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Brave is interesting because its users fall for the 'VPN' fallacy. Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and

Brave is interesting because its users fall for the 'VPN' fallacy. Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever. Or - with browsers - rather than install and configure Firefox to disable the (very limited) telemetry and configure ad blockers etc, you install a chromium derivative with all the Google pieces replaced with a different flavour of mystery sauce. You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google.

varispeed 6y ago
Is Google actually under any scrutiny? I get an impression that they can pay their way out of anything or get a slap on the wrist. I agree though that you cannot check if the VPN provider logs your traffic or not even if they claim they don't log it.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  Did Microsoft pay its way out of antitrust back around 2000? The thing with being protected through paying off politicians is that it works, until it doesn’t.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    They did settle, but it is worth noting that Microsoft is not Google. I consider Google to be much higher on the ladder of evil.
    - Craighead 6y ago
      Subjective statements are just that
  - pessimizer 6y ago
    Yes.
andirk 6y ago
I rarely use the Tor feature which is the VPN "fallacy". It's a widely successful anonymity network w/ no relation to Brave. If you have issue w/ Tor, then dont use Tor.
msvan 6y ago
But people don't use Brave because they care about privacy. It's the whole monetization angle that appeals to people, right?
- dsissitka 6y ago
  I use it because it seems like it might be our only hope for a Blink based browser with minimal Google nonsense. For example, see how Brave, Edge, and Vivaldi (And Mozilla, even though they're not Blink based.) responded to Manifest v3.
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  Tech illiterates tend to think of privacy first, when discussing Brave. Go into any geeky subculture not full of programmers, and ask about a privacy browser. Brave always comes up, the monetization model rarely does
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    Tech illiterates are typically not geeky subcultures, and they say they value privacy when asked but in reality they prefer free and easy to use/access.
    - crocodiletears 6y ago
      I'm referring primarily to gaming subcultures (board and video). Tech illiterate may not be the proper term. But most geeky people I know (even the ones who build their own PCs, and dabble in scripting) have a very cargo-cultish understanding of computing technologies. Dilettantes, perhaps?
      - three_seagrass 6y ago
        Even a cargo-cultish understanding is an understanding and not tech illiterate. I wouldn't call someone who can build a pc tech illiterate.
  - 6y ago
petre 6y ago
I use it because it blocks ads and it isn't Google Chrome, meaning no forced logins, not much BS except for the rewards which I disabled and hidden. I can also block scripts with two taps. Didn't know it had a VPN. On the desktop I use FF, on mobile the UI is quite underwhelming.
axaxs 6y ago
You may overestimate some people, for example myself. I don't like firefox, and I don't like ads. Brave is superb for that use case.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  How is Brave better than Chromium with uBlock Origin, in this case?
  - axaxs 6y ago
    Not a ton of difference on desktop. You can sync without logging in, I guess, but that's pretty minor. However, I require that my mobile and desktop sync, and as far as I can tell you can't ad block Chrome on mobile.
  - antonok 6y ago
    Brave's adblocker is all native code, so it's a bit more memory/CPU friendly than uBlock Origin. There's also some enhancements like CNAME uncloaking[1], which only otherwise works in uBlock Origin on Firefox because Chromium doesn't expose the required DNS API support for extensions. [1] https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/ https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/
    - ignoramous 6y ago
      CNAME cloaking is only the first of many possible mitigations. CNAME flattening would be the next likely angle of attack. Advertisers can very well get websites to run "cloud functions" at the edge (with Fastly, Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel, AWS Lambda etc) under the first-party domain, and the content blockers (native or not) will be none the wiser. This is similar to how content blockers struggle to block ads served from first-party domains on YouTube and other Facebook properties. Exhibit A: https://github.com/samkelleher/cloudflare-worker-google-analytics https://github.com/samkelleher/cloudflare-worker-google-anal...
      - antonok 6y ago
fullstop 6y ago
> Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever. Is this in reference to tor? I use brave because it's fast, compatible with chrome extensions, but a least a little bit disconnected from Google. Trackers and ads are blocked by default, and it's generally a nice browser.
- Miner49er 6y ago
