this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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Privacy

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Saw this in my adguard home query logs.

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[–] simpolomeo@piefed.blahaj.zone 245 points 1 week ago (1 children)

the crypto browser? it's not private and never was

[–] Scavenger8294@feddit.org 8 points 1 week ago

better than stock chrome or edge. Not better than Mullvad Browser.

[–] SwooshBakery624@programming.dev 155 points 1 week ago

Why I recommend against Brave - Luca Bramè.

This article is a pretty good breakdown of why you shouldn't use Brave.

[–] Blackfeathr@lemmy.world 147 points 1 week ago (4 children)

That's the lie they try to sell you.

I swear Brave ran a very successful guerrilla marketing campaign and it succeeded on Reddit. If you so much as question it or suggest an alternative, you get dogpiled on by Brave bros. I don't trust it one bit. I'll stick to FF and its forks.

[–] barnaclebutt@lemmy.world 46 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, haven't they done a ton of shady shit? I always cringe when people recommend the Brave browser. It's like recommending a free VPN.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 41 points 1 week ago

Brave is a protection racket wrapped in a cryptocurrency scam, created by a bigoted fuckwit. It is fractally shit.

[–] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 week ago

Apparently Brave's got some cryptocurrency components, so I guess that's where the cult-like following is.

[–] hietsu@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 week ago

Exactly. Same with Opera GX whatever, which is just a weird chinese spying chrome, with nothing to do with Opera from the good old days when it was still Norwegian (Vivaldi is made by those guys still).

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[–] BCBoy911@lemmy.ca 101 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Just use Firefox for gods sakes, Brave is a complete joke of a browser especially when it comes to privacy.

Yeah, doing any kind of digging into Brave will immediately send up warning flares that the privacy claims are pure fluff. Just use Firefox or Librewolf.

[–] donalonzo@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago

Firefox is great. Librewolf if you're extra keen on privacy.

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[–] 0xtero@beehaw.org 80 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Brave (the company) has a long history of doing dodgy stuff. They are just trying to do what Google did (directing clicks to their own shit), but they're using privacy as their marketing spiel.

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 66 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Roidecoeur@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Can you suggest a better alternative browser for android?

[–] luxliminal@piefed.social 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Mikina@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

~~How does IronFox compare to LibreWolf?~~

Am dumb, missed the "for android" part.

[–] kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I use IronFox too, but I'd say depending on your goal even Fennec+uBlockOrigin is a pretty good setup.

If you want to go chromiun-based then Cromite (similar in scope to IronFox).

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[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 65 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (10 children)

I've never really had a comfortable feeling about Brave. I have no substantiating evidence, it just seems a bit squirrely. Besides the Tor browser, LibreWolf, Waterfox, and FireFox are the only acceptable browsers as far as I'm concerned, tho I don't come down on those seeking an alternative to Google Chrome.

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[–] dangrousperson@feddit.org 59 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

From Wiki:

Brave Software was founded in 2015 by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and former Mozilla CEO who left the organization after coming under fire for his support of eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry [...]

and

In August 2016, the company had received at least US$7 million in angel investments from venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund [...]

Should tell you everything you need to know.

I'd say being 'privacy focused' is just a stick to get non-tech savy/gullible people that want to protect their privacy to use it, without thinking about it twice. Personally, I believe there is 0% chance they don't sell (or simply give) all data they can to Peter Thiel and Palantir.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 week ago

....also to Facebook, also one of the investors. Brave has good privacy protections, but they are selective.

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 45 points 1 week ago

no, brave is just another crypto scam

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No. At least not in the way most people expect.

It does block some tracking and ads that Chrome alone allows or explicitly adds. But it simply shifts that tracking to Brave. The idea was that you'd still get the benefits of that tracking by giving all of your data to Brave instead. I honestly never was convinced by this considering your data is still being sold, just by a different company so it doesn't sound much better to me. Supposedly, according to them, Brave is more trustworthy and gives you more control over what they track and sell, but I don't trust that business model. There's no real incentive for them to do what they said they would.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Isn't Brave just a crypto scam? I have no clue why people trust it so much

[–] BCBoy911@lemmy.ca 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It gets pushed often by reactionaries as an "anti-woke" browser LOL its a complete piece of shit. It's got crypto, tracking, NFTs, AI and ads baked in. Literally everything I hate about the tech industry rolled up into one package. I'd rather use Chrome, even.

