As a reminder, Brave was created by the guy who brought you JavaScript and was later fired from Mozilla for donating to hate groups. Brave also profits from multiple forms of fraud including NFTs and affiliate hijacking.
If folk want to have a chromium-based browser made by a company, take a look at Vivaldi instead ~~(which will keep the old plugin architecture, so adblockers work)~~. It has a limited built-in blocker and extra features, but for now still runs uBlock.
Vivaldi is what I use, and it's absolutely the best Chromium browser I've ever tried.
That said, I'd switch to Firefox in a heartbeat if it could duplicate that sidebar. I use that thing all the time, and it's the only thing keeping me on Chromium.
Firefox fork with features like the sidebar, vertical tabs, and more. It's a vivaldi-like gecko browser, give it a shot.
I have Vivaldi on my android but I do not know how to get adblock working. Is it even possible?
Firefox mobile has Ublock Origin and works great. Even on YouTube.
Menu -> Settings -> Tracker and Ad Blocking -> Block Trackers and Ads
This is misleading. The BAT was a reasonable idea not really a scam.
It's not just BAT; Brave also supports NFTs, which are even more unambiguously a scam.
The company is in bed with the cryptocurrency "industry" which cannot exist without constant fraud, ransomware, and other crimes.
Just a reminder, one of the largest investors in Brave is a right-wing billionaire who runs a corporate espionage agency that contracts with the US Department of Defense to spy on people.
Source of the info?
Well, it's about Peter Thiel, who also founded the Palantir surveillance technology company. As a source for his involvement with Brave, Wikipedia cites this TechCrunch article, which mentions funding from Thiel's "Founders Fund".
I'd rather criticize Brave for other reasons though, like being led by Brendan Eich or supporting crypto.
Just a reminder, Brave was using people's likenesses to solicit donations without their consent, and without necessarily give those people the donations.
Update: Brave plans to address the issue in a future release. The VPN service will only be installed after a user purchases the VPN.
"Oh gee whiz did we do that?! Woopsie doodle! We'll fix it someday!"
Furthermore, no data is sent to Brave from the VPN services. End
This might be true but the bigger problem is I have exactly zero reason to believe anything Brave says about the things they're installing on people's machines without consent. If you're still using Brave at this point you're a fool.
They'll either evil or incompetent. Neither of which I want on my computer
Damn the negative stories just keep coming in regards to Brave. It’s a shame, I liked using their iOS app but I said fuck it awhile ago already. Firefox is my main b ^rowser^
Stop using Brave, jfc. Please use Firefox, it's not the best, but it's better than this trash my goodness how many more scandals do people need to get rid of this crap?
Firefox is the best.
Yeah the first time I tried Brave it the a bunch of ads for their services - and asking about providing info to their partners - at me constantly. I don't understand why people use that PoS
The usual anti-Brave hate wagon, with FUD and pitchforks. They're already working on it:
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/33726
VPN is a paid service, it doesn't connect to anywhere if one doesn't pay. This is just a service installed just in case. And complaining about this while using Windows , the OS with unavoidable telemetry, spyware and ads is just laughable.
Mozilla did far worse "mistakes" over the time (Pocket , Cliqz, Mr. Robot, deal with the worst privacy offenders on the Earth such as Google Facebook, Amazon, CEO pay rise while firing devs and losing market share, while begging for donations... and so on) but they somehow always get a free pass, with people swallowing Mozilla's corpo PR every single time.
Mozilla have some immunity because they do the hard work and actually develop a browser, while for Brave everything that matters is leeched from Google's Chromium.
Lol look at your downvotes. You don't even know why we're all against brave.
Only stupid people care about downvotes. And who are these "all"? A lot of people use Brave happily every day, while a lot of people deservedly leaves Firefox everyday because they realize the scam Mozilla is:
Vivaldi is a better brave. You get built in ad blocking and tracking prevention along with not having built in crypto
And mouse gestures! Configurable tab stacking! Workspaces! Notes and pinned tabs! Tab tiling! Web apps in the sidebar! I love Vivaldi.
Remember when Opera had all of these things a literal decade+ ago? I remember.
Software installs services to make its features operate, including optional default off ones. More news at 10.
Either it does it at install time, or when you try to turn on the VPN after subscribing to it, it pops an UAC prompt to finish installing optional components. That's standard practice, and it's good for security because it means they can flag the browser itself as not capable of elevating privileges. They're not going to put a gaping security hole in their software so that idiots don't write articles about "installing things without your concent". You already consented to installing Brave, you can't be surprised Brave is installed.
As long as it deletes them when you uninstall, this is a complete non-issue.
I guess it depends on how much you trust a company (both now and in the future) to do something they shouldn't with this kind of setup, whether on purpose or though incompetence.
Personally, I don't software silently installing unrelated services to my machine just in case the company decides they want to have it running on my machine in the future.
It is an advertised feature though. It can and will use those services if you enable them.
Should it also not come with the binaries for the VPN feature at all? That has downsides: maybe you're on a laptop trying to bypass a network block that also blocks the download of the VPN software but the VPN would work.
So if it's to come with the binaries, why can't it install the service too, that defaults to off and manual launch? On Linux that'd be a systemd unit, on Windows it's probably an API call of some sort but they basically contain the same information: some metadata, an executable and the privileges to launch it as.
I'd never seen a Linux user complain about <1kb systemd unit file being installed that's disabled by default and only started on demand when the feature is requested as part of a package they install. It just is and doesn't hurt anyone. Don't want it, don't use it.
When I download software, I expect all its built-in features to be installed and usable even if I don't use them, nor want them. It's part of the package.
It's kind of borderline because the VPN really could and should be a separate product entirely, I don't want to launch a browser just to then on a VPN. But they made it a built-in feature that's advertised as such, so it shouldn't surprise anyone.
Especially given its proprietary software. If you're that privacy and security conscious, why are you using proprietary software and not Firefox or Chromium or whatever the latest flavor of degoogled Chromium fork du jour is. The service is nothing compared to all the other crap they could be running in the browser completely hidden from you. That service is super transparent and upfront, if they wanted to hide it they could easily hide it. If you really don't want it to run, you can even set it to disabled entirely, and Brave won't even be able to start it.
If you're that paranoid, you really should be running Linux or at least avoid as much closed source software as possible.
Yeah I mean there’s a lot wrong with brave but this is like getting mad at software for installing an autoupdate service
The only chrome variant that doesn’t seem sketchy to install is chromium. The built from open source chromium. And that’s just because some sites barely function unless you’re using chrome’s rendering.
For everything else, Firefox.
If you need a Chromium browser use Ungoogled-Chromium, Windows version.
Librewolf
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