  No, OP is comparing VPNs to Brave. With a VPN, you don't actually gain privacy, you only replace your ISP with some foreign-country entity that operates under foreign laws. Brave is like that, but a browser. You replace Google/Firefox with a smaller, maybe slightly less watched, browser that still does the same stuff.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    In some ways brave is worse. At least with FF there isn't an incentive to sell your attention. Brave is explicitly positioning themselves as a reseller of attention which they then obscure by pretending to focus on privacy. I'm not sure why anyone uses them - they're an ad company and their incentives are not aligned with their users. I find them really untrustworthy and their pro-privacy branding has really confused their users.
    - jmnicolas 6y ago
      Their ad program is opt-in.
naringas 6y ago
> with no oversight whatsoever. for many of us who grew up in 'third world' (and/or 'developing') economies, this is not in any way better to "heavily regulated". I expect that people from very corrupt ex-soviet states will agree with this sentiment.
weavejester 6y ago
> Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country That's nice if you live in one of those countries. Some countries have very little privacy regulations for data collected by ISPs; others actually mandate collection and storage of data.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
layoric 6y ago
If you’re in Australia, no fallacy imo, government mandated data retention laws in place. I believe started that very few gov departments could see this data but has increased over time to the point I believe is accessible for some civil cases and to organisations [0], so please don’t dismiss VPN privacy use case as it is very applicable for some. I don’t use Brave and there are a lot of problematic VPN providers which makes it complicated for those who want to use them. [0] https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/02/25/data-retention-scheme-abuse/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/02/25/data-retention-scheme-a...
sneak 6y ago
Not everyone is perpetually stationary. IP geolocation amounts to city-level coarse location, and accessing a service over time basically shares with them your travel habits: at which dates and times are you in which places? Using a VPN is a good way to obscure that information. Not every website you visit or app you use needs to know that you're in city X on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and city Y the rest of the week. That's pretty sensitive stuff for a lot of people.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
The number of examples within the "tech industry" where users fall for a fallacy is too long to list. In these cases, deception of the user is a prerequisite for "success".
golergka 6y ago
> Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country That's only fallacy if you think I'm using VPN because I care about who has my browsing data. I really couldn't care less. I'm using it because my country blocks certain websites and Netflix doesn't have Arrested Development or West Wing licenses for it.
Barrin92 6y ago
>Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever. which is precisely the point because one of the most popular use cases of VPNs is to send copyright infringement letters to /dev/null. Every single time when VPNs come up there's people talking about all the pitfalls of VPNs when the vast majority of people just want to get past geo-restrictions or avoid being sued for torrenting.
meowfly 6y ago
I'm still not sure what the VPN fallacy is, and I'm asking genuinely trying to understand. If someone goes into private mode (and tor becomes enabled) and visits a site, wouldn't the owners of that site have less information on that person than if they visited from their own IP address? What exactly is the fallacy here?
- gsich 6y ago
  The fallacy that a VPN suddenly protects your privacy. While the IP is a data point used in tracking it's not the only one.
  - d1zzy 6y ago
    Case in point: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/ Look for the fingerprinting result.
- mulmen 6y ago
  The VPN provider knows everything you're doing. You aren't automatically anonymous because you use a VPN, you just shifted the party that gets to inspect your traffic.
- huffmsa 6y ago
  Nothing to do with actual private mode / Tor. It's that you're "safe" because big bad mega corp isn't seeing your DNS traffic or in this case they aren't sending you ads. But you've traded big bad mega corp for up and coming bad mega corp2, so you're not really any safer. Not sure I agree with that in this case.
gsich 6y ago
>Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever. I have seen that argumentation only in reverse when people were defending DNS over HTTPS by Cloudflare.
gambler 6y ago
>Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country US ISPs: - Were given retroactive immunity for their participation in illegal domestic spying. - Often operate in a duopoly, caring not at all about their reputation. - Routinely engage in shady practices like DNS hijacking.
0-_-0 6y ago
Does Brave really capture all the analytics that Chome does? I find that claim surprising.
- festivecake 6y ago
  It doesn't. That comment is just irresponsibly false. This is the extent of Brave's analytics: https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ You can also disable it completely.
vmception 6y ago
