- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
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https://privacytests.org rate Brave as the best browser.
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The man who is CEO is a shitter who gave us the blessing/curse that is JavaScript
They’re relying on a cryptocurrency for growth
They use Chromium/Blink
Its the same guy who made firefox though?
He is
What hasn’t been said as explicitly yet: It being Chromium-based means there’s tons of implementation details that are bad, which will not be listed in any such comparison table.
For example, the Battery Status web standard was being abused, so Mozilla removed their implementation: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/battery-status-api-being-removed-from-firefox-due-to-privacy-concerns/
Chromium-based browsers continue to be standards-compliant in this regard.And this is still quite a high-level decision. As a software engineer, I can attest that we make tiny design decisions every single day. I’d much rather have those design decisions made under the helm of a non-profit, with privacy as one of their explicit goals, than under an ad corporation.
And Brave shipping that ad corp implementation with just a few superficial patches + privacy-extensions is what us experts call: Lipstick on a pig.
Judging by a default browser is also really misleading. Firefox is by far the most private with extensions, no competition.
What extensions would you recommend?
This is just my personal list
- Ublock origin in advanced mode to block js like matrix did (or in basic mode on mobile/if you don’t want to waste time fixing broke websites)
- Decentraleyes to avoid loading libraries
- Cookies autodelete to you guess it
- Consent O Matic to auto consent gdpr banners
- Link cleaner to clean copied urls from tracking queries
- Redirector to redirect famous websites to their alternative front-ends (YouTube to piped etc)
I go pretty hard core while making sure it “just works”. People will mention LibreWolf, but the fingerprint resistance causes too much breakage for me. I install uBlock Origin no matter what, enable every single filter except the language lists. I install Dark Reader and set it to a timed schedule which is comfy for me.
Then I install NoScript then enable “Temporary set top level sites to trusted” and enable media under the trusted tab. This fixed majority of the breakage, but you sometimes need to tweak it. You can just not use NoScript if it’s too much of a hassle, uBlock Origin does basically everything you need anyways.
Also of course if you’re using stock Firefox, make sure to turn off analytics and telemetry in the settings, go to
about:configand setpocket.enabled(or something like that, idr) to false. Then I set my default search to duckduckgo.Awesome, thank you!
You can use ublock in advanced mode and replace noscript I think
I’ve had good experience with LibreWolf, but disabling the resist fingerprinting is QoL compromise with privacy easily accomplished in the settings.
uBlock and the right Firefox settings is good enough in my opinion, you can go really crazy with just those two things but you’ll also break a lot of sites, I found a middle ground that I like.
Have a gander at the people behind Brave Software. They’re all cut from the same silicon wafer as everyone else in the Silicon Valley executive biome. And the (lack of) readiness of the information about who is behind Brave is another tell in itself.
That’s just browsers with default settings. Firefox doesn’t have a built in ad block, so it will always perform worse in that test. I guess FF + ublock origin + hardened settings (such as arkenfox) would perform like brave, if not better. For example, if you check android browsers, you see that Mull (a hardened fork of Firefox) performs great, even without ublock (that you can install as extension anyway).
Isn’t that enough (default part). The vast majority of people won’t change defaults.
Yes, I think that’s the point. Most browsers can be hardened, easily or not, but only few have actually good defaults.
brave owns that domain, I believe. Of course they are going to rate their browser te best
Not exactly, the guy who runs it became a brave employee shortly after starting it. but they claim to continue to run it independently.
They were not rated that well in the beginning. Brave contacted the guy who runs the website and asked about the tests he was running, then patched their browser accordingly until it passed all the tests it does today.
it is not even true that “privacytests.org rate it as the best”, if you look close enough, librewolf is best rated, which is an amazing browser BTW.
I don’t run Brave because Brave runs a crypto scam right in the browser.
I don’t care that you can disable it, I don’t care that it might be the only way they found to make a buck out of free software: anyone who dabbles in crypto is instantly sketchy. And I don’t want to run a piece of software as critical as a browser made by someone who’s not 100% trustworthy.
I don’t care that you can disable it
It’s opt-in.
I wouldn’t really call it a crypto scam if they aren’t demanding or asking you buy it, just giving you free crypto
just giving you free crypto
If being alive for 40-some years has taught my anything, it’s that companies “Just giving you free anything” should raise red flags.
Even if it is benevolently intended, I’d be suspicious and very cautious about using their products.
They give it in return for showing ads
Point still stands.
Everyone has to figure out what they will/will not tolerate for themselves in the internet ecosystem.
I’m mostly just advocating caution.
