I’m currently using Vivaldi at the moment but keep seeing Brave being recommended as a better browser due to it’s built-in features.
How do these two actually compare when it comes to privacy though? Currently, I have uBlock Origin installed and use DuckDuckGo as my default engine, so this should be pretty much equivalent of using Brave, right?
Hoping to hear other thoughts from people with more experience in this field than me.
Vivaldi has a tweakable to improve your security. It ask you on first run how private and how feature packed you want the briwser to run.
Its unfortunafe that the orivacy community cant see vivaldi as a whole oackage with many feature and privacy settings, and and a ceo woth privacy goal.
I am using vivaldi and did try brave on mobile. To “secure” brave followimg the guide, I had to disabke a lot of stuff, including brave owned cryptocurrency integrated in the browser. I abandoned this and went back to vivaldi.
Vivaldi has no feature tracking analytics inside the app, their bookmark/notes sync is E2EE, And Jon S. von Tetzchner has been running opera before vivaldi, before it was aquired by chinese for data gathering.
Here are some interesting links to read How (not) to track product usage | Vivaldi Browser
“Wrong to turn the internet into a surveillance economy”, Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner at Web Summit 2023 | Vivaldi Browser
You cannot only trust tool/software. You need to thust the team and I can’t trust brave team. I do trust john for more than 10 years and the browser is feature packed, which is perfect for me.
Check out Privacytests.org, it’s a website that shows you the privacy features enabled by default on browsers
Vivaldi is very heavily behind Brave. It lacks fingerprinting protection, doesn’t have full state partitioning like Brave (see here), makes various direct connections to Google (if that’s a concern for you), etc. Also like @SkewedZeppelin pointed out, it’s closed source. They try to claim it’s “partially open source” just because it uses Chromium, which doesn’t make much sense to me. I guess by their logic, Edge, Chrome, Opera, etc. are “partially open source” too…
I’d definitely avoid it.
Of course, Brave is much better than Vivaldi if you only look at the point of privacy. However, they explain why they make the UI component closed-source, and I definitely understand it.
The only thing frequently mentioned the paragraph in their privacy policy about a unique identifier which is necessary for the ad and search engine deals I think.
For me, it’s a fair compromise with the features they provide. I use it mostly for work purposes.
One interesting I found is that like Brave, Vivaldi’s own tracking protection lets you customise filter lists, unlike Firefox.
AFAIK, Vivaldi doesn’t really do anything to enhance privacy or security beyond a builtin adblocker and maybe a couple other things.
Currently, I have uBlock Origin installed and use DuckDuckGo as my default engine, so this should be pretty much equivalent of using Brave, right?
Not really. It is more equivalent to using a mainstream browser like Chrome/Chromium with duckduckgo search and uBlock Origin installed.
Like Firefox, Brave is a privacy-centric browser that does a lot of big and small things to improve privacy and in some cases security. Many of these changes are ‘under the hood’ (not things that are obvious to average users or visible in the UI. But it is those under the surface changes that often have the biggest impact.
A built in adblocker is a nice convenience and a sensible decision, but realistically that saves about 60 seconds of effort compared to installing a browser extension.
Vivaldi w/ adblocking and a private search engine might be a fine fit for you, for most of us privacy isn’t the only factor. But don’t mistake it for being a privacy-focused browser.
My impression is that Vivaldi is Chromium + more features, and a refreshed/creative UI. As you can see in the privacy comparison @davidcollini and @Sharply linked to, the privacy features Vivaldi has and lacks are virtually identical to Google Chrome, not to Brave or a well configured Firefox (represented in that test by either Librewolf or Mullvad)
Not very private to mark users with unique id… Also Vivaldi is a rare example to not allow users to change to custom search engine in mobile version, because greedy Vivaldi won’t earn money. Brave ads are optional, looks more like “users first, money second”?
At least, they are transparent and don’t fool their users by injecting referral links or installing VPN secretly on windows.
Greedy Vivaldi allows you to change search engine on iOS. I reinstalled the app to try it again.
On Android, Here are the instructions. Search the web with Vivaldi on Android | Vivaldi Browser Help
So, there is no need for fanboyism for any browser. Just state the facts.
Edit: I misunderstood @KeepItSimple your point. You mentioned about a custom search engine, whereas I thought about changing the default SE. Sorry for misunderstanding.
The fact is Vivaldi do not allow to use custom search engine. Your screenshot shows it.
You can change the search engine on mobile. Just add it on desktop, enable sync, then it will show.