That's not why I use Brave lol. At this point: I use Chrome for one Metamask HD sequence I use Firefox for another Metamask HD sequence I use Brave for another Metamask HD sequence Funny to say this, but I use so many browsers mostly for accounting purposes. I wish there was a good wallet that maintained multiple HD paths and assisted in other best practices.
- collsni 6y ago
  Why not just use firefox profiles ?
  - vmception 6y ago
    for one it sounds like then I would have to use Firefox more often, I like the Chrome interface more although I can concede the resource hogging has gotten annoying for two, I don't know anything about Firefox profiles, does that create a profile for my extensions too? Will multiple firefox profiles have different metamask instances segregated?
    - mkl 6y ago
      Then why not Chrome profiles? As with Firefox, the profiles are completely disconnected, and have different history, extensions, cookies, etc. If you don't like Chrome's resource hogging, try something like The Great Suspender.
      - everythingswan 6y ago
        I've been using this combo for a while and it works really well. I have 2-4 profiles open at one time and just whitelist my inbox and a few other sites/apps I frequent while working. Great Suspender makes it totally viable.
      - spurgu 6y ago
        Firefox containers share extensions, but maybe Firefox has profiles as well that I haven't noticed (after using it for 2-3 weeks now)?
toxik 6y ago
It’s also a matter of strength in numbers. It’s impossible to go after every little VPS provider in the world, or at least significantly harder, than it is to just tell Google to shut down person X’s account and give us a nice report.
ElijahLynn 6y ago
Brave is interesting because some non-users have a complete misinformed idea of what people actually use it for. Brave is one of the best things to happen to the web and actually has a chance at saving the web. Brave allows me to easily donate money to creators. I currently fund the internet to the tune of $10/month using Brave. Someday that will be $100/month. Brave removes ads "pre-render" so it is the fastest experience one can get. Other ad-blockers remove them after they have already loaded via JavaScript. Brave does this natively. Brave has features to let users watch ads and earn currency, I don't use that at all. But some do, and it is consensual and fine for them. Brave has an option called "Private w/Tor" and that is what yabones is claiming that "its users fall for the VPN fallacy". Which may be true for a small percentage but yabones is making a sweeping generalization here by implying "all users", which is not even close to true. I don't even use Private w/Tor mode. I don't consider anything truly private on the web and nobody else should either. Brave is one of the best things to happen to the web as the web has become swamped with tracking and ads. Brave does remove all those by default.
- bitexploder 6y ago
  I have been using it along with Firefox for a while. It doesn't have any of Chrome's worst behavior. When Google starting forcing the Google profile stuff into Chrome I dropped it cold. Firefox is alright. Brave is alright.
- deadbunny 6y ago
  > Brave allows me to easily donate money to creators. I currently fund the internet to the tune of $10/month using Brave. Someday that will be $100/month. Isn't this only for sites "signed up" with BAT with Brave keeping the BAT if the site isn't enabled? NB: It has been a long time since I've checked out Brave so my info may be out of date.
- ernesth 6y ago
  > Brave removes ads "pre-render" so it is the fastest experience one can get. Doesn't Ublock Origin remove ads "pre-download" which is obviously faster?
festivecake 6y ago
This comment is just irresponsible. >Different flavour of mystery sauce There's no "mystery sauce". It's completely open-source. >You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google. Brave's completely open about its analytics, and they're designed specially to be privacy-preserving. (No, it's not some naive "anonymous identifier".) https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ And you can also turn them completely off.
- mustuhfa 6y ago
  Assuming some of the people turned off analytics, then how do they know the MAU And DAU numbers? You can never turn all analytics off.
justsee 6y ago
Brave is interesting because it's taking a firehose to the current ad-tech system, and anyone who's spent time working in ad-tech understands it's is a towering inferno of fraud and abuse. Some don't like Brave's approach of an alternative, opt-in ads / rewards system because in their view everything crypto-related or ads-supported is scammy. That's an understandable perception: a significant number of crypto enthusiasts appear to be scammers pumping pyramid schemes, and we've already established the ad-tech industry is a towering inferno. But technically I think you have to concede Brave's on-device ad relevance model is a better way (and the only conscionable one) to run an ad system that delivers relevant ads to interested users, and even directly reward them for their attention. If you think ad-supported anything is a non-starter, then you'd just never enable Brave Rewards, or use another browser (although they're entangled in the current ad-tech system so...) What you say about 'VPN fallacy' makes little sense. By default Brave is the most aggressive in blocking