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Why I recommend against Brave. (thelibre.news)
submitted 3 weeks ago by Tea@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
303 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If you are keen on personal privacy, you might have come across Brave Browser. Brave is a Chromium-based browser that promises to deliver privacy with built-in ad-blocking and content-blocking protection. It also offers several quality-of-life features and services, like a VPN and Tor access. I mean, it's even listed on the reputable PrivacyTools website. Why am I telling you to steer clear of this browser, then?

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[-] Kiuyn@lemmy.ml -1 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah brave has it own issue, but overall it is still more privacy respecting than chrome or edge. Brave is personally not my choice. I use librewolf. Still, if someone ask me for a browser to use for their privacy journey I will undoubtedly tell them to just use brave. Firefox(and the forks) isn't a choice for most normal people it often break Captcha. Some website even straight up just don't allow Firefox based then tell you to use chrome. I am not by anyway try to defend Brave action, but I can't see much choice that just work for people who don't even know what an OS is.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 weeks ago

Over Vivaldi?

[-] Kiuyn@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I know that I am overly paranoid but they do the weird user ID thing. It it opt in as they said in their privacy policy.

When you install Vivaldi browser (“Vivaldi”), each installation profile is assigned a unique user ID that is stored on your device. Vivaldi will send a message using HTTPS directly to our servers located in Iceland every 24 hours containing this ID, version, cpu architecture, screen resolution and time since last message. 

We anonymize the IP address of Vivaldi users by removing the last octet of the IP address from your Vivaldi client then we store the resolved approximate location after using a local geoip lookup

At least to my knowledge brave do not do anything like this or maybe it is opt out by default. But honesty, I think from now, I will recommend both of them and just let people choose.

[-] GroupNebula563@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

There's always Ungoogled Chromium. If you do want to suggest Brave to people, please tell them about these downsides as well.

[-] Kiuyn@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

Ofc I will try my best to tell people about up/down side of a product. When it come to ungoogled chromium do they still support manifest v2? If yes then it will be also a great choice for desktop.

this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
839 points (95.3% liked)

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