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Brave Browser Hardening
- behnamoh 4y agothis type of stuff makes me wonder if there really ever was any browser that truly cared about privacy. firefox has gone down the hill and last week I switched to Brave. but hardening Brave isn’t the ultimate solution as lots of things will break in future updates.
- celdon25 4y agoBoth are open source, aren't they?
- heliostatic 4y agoI've been happy with Orion. Mac only, but solid and improving: https://browser.kagi.com/ https://browser.kagi.com/
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoThere’s still safari!!
- imwillofficial 4y agoArguably doing the most to protect user privacy.
- rufugee 4y agoWhat is Safari doing that Firefox isn't? I find multi-account containers in Firefox to be indispensable. Does Safari do something similar?
- behnamoh 4y agoNope! https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jacooper 4y agoNot even close, brave is second to only librewolf which breaks a lot of sites. Safari/WebKit is modern IE at this point https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/23/opinion_column/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/23/opinion_column/
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y agoOnly on a mac, unfortunately
- cinntaile 4y agoWhat's wrong with Firefox?
- generalizations 4y agoLast I checked (6 mos ago), it had memory leaks and it was slow. I could leave my chrome/brave tabs open for a week while I worked on a project, but firefox had to be killed and restarted daily or it would eat all my RAM and swap. That being said, I made do with it for years because I love the tree tabs plugin and the containers. But 6 months ago I finally gave up on it.
- cinntaile 4y agoThe parent made it sound like the privacy side of Firefox was slipping, so I was hoping he could talk about any specifics.
- behnamoh 4y agoI had to add a lot to my user.js (or about:config) just to avoid Mozilla's shady telemetry and diagnostics. If you google it, there's even Hardended Firefox...
- cinntaile 4y agoCan't you just uncheck the telemetry box in the settings? I don't get what is shady about it though, you can see what is being sent (about:telemetry) and they tell you it's on by default.
- behnamoh 4y agoThat's not the only place where telemetry takes place. Even with that option turned off, FF has other telemetries working in the background.
- timbit42 4y agoI run Firefox for two months at a time with no memory leak issues. I have 6 Firefox windows open at all times with over 200 tabs open and over 300 tabs open at once at points during the day. Right now it's using 3.5GB of RAM. The only reason I don't run it longer than two months that is I need to reboot for OS updates. This is on Debian.
- nyanpasu64 4y agoLibreWolf is a Firefox fork/mod which actually respects privacy in my usage (if you trust it to be non-malicious). It enables privacy features, and turns off Firefox-bundled ads and studies and telemetry. I had to turn off fission.autostart on an old machine with 4 gigabytes of RAM (and maybe decrease content processes to 1), to make it use less RAM.
- timbit42 4y agoLibreWolf?
- jacooper 4y agoBreaks a lot of sites and disables a lot of things for no reason. Its only for very advanced users.
- timbit42 4y agoLibreWolf? Source: https://privacytests.org/ https://privacytests.org/
- jacooper 4y agoI find the default brave values to be very good. Its almost the best browser in terms of privacy protections by default, only battered by librewolf which breaks a ton of sites(1) And with brave search, you have good search and a good browser too. 1. https://privacytests.org https://privacytests.org
- qsi 4y agoI've been using Brave as my primary browser now for at least four years, and it breaks very few web sites these days. I still have to revert to another browser every once in a while (less than once a month). The Brave experience has made using any other browser painful... Whenever I open a familiar site in a different browser where Brave isn't available (work) it's a jarring and dissonant shock. So many annoying ads everywhere all of a sudden! The crypto stuff I just ignore.
- asddubs 4y agoI never really understood the crypto stuff. BAT isn't mined on the computers of people who use brave, right? so why is it even a cryptocurrency at all, couldn't they just essentially use a non-coin solution? aka a bunch of integers in a sql database
- jacooper 4y agoI never cared about BAT, I just realized its was centralized on top of ETH and then just stopped caring. I immediately disable it and anything related to crypto and I just forget about it.
- rglullis 4y agoThe official story is that Brave runs a revenue share program, so if they wanted to use "real money" they would have to be a licensed money transmitter. To sidestep the regulatory issue, it is much easier to use a cryptocurrency for the payout and punt all the KYC/AML requirements to a crypto exchange. "Why BAT and not just use another existing crypto?" Well, they tried! They started with Bitcoin, but no one wanted to use BTC to tip or contribute, which is kind of a problem if you want to build an alternative monetization strategy for content creators.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoSafari, GNOME Web, Falkon.