trackers, adware, and spyware compared to Firefox and Google — and this is actually a problem for Brave. Follow their web-compat issues on Github [1] to see the kind of things they're dealing with (an example of the very problematic and kind-of-unresolvable issues that come up include the Duolingo issue [2]). Users can disable shields on a per-site basis to deal with these things, but it's an open question as to whether this kind of friction will increase or decrease, and whether it's a barrier to larger adoption. There is no question though that the Brave team have the most commitment to privacy compared to Firefox and, of course, Google. Your statement that the Google spyware Brave has removed in their Chromium derivative has been replaced by some mystery sauce is based on...? I do find it curious that whenever this little challenger brand pops up on HN there's a predictable surge of hot take / bad take commentary which aggressively tries to paint a picture of Brave as anything but a plucky challenger brand full of technologists who are expending a lot of energy on privacy, security, and moving browsers forward. The accounts trying to shop a myth of Brave as a low-rent scam operation will inevitably find buyers for various reasons, but you'd hope technologists in the main will do their research and ignore, or even become curious as to what is driving this continued negative opinion-shaping... I did mine, and I fell for Brave due to a desire to opt-out of the worst of ad-tech surveillance, get a faster browser, and participate in a novel attempt to bootstrap a frictionless crypto / tipping / payment economy. Not all of these novel ideas will work, but they're worth exploring. For now Brave's been a dream, and when I accidentally use another open test browser for normal browsing, I'm taken back to a gross dystopia of a web experience. [1] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/projects/17 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/projects/17 [2] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/3725 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/3725
FpUser 6y ago
>"You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google." I could care less what some abstract country has on me. My own country - different story.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I could care less what some abstract country has on me. My own country - different story. What some other country has on your country’s citizens (whether friend or for) is a target for your country's security services, by exchange or espionage, so you can't ignore one if you are concerned about the other.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    gp is entirely correct in saying that it really doesn't matter what a country a continent away knows about some random and fairly ordinary web surfer. They probably aren't ignoring the risk of data flowing back as much as noticing that the flow is obstructed and that it is the flow, rather than the foreign counties knowledge, that is the problem. Using a local ISP means that domestic spies will easily hoover up traffic and have easy ways link it back to all sorts of data about you. Using a VPN means that first the VPN provider has to be compromised somehow, the data has to be aggregated into the pool of domestic data - not a trivial task. It is a pretty simple improvement that puts more of a burden on data collection agencies.
  - FpUser 6y ago
    >"you can't ignore one if you are concerned about the other" Yes I can. I understand reasonable security concerns and that is why countries have various security agencies who are being paid to do their job so I let them worry about it. My job is to worry about myself personally and I really do not care about what Timbuktu knows about me. They can't do shit to me personally. My own government and corporations however can. The exception of course are large neighbours and their multinational corporations. I was surprised and irritated when I've discovered that Amazon knows exactly what kind of car I have even though I bought it from a used car dealer without any Internet involvement and I do not keep Alexa and likewise spyware in my place.
deepstack 6y ago
It all comes down to which company (or people who runs the company) do I trust. As of now. Google, FB group are not truthworth with any of my data. I'm still not sure about Brave, however willing to give a try. The founder is the mozilla firefox founder BTW. And with the way how Mozilla suck up to Google. Building an alternative that destories goole is always good. Would like to find out the people who are funding Brave at this point. Anyone here in HN has any clue as to ethics of those VC funding Brave?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
BrendanEich 6y ago
We don't replace Google's account based tracking with anything of the kind. See https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-... In completely unrelated code paths, all open source, we have timing-channel blinded, few bits per answer, automated survey questions that tell us, e.g., how many people reset default search to a different engine (but nothing more). See https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/. I'm not sure why you wrote what you wrote. Assumption? It makes an ass of u and umption, to quote Samuel L. Jackson's character from "The Long Kiss Goodnight" :-/.

