that would be the last resort of course, but would you use brave if they start whitelisting google ads in their embedded adblocker? wasn’t it the sole purpose of using brave instead of something else like firefox, or even maybe Chrome (in edge cases where you just have to use a chromium browser)
anyways, the brave-initiated BAT purchases chart above looks absolutely terrible. If I’m not mistaken, they get 30% of the ad revenues for themselves, which is less than half of the 70% that they use to purchase BAT tokens. that means less than $200k per month in revenues, or $2.4m per year. yikes! how many developers you could hire for that amount of turnover? they are obviously dependent on VC money to pay the operating expenses. which is not a sustainable business model, and there will be more pressure from VCs to start monetizing, or shut down.
this might be old news, but still a valid concern now:
for a quick comparison, firefox has revenues of more than $500mn, and Opera roughly $400mn. Brave’s strategy as of now seems to be to increase it’s number of active users, while burning VC cash, to gain a critical mass of users, at that point VCs might be considering exit or sale to another potential buyer with synergies.
This is something I can just not understand: How can you be okay with background updates?
It just seems so strange that a browser focused on user privacy would have “background updates” turned on by default???
What happens if a Win10 PC user has their VPN turned on and Brave decides to do a “background update”? Wouldn’t that leak the IP address of the Win10 PC user especially at a time when the user thinks they’re secure and has chosen a high quality VPN provider?!??!
What happens if a Win10 PC user has their VPN turned on and Brave decides to do a “background update”? Wouldn’t that leak the IP address of the Win10 PC
I don’t see why/how that would leak your IP.
If you are using a VPN, by default that should cover your whole system, unless you take explicit steps to poke holes, or there is a flaw/bug.
How can you be okay with background updates?
It just seems so strange that a browser focused on user privacy would have “background updates” turned on by default???
I think browser updates is a case where security takes priority over many other things. But apart from that, I’m not sure I see the ways in wich auto updates are necessarily incompatible with privacy. It seems to me it is more of an issue of control, trust, and security. But there might be things I’m overlooking.
Why you afraid Brave will know your IP? You probably should use some retro/minimal browser than without any home phoning. Maybe without adblocker, as filterlists should ve updated too and they will know your ip. No extensions as well. But will it be more secure and private?
They host their binaries in Amazon S3 buckets. I’m not sure they’d have the IP. I’m not sure they’d care what the IP is. And they wouldn’t get it unless you are splitting your VPN traffic.
I don’t think background updates automatically occur. I’ve seen instances where I do Help | About and it goes off to think and then comes back with details about an available update. Other times the notification has gone green to yellow to red about an update that was delayed and still pending after several days.
As I mentioned, I want my browsers to be within days of being released, as they are likely the highest risk and run open content.
Why wouldn’t it? It’s definitely a plus for security for the vast majority of users, since surprisingly many are lazy with updating their applications and OS.
No, not more or less than any other program which makes connections. It’s up to your VPN app to hinder connections outside the VPN tunnel.
Brave announced a business partnership with LY Corporation.(source) This company is best known for its instant messenger application LINE, which is widely used in Japan, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, and for operating Yahoo Japan.
As a result, Brave’s default search engine in Japan has been changed to Yahoo Japan.
LINE has been the subject of several incidents of personal data leaks and has been warned by Japanese data protection authorities. (source, source)
Consideration should be given to delisting Brave for partnering with a company that does not respect privacy.
These situations with Brave is getting really annoying. They keep doing small acts that give them plausible deniability but its my waning trust in thier credibility by a thousand cuts
I just want a browser free of grifting thats chromium based why is that so hard?
I don’t agree. As long as it does not impact the product. A company has a product they want to promote and if they think it’s good for the company to do such a partnership, I’ll accept it if it does not affect the product.
also this is only affecting things like Japan, some of the sources you provided are in Japanese.
with that being said I agree with @mangomango and @user1
Not really because Mullvad Browser comes with Leta and Tor with DuckDuckGo by default, but yeah, none of the recommendations should be removed because of this.
Do we have some official documentation detailing the extension of this business? I mean, would be good to learn from official channels what is happening.
Hey @KevPham sorry, I was referring the business (partnership) between Brave and Line, but thanks for the links (it solidify the concern about Line actions). Would be good to have some insight of what they are pushing.
Edit: And just ignore this because we have links in the original comment.
Welp that is awkward. I also had my fair share of private privacy fights with Brave Search to be fair. In my experiences it has been notoriously hard to remove something from their index after the data has been removed the source. It is much easier to do that at Google.
I think Brave does need a business model and it is hard to get a privacy respecting one in a world where everyone is used to pay with data. Not defending them with this but it is a struggle.
I have been looking for alternatives for brave thwt suit convience by having both mobile and desktop version, it is hard to find.
I don’t like this at the same time ks Brave Search good in Japanese Privacy > Questions@tanaka?
+Google, not Brave Search was the default search engine in Japan.
And remember, Brave always blocks ads by default, so privacy-wise impact will be limited. (IP tracking can also take place tbh.)