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Well, I’m fairly certain calling people ‘morons’ and ‘fucking stupid’ isn’t changing anyones minds either.
Quite the contrary. Antagonizing tends to turn people against you.
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What makes it a “crypto scam” and what makes “dabbling” in crypto inherently “sketchy”?
Come on mate, there’s no way you’d be aware of crypto in an online space like this without being well aware of why most people consider it a scam.
On the contrary, I’d expect people in these spaces to be more capable of separating the signal from the noise with crypto and not default to “crypto bad”.
Mullvad and Signal support crypto
Mullvad accepts crypto as payment; there aren’t many other options for anonymous online payment methods today. What Mullvad aren’t doing us creating and running their own cryptocoin in support of their advertising wing. The two are not equivalent.
Well then maybe don’t call anyone who “dabbles in crypto” sketchy
I didn’t; that was someone else. But you did make the false equivalency.
I’m not anti-crypto myself, incidentally…
And of course, my mistake. Didn’t mean to falsely accuse you.
No problem. All social media apps on mobile have this issue of obscuring the chain. It’s the nature of the beast.
How did I make a false equivalency when the op literally called any project that “dabbles in crypto” a possible scam? That includes Signal as well as Mullvad. Op’s comment does not in any way indicate the use of one’s own currency, simply abolishing all services using crypto.
Don’t you recognise a difference between creating a cryptocurrency to use it to encourage people to watch ads, and allowing people to pay with for a service with an existing cryptocurrency in the cause of anonymity? There’s a fundamental difference, right? If not, then fair enough - them taking exception to Brave but supporting Mullvad is hypocracy in your eyes.
FWIW, I believe no defender of !privacy should be opposed to cryptocurrencies; for better or worse, they’re the only option for online anonymous payments. But I also object to the proliferation of bespoke shitcoins, most of which are truly pyramid schemes in intention amd execution. But it’s a fine line, I’ll admit.
test post
Of course I recognize the idfference. And I hate brave for somewhat abusing their users like they do. Still, that is not what op said. I won’t repeat it again, but that fundamental difference you are speaking of was not highlighted by them. Possibly leading other people to believe that cryptocurrency is bad to use as a whole, which as yourself has said is not right if one repsects privacy.
That website is run by an employee of Brave, who rates the privacy of browsers based on their default settings (which Brave tends to perform best in). If browsers prompt the user to select their privacy settings on a first run, he scores them based as if the user had selected the worst privacy options.
If he actually spent a few minutes setting up each browser, as is always recommended within the privacy community, that table will look a lot different. But then Brave wouldn’t stand out as much…
He’s launching a self-test tool, for anyone to use. It’s still unfinished (last time I checked), but tweaking some values doesn’t make a huge amount of difference. Where it does, he included a Browsers similar to those settings, pre applied (eg: Librewolf, Mullvad Browser). Plus by that logic you should also test Brave on Aggressive mode, which by default, is set to Standard.
almost nobody does that though. And after a certain amount of time even power users are like “yeah. f* it”. So default settings ARE important imo
They are, but when you explicitly have to go through the options you probably won’t select the weaker ones.
That website is run by an employee of Brave
Like, for real? That’s kinda funny.
There is a summary linked here also: https://lemmy.ml/post/4077614
Chromium, Crypto, Trash UI
So much with anything privacy comes down to trust. Any piece of software’s technical ability to keep you private is of course important but when it comes to a very large (in terms of code and use) piece of software, being able to trust the motivations and intent of the people behind it is also very important.
It’s now reached the point that I personally don’t feel I can trust the person leading the company, or the intent behind the software(s) the company makes.
Brendan Eich is a homophobe and an antivaxxer. It’s hard to trust in the common sense of a man who thinks in these ways.
Brave has been caught inserting affiliate links and ads that track and just recently of selling other people’s data. Any one of these things, taken in isolation is bad enough but this is now a pretty much established pattern of very questionable behaviour.
I also forsee a time when the browser is going to have to make some concessions to it’s Chromium base. I know they’ve said the change from Manifest v2 to 3 won’t affect ad blocking as their Shield won’t be an extension but built in and that they’ll also carry on supporting v2 but the issue goes beyond merely adblocking and they’ve been unclear on exactly how and for how long they’ll support v2. As long as they’re Chromium based browser, they are dependent on Chromium and the whims of Google developers. It’s hard to see a good future for Brave.
Unless someone wants to disagree with me
All the code is opensource and no one has ever raised a privacy alarm in a merged pull request. There’s nothing to fear
I don’t trust browsers that feel the need to advertise themselves
That’s why I use curl and less