varispeed 6y ago

Is Google actually under any scrutiny? I get an impression that they can pay their way out of anything or get a slap on the wrist. I agree though that you cannot check if the VPN provider logs your traffic or not even if they claim they don't log it.

xyzzyz 6y ago
Did Microsoft pay its way out of antitrust back around 2000? The thing with being protected through paying off politicians is that it works, until it doesn’t.
- varispeed 6y ago
  They did settle, but it is worth noting that Microsoft is not Google. I consider Google to be much higher on the ladder of evil.
  - Craighead 6y ago
    Subjective statements are just that
- pessimizer 6y ago
  Yes.

andirk 6y ago

I rarely use the Tor feature which is the VPN "fallacy". It's a widely successful anonymity network w/ no relation to Brave. If you have issue w/ Tor, then dont use Tor.

msvan 6y ago

But people don't use Brave because they care about privacy. It's the whole monetization angle that appeals to people, right?

dsissitka 6y ago
I use it because it seems like it might be our only hope for a Blink based browser with minimal Google nonsense. For example, see how Brave, Edge, and Vivaldi (And Mozilla, even though they're not Blink based.) responded to Manifest v3.
crocodiletears 6y ago
Tech illiterates tend to think of privacy first, when discussing Brave. Go into any geeky subculture not full of programmers, and ask about a privacy browser. Brave always comes up, the monetization model rarely does
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  Tech illiterates are typically not geeky subcultures, and they say they value privacy when asked but in reality they prefer free and easy to use/access.
  - crocodiletears 6y ago
    I'm referring primarily to gaming subcultures (board and video). Tech illiterate may not be the proper term. But most geeky people I know (even the ones who build their own PCs, and dabble in scripting) have a very cargo-cultish understanding of computing technologies. Dilettantes, perhaps?
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      Even a cargo-cultish understanding is an understanding and not tech illiterate. I wouldn't call someone who can build a pc tech illiterate.
- 6y ago

petre 6y ago

I use it because it blocks ads and it isn't Google Chrome, meaning no forced logins, not much BS except for the rewards which I disabled and hidden. I can also block scripts with two taps. Didn't know it had a VPN. On the desktop I use FF, on mobile the UI is quite underwhelming.

axaxs 6y ago

You may overestimate some people, for example myself. I don't like firefox, and I don't like ads. Brave is superb for that use case.

Miner49er 6y ago
How is Brave better than Chromium with uBlock Origin, in this case?
- axaxs 6y ago
  Not a ton of difference on desktop. You can sync without logging in, I guess, but that's pretty minor. However, I require that my mobile and desktop sync, and as far as I can tell you can't ad block Chrome on mobile.
- antonok 6y ago
  Brave's adblocker is all native code, so it's a bit more memory/CPU friendly than uBlock Origin. There's also some enhancements like CNAME uncloaking[1], which only otherwise works in uBlock Origin on Firefox because Chromium doesn't expose the required DNS API support for extensions. [1] https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/ https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/
  - ignoramous 6y ago
    CNAME cloaking is only the first of many possible mitigations. CNAME flattening would be the next likely angle of attack. Advertisers can very well get websites to run "cloud functions" at the edge (with Fastly, Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel, AWS Lambda etc) under the first-party domain, and the content blockers (native or not) will be none the wiser. This is similar to how content blockers struggle to block ads served from first-party domains on YouTube and other Facebook properties. Exhibit A: https://github.com/samkelleher/cloudflare-worker-google-analytics https://github.com/samkelleher/cloudflare-worker-google-anal...
    - antonok 6y ago

fullstop 6y ago

> Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever. Is this in reference to tor? I use brave because it's fast, compatible with chrome extensions, but a least a little bit disconnected from Google. Trackers and ads are blocked by default, and it's generally a nice browser.

