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Brave browser quietly slips a VPN service onto your Windows PC (www.androidcentral.com)

submitted 8 months ago by AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] db2@sopuli.xyz 210 points 8 months ago

BuT bRaVE isN't ThaT bAd 🤡

[-] ZeroCool@feddit.ch 118 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yep, this news actually broke a couple days ago, I remember seeing a Brave fanboy having a meltdown over it and ranting about how Mozilla is the real shady company, blah, blah, blah.

[-] pensivepangolin@lemmy.world 52 points 8 months ago

Oh dear lord. What did they say in support of their “Mozilla is shady” argument?

[-] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 70 points 8 months ago

Brave's CEO was fired from Mozilla so Mozilla bad.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

To be fair. Mozilla foundation is shady. They keep pushing things that don't follow their core mission. That try to expand their brand.

You can use Mozilla to build solid privacy respecting systems, but Firefox out of the box not so much. They're better than Google, but that's a low fucking bar.

Mullvad browser, Tor browser, mull for Android - all use the core Firefox open source engine, to make privacy respecting programs that work out of the box with privacy respecting defaults.

So I would say Mozilla is a good guy in this conversation, but not a saint.

[-] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 53 points 8 months ago

Though they are transparent with the fact that they are doing it. I'm not a fan of it either, but it's not too shady when they're open about it IMO.

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[-] kirk781@lemm.ee 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I follow Ghacks, a tech site, as well and boy there is a Brave shill on there who attacks everyone there for daring to say anything against it. He knows stuff, judging from his comments, yet is so anti Mozilla and pro Brave that I can't understand. Almost thinks anyone not using Brave is inferior.

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[-] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 111 points 8 months ago

Ok. Chrome sucks. Brave sucks. What’s good. Firefox?

[-] Grant_M@lemmy.ca 248 points 8 months ago

Firefox is great.

[-] phx@lemmy.ca 79 points 8 months ago

Firefox with good plugins is even better!

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[-] netchami@sh.itjust.works 19 points 8 months ago

And LibreWolf is better. It's Firefox with all of the privacy settings preconfigured and uBlock Origin preinstalled. Also, crap like Sponsored sites and Pocket are removed.

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[-] Deebster@infosec.pub 51 points 8 months ago

I'm team Firefox, very happy here. There's a small amount of optional telemetry to disable to maximise your privacy, and it has the best plugins because there's a lot of choice and they're not purposely crippled.

[-] KpntAutismus@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago

Plus you can use pretty much any plugin on mobile. this is the biggest feature for me.

[-] kirk781@lemm.ee 16 points 8 months ago

I like Firefox because it allows, Atleast for now, customization via userchrome.css files. I once tried Edge and hated it's bloated right click context menu. Meanwhile, in Firefox, I can trim down the context menu to only basic elements.

I do wish Firefox had proper PWA support, but otherwise I have been using it as the main browser on both PC and phone(since uBlock Origin is supported on it, the only Chromium browser to support it is Kiwi Browser on Android).

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[-] Orbituary@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

Firefox and Mull (a Firefox fork) have your privacy in mind. They work as good as Chrome and don't fuck you without asking.

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[-] mypasswordis1234@lemmy.world 108 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Just use Firefox. Or LibreWolf if you want a pre-hardened Firefox. Remember to install uBlock Origin.

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[-] thefloweracidic@lemmy.world 105 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I don't like brave because Brandon Eich (CEO, formerly with Mozilla) doesn't support gay marriage and was pushing anti-vax stuff on twitter. I don't look for this shit to titillate my tits like some folks, but when it hits me in the face I can't ignore it.

When fact checking myself I found even more controversies, but I'm not wasting time reading articles that feed a confirmation bias.

[-] kautau@lemmy.world 38 points 8 months ago

It’s crazy to me that people ever thought brave was “privacy focused” when it was clear that they were trying to jump on the crypto bandwagon with their own in-network crypto and ad network. It was always just a reskinned chrome with ublock built in and then their crypto and ad network tacked on top

[-] TWeaK@lemm.ee 24 points 8 months ago

I don't like Brave because they've done dodgy things like this time and time again over the years, and each time Brandon Eich went on a marketing campaign across social media to drum up new users and drown the story out.

