4 posts were split to a new topic: Is there an Android browser that does not leak your timezone?
Brave is one of browsers that i use occasionally, but after reading this: The shady world of Brave selling copyrighted data for AI training
well i’m a bit worried.
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With all the controversies and fears people have regarding Brave, it is still the best browser to recommend to the majority for many reasons, and is still the best Chromuim-based browser for general use. Brave is the happy medium we have in the browser arena. It is a highly private browser, with many very useful features integrated into it, it pulls updates from upstream quite fast, and at the same time we can be sure the browser will be maintained for the foreseeable future, as it is backed by an enterprise.
It shouldn’t be removed from PrivacyGuides unless Brave succumbs to severe enshi**fication.
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I think we should consider removing Brave for Android and consider recommending Mulch or Cromite instead.
Also, is there anything keeping Vanadium from being added to recommendations?
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I feel like we should wait to see how Brave responds before jumping the gun. If Brave refuses to fix this, then I’d agree with its removal.
This was discussed here:
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Response from VP of Engineering at Brave:
Thanks for the report folks - this is a known issue
We depend on Google Play Services for Safe Browsing, Brave Rewards, and more.
To recap: this dependence on Google Play Services is expected and we don’t have plans to address.
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That was in response to the general issue of removing Google Play Dependencies from Brave before this issue happened. Some features not working vs. the entire app being broken is completely different, so I hope they’ll be willing to fix it.
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If there is, I’d say it’s because it is only available on GrapheneOS currently. They do plan to make it available for other Android OSes but that hasn’t happened yet and it won’t be as hardened.
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One thing I found weird with Brave was that its default setting was to “update in the background” even if the Brave App was closed on my Windows 10 PC??? 
I’m ok with background updates to what is probably the biggest target we hold on our computers for security.
Brave on Linux doesn’t auto update. But when new browsers are available to install, that’s my queue to update my system when I have some free time to recover any side effects.
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I want to like Brave, I really do. I trust my gut instinct in thinking there is something off with them or maybe it’s because I dislike the Chromium engine because Google has its filthy paws all over the code and has made it its girlfriend!
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The entire aesthetic and mentality of Brave seems very tacky, juvenile, capitalist and non-neutral, I do not like it. However, this is by no means exclusive to Brave. In essence, the browser does not pretend to take a neutral unbiased standpoint. It just looks very unprofessional.
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What do you suggest in its place then?
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I watched this one now. It starts around 5 minutes. Before is just a repeated message that browsers aren’t bullet proof but more focused on repeating the Brave word. The first point is about the embedded tracker protection from Brave, it criticizes the marketing made by the company regarding its capabilities, fair enough but a bit misleading because it doesn’t really make it weak like he wants it to sound.
Then he says around 7:56 that Brave blocks all ads except those that are part of the program awards which I believe you can actually opt out this, not sure.
After that he reproduced the Irish study that classified Brave as the most private Browser among 5 candidates but he used Linux instead of MacOS or Win and he affirms that his traffic sent data to websites included in the Brave Awards program and some telemetry, he said that his telemetry option was disabled and still Brave was sending data out. Isn’t this already fixed? It is a 2 years video.
Around 14 minutes he starts to talk about Chromium security issues which I think totally deviated the focus but I’m probably biased. Honest was difficult for me to watch it, I feel a bit tired to enter in those discussions. It compared fingerprint with TOR which isn’t really a fair fight and is not the purpose of the tool.
Finally, 18 minutes bring back the coins polemic and the president stupid reaction. Then it finishes it talking about the included Google Search option by default in the search bar on Brave.
He concludes saying that it is better in privacy than Chrome and Edge, then says that it is similar to Firefox in terms of privacy both without any changes. He considers Firefox with changes more private then Brave in a computer. Which basically aligns a bit with I believe what we see discussed here. It closes the video recommending the dead Bromite if you are looking for a Chromium browser.
I think the video was a bit of alarmist, exaggerated and the main point was to vent about the Brave program awards to get to similar conclusions that we already have about the browser. It was kind of a 23 minutes wasted.
From my DNS logs on Windows browser.
1 is allowed, 0 is blocked.
From my policies
The problem with Brave is more about the business model and VC funding than anything else. At some point they have to find a way to make money, but the way many of their users opt out of all the ads, and disable all the crypto web3 crap, it’s eventually going to fail.
whatever ad revenue that brave collects, they initiate an automatic purchase of bat tokens for the amount of 70% of received ad revenue. Take a look at the dollar amount of the purchase in this chart:
Although the number of users has skyrocketed, they aren’t simply making enough money. Unlike firefox and even Opera and Vivaldi, which can generate revenue by offering their default search engine, Brave can’t choose this option, since they are blocking all the ads by default, unlike the other two. That’s why they developed their own search engine.
Eventually they will run out of VC money to burn, and they have to make some money or shut down. I don’t see that happening with Brave, which will make it not a long term option
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It would be easy to make an exception for the search engine’s ads by default and offer a toggle to change that. Many Firefox users use an ad blocker and Vivaldi has one built-in and still they get a lot of money from Google.