Miner49er 6y ago
No, OP is comparing VPNs to Brave. With a VPN, you don't actually gain privacy, you only replace your ISP with some foreign-country entity that operates under foreign laws. Brave is like that, but a browser. You replace Google/Firefox with a smaller, maybe slightly less watched, browser that still does the same stuff.
- fossuser 6y ago
  In some ways brave is worse. At least with FF there isn't an incentive to sell your attention. Brave is explicitly positioning themselves as a reseller of attention which they then obscure by pretending to focus on privacy. I'm not sure why anyone uses them - they're an ad company and their incentives are not aligned with their users. I find them really untrustworthy and their pro-privacy branding has really confused their users.
  - jmnicolas 6y ago
    Their ad program is opt-in.

naringas 6y ago

> with no oversight whatsoever. for many of us who grew up in 'third world' (and/or 'developing') economies, this is not in any way better to "heavily regulated". I expect that people from very corrupt ex-soviet states will agree with this sentiment.

weavejester 6y ago

> Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country That's nice if you live in one of those countries. Some countries have very little privacy regulations for data collected by ISPs; others actually mandate collection and storage of data.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

layoric 6y ago

If you’re in Australia, no fallacy imo, government mandated data retention laws in place. I believe started that very few gov departments could see this data but has increased over time to the point I believe is accessible for some civil cases and to organisations [0], so please don’t dismiss VPN privacy use case as it is very applicable for some. I don’t use Brave and there are a lot of problematic VPN providers which makes it complicated for those who want to use them. [0] https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/02/25/data-retention-scheme-abuse/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/02/25/data-retention-scheme-a...

sneak 6y ago

Not everyone is perpetually stationary. IP geolocation amounts to city-level coarse location, and accessing a service over time basically shares with them your travel habits: at which dates and times are you in which places? Using a VPN is a good way to obscure that information. Not every website you visit or app you use needs to know that you're in city X on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and city Y the rest of the week. That's pretty sensitive stuff for a lot of people.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

The number of examples within the "tech industry" where users fall for a fallacy is too long to list. In these cases, deception of the user is a prerequisite for "success".

golergka 6y ago

> Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country That's only fallacy if you think I'm using VPN because I care about who has my browsing data. I really couldn't care less. I'm using it because my country blocks certain websites and Netflix doesn't have Arrested Development or West Wing licenses for it.

Barrin92 6y ago

>Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever. which is precisely the point because one of the most popular use cases of VPNs is to send copyright infringement letters to /dev/null. Every single time when VPNs come up there's people talking about all the pitfalls of VPNs when the vast majority of people just want to get past geo-restrictions or avoid being sued for torrenting.

meowfly 6y ago

I'm still not sure what the VPN fallacy is, and I'm asking genuinely trying to understand. If someone goes into private mode (and tor becomes enabled) and visits a site, wouldn't the owners of that site have less information on that person than if they visited from their own IP address? What exactly is the fallacy here?

gsich 6y ago
The fallacy that a VPN suddenly protects your privacy. While the IP is a data point used in tracking it's not the only one.
- d1zzy 6y ago
  Case in point: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/ Look for the fingerprinting result.
mulmen 6y ago
The VPN provider knows everything you're doing. You aren't automatically anonymous because you use a VPN, you just shifted the party that gets to inspect your traffic.
huffmsa 6y ago
Nothing to do with actual private mode / Tor. It's that you're "safe" because big bad mega corp isn't seeing your DNS traffic or in this case they aren't sending you ads. But you've traded big bad mega corp for up and coming bad mega corp2, so you're not really any safer. Not sure I agree with that in this case.

gsich 6y ago

>Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country, you send all your traffic through a third party based in a foreign country with no oversight whatsoever. I have seen that argumentation only in reverse when people were defending DNS over HTTPS by Cloudflare.

gambler 6y ago

>Rather than having your traffic logged by your local ISP, bound by the laws of the land and all the privacy regulations in your country US ISPs: - Were given retroactive immunity for their participation in illegal domestic spying. - Often operate in a duopoly, caring not at all about their reputation. - Routinely engage in shady practices like DNS hijacking.

