Please, do not use Brave.
Please, do not use Brave.
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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I've used Brave in the past because of the Rewards. Once the rewards stopped I've continued using it simply because it's one of the best Chromium options available. I
Rewards and magic internet beans stuff is easy to disable, but not as straightforward as it should be.
I see a lot of this kind of copy paste rants against Brave tossing up past behaviors - the thing is, even with that considered it's a very good browser with one of the best ad blocks I've had on the phone.
Past behaviors are what companies are judged on. If you want a good Chromium option use Ungoogled Chromium or just don't use Chromium based browsers.
For the mobile thing, if you are on an iPhone you can use AdGuard with Safari, and if you're on Android you have pretty much unlimited options. (If you're on an iPhone you've pretty much given up on privacy anyway.)
I’m not trying to start a pissing contest- but how is iPhone a give-up on privacy? If memory serves, the App Store was the first to call out all the permissions app requests and allow you to block, first to do massive tracking blocks that fucked Facebook, first to offer Secure Enclave on the device for encryption, built in private relay, email address obfuscation, usb port locking, emergency lockdown mode, remote wipe, etc etc etc. I don’t really understand how android is anything other than a Google data collection box. If you’re just talking about the software based browser/plugin ecosystem being limited on iOS, I totally agree, but it sounds like that’s gonna change finally- otherwise could you elaborate?
An iPhone is a give-up on privacy because you don't get alternatives. If you don't like your stock OS on an Android phone you can just switch OS (for example GrapheneOS, a very privacy-centric OS.). If you don't like the normal YouTube app you can just sideload a different one. You don't get this kind of freedom with an iPhone. A prime example of this is when, during the Hong Kong Riots where Apple pulled an app that assisted protesters..
Alright- those are fair points. I will point out that the YouTube thing was more about Google than Apple- I never used stock YouTube app until Google shut down the APIs a few years ago. There used to be many alternatives but since they were ad free, Google didn’t like that.