for clear web, and that sounds perfect. So far, I didn't run into any issues, so is there a catch, or are they just not well enough known yet? Or, maybe people are turned away by their optional VPN?
Probably because LibreWolf is most of the way there, and the Mullvad branding + proprietary VPN is more than a bit much. I use(d) the VPN alongside it and found the add-on "hints" regarding the correct DNS settings more frustrating than helpful, too.
I was using LibreWolf before, but I really like the idea of bundling VPN + Browser, and also the way they handle payments - not only is Mullvad VPN kind of cheap, I can just pay with crypto and don't need any account (kind of - you just generate username that also serves as an password, without any other contact information required).
But what I like the most about it is the idea of making a browser with the goal of having the same fingerprint between users (as much as possible), and offering it with a VPN - becuase that means that most of other users of the VPN will probably also have the same fingerprint from the browser, so you will blend in with them. I wasn't really sold on the idea of VPN before that and didn't use one, but this was what convinced me.
But tbh I haven't done much research into the company, or into the effectivness of their implementation. I'm kind of betting on their cooperation with Tor Browser, which should have most of this stuff already figured out. But it's possible that other browsers are just better at it, I never checked.
I do however still use LibreWolf for the occasional site that breaks with Mullvad, but it's not something that happens too often.
Hmm, I don't think I've ever noticed anything about DNS. I think I've actually never click on the browser vpn extension, though :D Is it the encrypted DNS hint?
EDIT: Found this, apparently it's doing pretty well https://privacytests.org/
Firefox's resist fingerprinting breaks sites too.
It doesn't really break things for me personally. However if it does break something just turn it off.
I have encountered a handful of sites that it broke as well. I use the strict protection option and manually add exceptions to the few sites it breaks - then I never have any other issues with them
yes, why are people so allergic to it??
The UI is somewhat clunky and it feels half dead.
I really wish Mozilla would rethink there business.
whats clunky about it??
a browser is just an address bar and tabs
With tons if spacing between everything
compact mode, in the same place you would change the theme
i use it for this very reason
Firefox lacks a ton of features and its default settings have terrible fingerprinting protection to start.
Yeah, Firefox lacks features like built-in pop-up ads, full screen homepage ads (those ones are enabled by default), and a VPN you probably didn't even purchase.
Truly, the features I wanted to clog up my hard drive whether I use them or not
You forgot built in crypto scams that can't be disabled.
Which one cant be disabled?
The affiliate link one certainly couldn't. It wasn't until people identified it and started complaining that the company had to backpedal.
And even for the scam stuff that can be disabled, why should it be downloaded, installed, and take up space on the hard drive to begin with? If it's so good, they can make it an add-on for people to optionally choose.
Well, the reason that is because brave wants you to use that, same way mozilla wants to you use their account services and the cloudflare dns that you can opt out of but can't uninstall unless you use a fork of firefox.
And also I don't know why you put emphasis on space usage when firefox uses more resources on websites than brave and chromium, I tested it back when using xfce4 and for 3 tabs and the total system mem usage was 1.24 GIB for firefox and 1 GiB for Chromium and Brave. And when I did that test chromium hadn't implemented a new feature that they added that moves inactive tabs to the disk.
I also don't think I'm gaining anything by replying to your comment after you didn't even bother replying when I told you all the issues and missing features that firefox has and instead focus on hating brave. I hope you're doing this because you hate the brave ceo and not because of some weird fanboyism with firefox lol.
Brave cryptocurrency crap = a Firefox account? Come on, at least compare apples to apples.
Because we were talking about how opting out of cryptocurrency crap doesn't fix the issues with it being installed by default.
You ignored the part about sending all the dns requests to cloudflare (the name of all the websites you visit), which sure, firefox is not as bad as brave on this. But I told you that already before, I said very clearly that when I mentioned that firefox is slightly better on this before in the other comments you didn't bother even replying to...
You're being disingenuous, another user said that it CAN'T be disabled to which I asked which can't? because you can, and now you're going on this weird goal post rant of it taking disk space while disabled ignoring all the useful features that brave has and all the issues and missing features of firefox lol.
edit: This reminds me of the rants people have against systemd because it is more bloated but ignore the fact that it is faster and easier to use lol.
I gave a concrete example: when Brave injected affiliate codes into the URL bar, there was no way to disable it.
Because it's irrelevant and gish gallop is not convincing to me
My dude, the other user said that the crypto scams can't be disabled, meaning right now in the present. Not that they couldn't be disabled. I asked which can't be right now in the present.
And now you're talking about something that happened 4 years ago and was fixed lol. I did not ask when did brave ever prevent you from disabling crypto scams, I asked right now lmao.
Once again, I hope you’re doing this because you hate the brave ceo and not because of some weird fanboyism with firefox lol. Because the more I look at your comments the more it looks like the later. You just pretty much said that you don't care about the issues with firefox by saying that it is irrelevant.
You are in a post about Brave. If you need to talk about anything but Brave to justify its behavior, the behavior is bad.