0-_-0 6y ago

Does Brave really capture all the analytics that Chome does? I find that claim surprising.

festivecake 6y ago
It doesn't. That comment is just irresponsibly false. This is the extent of Brave's analytics: https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ You can also disable it completely.

vmception 6y ago

That's not why I use Brave lol. At this point: I use Chrome for one Metamask HD sequence I use Firefox for another Metamask HD sequence I use Brave for another Metamask HD sequence Funny to say this, but I use so many browsers mostly for accounting purposes. I wish there was a good wallet that maintained multiple HD paths and assisted in other best practices.

collsni 6y ago
Why not just use firefox profiles ?
- vmception 6y ago
  for one it sounds like then I would have to use Firefox more often, I like the Chrome interface more although I can concede the resource hogging has gotten annoying for two, I don't know anything about Firefox profiles, does that create a profile for my extensions too? Will multiple firefox profiles have different metamask instances segregated?
  - mkl 6y ago
    Then why not Chrome profiles? As with Firefox, the profiles are completely disconnected, and have different history, extensions, cookies, etc. If you don't like Chrome's resource hogging, try something like The Great Suspender.
    - everythingswan 6y ago
      I've been using this combo for a while and it works really well. I have 2-4 profiles open at one time and just whitelist my inbox and a few other sites/apps I frequent while working. Great Suspender makes it totally viable.
    - spurgu 6y ago
      Firefox containers share extensions, but maybe Firefox has profiles as well that I haven't noticed (after using it for 2-3 weeks now)?

toxik 6y ago

It’s also a matter of strength in numbers. It’s impossible to go after every little VPS provider in the world, or at least significantly harder, than it is to just tell Google to shut down person X’s account and give us a nice report.

ElijahLynn 6y ago

Brave is interesting because some non-users have a complete misinformed idea of what people actually use it for. Brave is one of the best things to happen to the web and actually has a chance at saving the web. Brave allows me to easily donate money to creators. I currently fund the internet to the tune of $10/month using Brave. Someday that will be $100/month. Brave removes ads "pre-render" so it is the fastest experience one can get. Other ad-blockers remove them after they have already loaded via JavaScript. Brave does this natively. Brave has features to let users watch ads and earn currency, I don't use that at all. But some do, and it is consensual and fine for them. Brave has an option called "Private w/Tor" and that is what yabones is claiming that "its users fall for the VPN fallacy". Which may be true for a small percentage but yabones is making a sweeping generalization here by implying "all users", which is not even close to true. I don't even use Private w/Tor mode. I don't consider anything truly private on the web and nobody else should either. Brave is one of the best things to happen to the web as the web has become swamped with tracking and ads. Brave does remove all those by default.

bitexploder 6y ago
I have been using it along with Firefox for a while. It doesn't have any of Chrome's worst behavior. When Google starting forcing the Google profile stuff into Chrome I dropped it cold. Firefox is alright. Brave is alright.
deadbunny 6y ago
> Brave allows me to easily donate money to creators. I currently fund the internet to the tune of $10/month using Brave. Someday that will be $100/month. Isn't this only for sites "signed up" with BAT with Brave keeping the BAT if the site isn't enabled? NB: It has been a long time since I've checked out Brave so my info may be out of date.
ernesth 6y ago
> Brave removes ads "pre-render" so it is the fastest experience one can get. Doesn't Ublock Origin remove ads "pre-download" which is obviously faster?

festivecake 6y ago

This comment is just irresponsible. >Different flavour of mystery sauce There's no "mystery sauce". It's completely open-source. >You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google. Brave's completely open about its analytics, and they're designed specially to be privacy-preserving. (No, it's not some naive "anonymous identifier".) https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ And you can also turn them completely off.

mustuhfa 6y ago
Assuming some of the people turned off analytics, then how do they know the MAU And DAU numbers? You can never turn all analytics off.