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

anti-woke

I find it quite interesting those who protest being woke. The word 'woke' has a long standing meaning to the Black community. The usual suspects using the word 'anti-woke' are almost always American Republicans, and their track record of racial animosity has preceded itself for generations like the stench of a rotting corpse. Given the choice between being woke or asleep, I'll take woke any day.

[–] Core_of_Arden@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

People sadly believe so. Firefox, a few addons and you are good to go.

[–] FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 week ago

It boggles my mind how people still recommend Brave as a good browser for privacy.
The entire point of Brave from the beginning was their own Crypto currency that they wanted to shill.
In their early days they offered a bunch of Tech YouTubers some crypto (via affiliate links) in return for them shilling brave.

Brave is basically just yet another Chromium reskin with custom branding, extra tracking and crypto bullshit bolted to it.
No, the builtin AdBlocker does not make it "worth it". Stop recommending this pile of crap.

[–] mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org 24 points 1 week ago

Brave is like the ExpressVPN of browsers

[–] Melody@lemmy.one 20 points 1 week ago

No.

It sold out on it's privacy promise years ago. Brave Browser CANNOT be trusted if you are someone who must ensure Privacy Preserving featurs must remain on at all times.

I recommend the Tor Browser. DO NOT USE THE TOR BROWSING CAPABILITIES OF BRAVE! YOU WILL BE DEANONYMIZED! Likely anything you'd be using Tor for, you don't want your browser slipping up and leaking anything.

Personally I use a blend of hand-hardened Firefox (Via plugins), Librewolf and Ungoogled Chromium (for very rare cases where the site is actually trusted and requires Chrome to function predictably)

[–] url@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Librefox then? Or what are you guys using?

[–] kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

IronFox, or WebLibre which is pretty new but promising in my opinion

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago

TIL, weblibre exists. Thx stranger.

For the lazy ones. https://github.com/FaFre/WebLibre

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[–] kepix@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

even tho most low level searches and recommendations gonna point towards brave as the private browser, all you need to just look at the options. its datafarming, its running in the background randomly, its an nftbro chrome.

[–] NinjaTurtle@feddit.online 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Don't a lot of browsers by default have pings set up to track usage? Check the privacy section. There is usually a check box about sending daily pings to whatever company made the browser to track usage.

Not sure about the variations though

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[–] that_leaflet@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It’s more private but doesn’t have 0 telemetry. You can disable some telemetry in settings. But it still has to make requests for update checks if using Windows or MacOS.

[–] BaroqueInMind@piefed.social 17 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I'm a grown adult and can check for updates my own damn self. This phone-home telemetry in the guise of updating bullshit needs to stop

[–] Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk 34 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Then use an actual private browser and not some techbro cryptobrowser.

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[–] goatmeal@midwest.social 10 points 1 week ago

Idk what the first two are, but you should be able to disable the usage ping at the bottom of privacy settings

[–] artyom@piefed.social 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can disable this in the settings. Nobara ships with Brave now but with all of the telemetry and crypto BS turned off out of the box.

[–] dajoho@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's a shame this is necessary, to be honest. It's the same argument with Windows users: "you can just run a debloater and fiddle with the registry to disable tracking". It shouldn't be needed in the first place.

[–] funkycarrot@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 week ago

Yeah, Zorin did this recently too. They made some good arguments on why Mozilla's trustworthiness has nosedived these past few years, but awkwardly centered on a ToS change that didn't really amount to much.

They didn't make a case for why Brave is more trustworthy, though.. (and I'm not sure one can)

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[–] wolfiedafloof@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago

I tend to recommend Brave for the ones who aren't technically savvy. For that, its good.

For me who is really into privacy, I've always felt uncomfortable with brave or any chrome based browser. So I go with TOR and LibreWolf

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I use Vivaldi, it's IMHO the only decent Chromium browser, apart European, with a good privacy, no logs, no tracking no third party investors. great services and community.

[–] FacelessOnes@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago
[–] WilliamA@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 1 week ago
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