And just because Brave is technically currently not engaged in any scams that we know of, does not mean that it has a history of engaging in those scams, or that enabling them by default is good behavior on their part.
You might as well not reply if you will deflect this badly.
Hey firefox boy, My original reply was to someone saying just use firefox that ignored mentioning all the issues that firefox has with its default settings including the terrible default fingerprinting protection to start lmao which is on point with this post about brave fingerprinting.
Also you're going around telling people that the privacytest is not reliable way to compare browsers because of a brave employee which is fair but you don't bother to mention whether the test is actually lying or even propose an alternative test either.
I personally tested the coveryourtracks test by the EFF, and to my surprise brave scores better than librewolf, and this is using the default fingerprinting settings of brave, not the one that will be removed.
Would you consider any of the following examples lies?
https://gizmodo.com.au/2014/04/how-to-lie-with-data-visualization/
My dude, the privacytest website shows that librewolf is a better browser than brave, and when you told me (I think it was you lol) about the brave employee running it I thanked you for that info and began looking for alternatives.
I did the coveryourtracks test, which to my surprise brave scores better than librewolf:
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
https://imgur.com/WeGvgS5.png (LIbrewolf on the left, brave on the right)
So yeah, in my attempt to make a more fair comparison I only ended up with results that make brave a better browser lol.
There is nothing wrong with pointing out the conflict of interest, but that should be followed with at least some alternative being suggested if you don't want to bother into looking whether the data is false or misleading.
Edit: I will also state that I don't know if there is another conflict of interest going on in the EFF though.
FIrefox lacks vertical tabs, can't change the default new tab page background color without having to use a custom .css file.
Having to use a userContent.css for something so basic is insane. That is orders of magnitude more work than disabling the crypto ads in brave which you don't even have to go in the settings to disable, it is right on the homepage menu.
Also firefox lacks configurable keybinds and when I used librewolf I had to add two extensions for something that basic.
One was to change the default keybinds to changing tabs from alt+123 to control+123 because for some reason they changed it on linux to that which is retarded (opening a new tab is still control+t so you can't just say that it is all the control options that got moved to alt lol).
The other extension was to deattach the tab which firefox has no keybind set for it.
And one of the best features that firefox has, which is the userChrome.css has only gotten worse over time with it breaking with new updates and also now having it disabled by default and hidden inside the about:config menu.
The default vpn on brave is terrible, although that only affected windows. And firefox is only slightly better on this because and pardon me if I'm mistaken (I don't wanna install firefox to check lol) didn't they change the default settings to send all dns over https to cloudflare? On librewolf they got rid of the default one and you have to provide one instead.
Edit: Look no further, you even have to install ublock origin on firefox to get rid of ads and also configure its filter list if you want to get rid of cookie prompts, something that brave does by default already.
These are all UI things you can add with extensions or some modding. Firefox needs forks for that.
Not to speak of actual features like sandboxing on android, user namespace sandboxing on Linux, and more.
You'd be amazed what you can do with
userChrome.css.True. This needs better documentation though, and I would highly appreciate to have official templates.
Yeah no biggy, just some 7 extensions and some css and you will get somewhat usable experience on Firefox...
And? It's not hard at all to install extensions.
That is horrible that you have to install a bunch of extensions for basic features, and one of those extensions to fix something that mozilla went out of their way to break on linux and not that they havent add.
And there is also things like syncing the user sessions and settings without an email which brave can do while firefox and forks can't
edit: And you ignored half of my comment, doing css to get firefox to work IS NOT EASY lmao.
I ignored half your comment because changing the background color with CSS is 100% not important. And no, it's not horrible that you can extend Firefox to do exactly what you want. What would be horrible is if you couldn't.
How can I make firefox sync my user session and settings between devices without having to use an email then? Last time I tried to do that with librewolf there was only one extension that did it for the bookmarks and nothing else.
edit: Ignored again, what a surprise. No wonder firefox is such a shitty browsers if its users don't care about it working.
Then customize it. Honestly they aren't all that bad and by using Firefox you ate not supporting google.
I have done that, and it a horrible, it takes more work to make a useChrone.css on firefox than to setup a wm on linux lol
You can also use any of the forks of chromium and not support google, what you said is like telling people not use grapheneos because it is a fork of android.
If we had a working alternative to Android as a whole, we would surely use it. But Linux on mobile works only in few devices and not flawlessly at all. But for the Chromium monopoly we have an actual alternative that works.
Linux on phones already work, just that phonecalls might not work sometimes, but if you are into privacy you might as well not use that anyway lol.
So yeah, time to drop graphene and start using linux on phones, if you managed to get firefox to work you can use linux phones, sure some websites might not work on firefox (that is not fault of firefox, same way not all apps might work on linux) and you may need to do some coding to get some things to your liking (using custom.css files is like settings up a bunch of configs and scripts on linux) and you might need to add a bunch extensions to get basic features (like adding extensions to gnome lol).