justsee 6y ago

Brave is interesting because it's taking a firehose to the current ad-tech system, and anyone who's spent time working in ad-tech understands it's is a towering inferno of fraud and abuse. Some don't like Brave's approach of an alternative, opt-in ads / rewards system because in their view everything crypto-related or ads-supported is scammy. That's an understandable perception: a significant number of crypto enthusiasts appear to be scammers pumping pyramid schemes, and we've already established the ad-tech industry is a towering inferno. But technically I think you have to concede Brave's on-device ad relevance model is a better way (and the only conscionable one) to run an ad system that delivers relevant ads to interested users, and even directly reward them for their attention. If you think ad-supported anything is a non-starter, then you'd just never enable Brave Rewards, or use another browser (although they're entangled in the current ad-tech system so...) What you say about 'VPN fallacy' makes little sense. By default Brave is the most aggressive in blocking trackers, adware, and spyware compared to Firefox and Google — and this is actually a problem for Brave. Follow their web-compat issues on Github [1] to see the kind of things they're dealing with (an example of the very problematic and kind-of-unresolvable issues that come up include the Duolingo issue [2]). Users can disable shields on a per-site basis to deal with these things, but it's an open question as to whether this kind of friction will increase or decrease, and whether it's a barrier to larger adoption. There is no question though that the Brave team have the most commitment to privacy compared to Firefox and, of course, Google. Your statement that the Google spyware Brave has removed in their Chromium derivative has been replaced by some mystery sauce is based on...? I do find it curious that whenever this little challenger brand pops up on HN there's a predictable surge of hot take / bad take commentary which aggressively tries to paint a picture of Brave as anything but a plucky challenger brand full of technologists who are expending a lot of energy on privacy, security, and moving browsers forward. The accounts trying to shop a myth of Brave as a low-rent scam operation will inevitably find buyers for various reasons, but you'd hope technologists in the main will do their research and ignore, or even become curious as to what is driving this continued negative opinion-shaping... I did mine, and I fell for Brave due to a desire to opt-out of the worst of ad-tech surveillance, get a faster browser, and participate in a novel attempt to bootstrap a frictionless crypto / tipping / payment economy. Not all of these novel ideas will work, but they're worth exploring. For now Brave's been a dream, and when I accidentally use another open test browser for normal browsing, I'm taken back to a gross dystopia of a web experience. [1] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/projects/17 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/projects/17 [2] https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/3725 https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/3725

FpUser 6y ago

>"You're still having all the analytics captured, it just goes to somebody with far less scrutiny than Google." I could care less what some abstract country has on me. My own country - different story.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> I could care less what some abstract country has on me. My own country - different story. What some other country has on your country’s citizens (whether friend or for) is a target for your country's security services, by exchange or espionage, so you can't ignore one if you are concerned about the other.
- roenxi 6y ago
  gp is entirely correct in saying that it really doesn't matter what a country a continent away knows about some random and fairly ordinary web surfer. They probably aren't ignoring the risk of data flowing back as much as noticing that the flow is obstructed and that it is the flow, rather than the foreign counties knowledge, that is the problem. Using a local ISP means that domestic spies will easily hoover up traffic and have easy ways link it back to all sorts of data about you. Using a VPN means that first the VPN provider has to be compromised somehow, the data has to be aggregated into the pool of domestic data - not a trivial task. It is a pretty simple improvement that puts more of a burden on data collection agencies.
- FpUser 6y ago
  >"you can't ignore one if you are concerned about the other" Yes I can. I understand reasonable security concerns and that is why countries have various security agencies who are being paid to do their job so I let them worry about it. My job is to worry about myself personally and I really do not care about what Timbuktu knows about me. They can't do shit to me personally. My own government and corporations however can. The exception of course are large neighbours and their multinational corporations. I was surprised and irritated when I've discovered that Amazon knows exactly what kind of car I have even though I bought it from a used car dealer without any Internet involvement and I do not keep Alexa and likewise spyware in my place.

deepstack 6y ago

It all comes down to which company (or people who runs the company) do I trust. As of now. Google, FB group are not truthworth with any of my data. I'm still not sure about Brave, however willing to give a try. The founder is the mozilla firefox founder BTW. And with the way how Mozilla suck up to Google. Building an alternative that destories goole is always good. Would like to find out the people who are funding Brave at this point. Anyone here in HN has any clue as to ethics of those VC funding Brave?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

BrendanEich 6y ago

We don't replace Google's account based tracking with anything of the kind. See https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-... In completely unrelated code paths, all open source, we have timing-channel blinded, few bits per answer, automated survey questions that tell us, e.g., how many people reset default search to a different engine (but nothing more). See https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ https://brave.com/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/. I'm not sure why you wrote what you wrote. Assumption? It makes an ass of u and umption, to quote Samuel L. Jackson's character from "The Long Kiss Goodnight" :-/.