- FargaColora 4y ago
- dustyharddrive 4y agobut you need TLS!
- luto 4y agoI think they are referring to cryptocurrency, not cryptography in general.
- Taywee 4y agoHow is HTTPS supposed to work without crypto?
- timbit42 4y agoI think they are referring to cryptocurrency, not cryptography in general.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ea550ff70a 4y agoGet used to it. Crypto related stuff is only getting more influential and adopted. Current prices don't mean anything. Use case and utility of some of them is where it's at. BAT from Brave is a good example of a practical application for an alternative ad system. I have been using Brave with the BAT option enabled for over a year and even though I started as a skeptic, I can now say it works relatively well. Is it perfect? No, there a some bugs in their UI for them. Does it accomplish the objectives it was designed for? Definitely. But the most important part at the end of the day is having the option to participate or not. I don't mind seeing an ad every once in a while specially if I can get a cut of how much it cost to display that ad to me.
- WithinReason 4y ago
- tomatowurst 4y ago
- fswd 4y agoWell, they pay me to use Brave.
- DonHopkins 4y agoBrowsers should't be get-rich-quick crypto pyramid schemes.
- ea550ff70a 4y agoYou don't need to put a single dollar into Brave's BAT in order to get paid in them when volunteering to get ads from their ad system (which companies pay for btw). You can easily sell them for hard cash. Your pyramid scheme example doesn't work here buddy.
- GlassKingdom 4y agoThe browser does a man-in-the-middle attack on webpages. It’s sketchy, dodgy and scammy. It was bad when they introduced it, but in 2022 it completely indefensible.
- ea550ff70a 4y agoI don't think you understand what a man in the middle is or how it works at the browser engine level but sure keep repeating it.
- dubswithus 4y agoAre you claiming that ad blocking is a MITM attack?
- GlassKingdom 4y ago
- bubersson 4y agoNice tutorial. It takes some work, but all that crypto stuff can be disabled in Brave and then it works really well blocking ads and trackers...
- FargaColora 4y agoRather than disabling all the crypto, why not use a browser that isn't infected with it in the first place?
- WithinReason 4y agoRead the second half of the comment you're replying to
- SapporoChris 4y agoActually it's addressed in the linked posting. Hardening does not start at choosing the right tools or networks, hardening begins with gathering information to inform yourself and others in order to stay up-to-date so that you can deal with current and upcoming threats. Tools, extensions and Co. are just a workaround until someone build the right system, that starts by voting and supporting the right politicians and organizations.
- brnt 4y agoFirefox also requires setup (installing uBlock for starters). I find that setting up Brave is not any more work, and then it is indeed a pretty good browser.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoBut that's the whole point of Brave. If you're not interested in crypto, pick a browser that's just a browser. There are better choices: Safari, GNOME Web, Falkon, Firefox.
- mixedCase 4y agoWhat if one just wants a more usable ungoogled-chromium?
- Layke1123 4y agoAnyone ever consider the possibility that crypto isn't needed in a society that is based on trust, and if we all trusted each other, then none of this is necessary? It is almost as if the powers that be want crypto because they don't trust anyone, and therefore perpetuates the problem of needless abstraction?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Analemma_ 4y agoWestern countries are rapidly moving from being high-trust to low-trust societies. The reasons for this are multifaceted, complex, and self-reinforcing, and it isn't likely that the trend will be reversed any time soon. Certainly not within our lifetimes. So we can either stick our heads in the sand about it, or develop technologies to deal with it as best we can. I'm not a crypto fan myself, but I understand why it exists and why it will probably be increasingly important as time goes on.
- Layke1123 4y agoNo one will ever trust a completely trustless coin, because if you can't trust each other, putting trust in an abstract concept isn't exactly a winning solution. Human trust matters, not mathematical trust.
- h-w 4y agoUnfortunately you don’t understand what trustless means in this context. “No one trusts a trustless coin” makes no sense, there is no trust required for it to function (theoretically). It works as expected whether your counterparty is a saint or entirely corrupt.
- Layke1123 4y agoI do, I think. No one wants to use a coin that also let's criminals do dark things with even less scrutiny than fiat currencies.
- stereoradonc 4y agoJust use Vivaldi :-) Simplicity is a virtue. Complexity is a sin.
- colordrops 4y agoIsn't vivaldi closed source?
- brnt 4y agoNearly all of it except the web renderer. You may like its GUI, but a secure or privacy respecting option it is not. Network analyses also show it's a very chatty browser.
- avinassh 4y agoWould be nice if there was a tool which automates all this and hardens the Brave in one simple click