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[-] MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 100 points 8 months ago

Just a reminder, any time you see a "tech" youtuber with brave installed, they're not going to be an excellent source of information

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[-] Emerald@lemmy.world 64 points 8 months ago

You have to be very brave to download that browser

[-] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 63 points 8 months ago

I don't understand when and why Brave became such a household name. It seems so many people use it and swear by it, but its reputation is "suspicious" at best.

Just use Firefox. It's been around way, way longer and it doesn't use the Chromium engine. Google doesn't need more of a monopoly on the internet.

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[-] Clbull@lemmy.world 57 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Brave to me is like an online advertising racket. They push ad-blocking software by default in their browser, then extort companies into using their own ad network to advertise to their users. Brave Ads are of course opt-in and the main incentive of enabling them is to earn BAT (Basic Attention Token) which is their cryptocurrency. In terms of their intrusiveness, they're like push notifications you get up to six times an hour, and from my experience using the browser, it was all mainly crypto marketplaces and VPN's advertising.

Compared to 2020, when you could earn hundreds of dollars in a year from frequently being served Brave Ads, BAT isn't really worth shit anymore thanks to the crypto crash, so the main financial incentive to use Brave is gone.

If you want privacy, Firefox is that way. Or if you absolutely need to use something based on Chromium, everyone and their fucking mother has forked that browser.

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[-] danielfgom@lemmy.world 49 points 8 months ago

Not surprised. Brave is dodgy af.

Use Vivaldi or Firefox if you care about privacy

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[-] fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 31 points 8 months ago

The Brave team are basically a bunch of dodgy wankers at this point.

[-] joklhops@lemmy.world 26 points 8 months ago

I don't trust Brave, there's too much money tied up in it for it to be good for users.

[-] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 22 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Please Brave: cutout the bullshit defaults game. Everybody's getting smarter and companies are getting stupider

Edit: said this b4, don't fuck with your own competitive advantage where you haven't had a joint and duly qualified computer science lawyer who explains how easy it is to lose trust and commercial viabillity for a sketchy, underhanded product (see LastPass). Also FUCK LastPass, may this Pass be their Last

[-] Bloxlord@lemm.ee 22 points 8 months ago

Download a browser with a built-in VPN
Get browser and VPN services on your computer

Why is this news?

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[-] SoonaPaana@lemmy.world 20 points 8 months ago

Why is installing a VPN considered bad? Is it because it is done without user consent? I don't understand if there is any malicious intent.

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 55 points 8 months ago

Brave browser has been automatically installing VPN services on Windows computers without user consent, but it remains inactive unless the user subscribes.

They're installing extra software that's useless unless you give them money. Plus you really want to be aware of your VPN since all your traffic will be going through it.

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[-] admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 29 points 8 months ago

Because a vpn can monitor all the websites that you visit. Not directly what you're looking at, but definitely where you're looking. Just line your provider can, if you're not using a vpn. But at least with your provider, you have a contract with them - you pay them to transport your data and nothing more. Some very scummy providers aside, that's where it stops.

A free vpn, however, needs to pay for transporting your data somehow. And if you're not paying for it with money, then who/what is?

See also Tom Scott's explanation about vpns, why you probably don't need one, and why he refused their advertisement money.

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[-] jet@hackertalks.com 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I agree with what other people said. And here's a new twist.

Any software that messes with the networking stack, can cause really difficult to debug errors. And it may induce errors in other programs. The more complicated your computer's networking, the more fragile it is.

So introducing, silently, unasked for, network drivers and VPN hooks into the operating system is harming the compute stability of their user base.

At the very least, it should be opt-in! There should be a dialogue asking hey we have this new awesome feature, click okay to install it, something like that. Informed consent

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[-] Tom_bishop@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago

The ol' bait and switch...classic. Opera used to be good too, then chinese people bought it, then emerged opera vpn. Shaddy af. Same as camscanner

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[-] HKayn@dormi.zone 16 points 8 months ago

Opera does this too and nobody bats an eye (anymore).

For some reason people like to clown on Brave specifically.

[-] Asudox@lemmy.world 39 points 8 months ago

Probably because nobody cares about Opera doing that since the ones pointing this out are at least privacy aware people that won't use Opera. It is also a problem when Brave does it because it is a "privacy focused" browser. They sure have the balls to do this.

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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023

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