I’ve been reading that people started mistrusting Brave. It has to do with the way they handle the BAT stuff, cookie deletion and bug reports.
I like Brave because it’s open source and blocks ads out of the box. I’m trying to be very careful when it comes to installing browser extensions.
Some people recommend Bromite. I think it’s only for Android right now, and I can’t find it in the app store yet.
Is there a better privacy-oriented, OOTB ad-blocking browser than Brave?
My opinion is any browser that claims to protect your privacy while having a ads rewards program cannot be trusted. Because of this I us Vivaldi. Besides being more privacy centric Vivaldi is so much more customizable.
If you want add blocking baked then you can try vivaldi. If you like bromite on android then ungoogled chromium is virtually the same or you can just use Firefox and download the adblocking add on.
Vivaldi is a bone of contention with some users as the ui element of the browser is proprietary. Personally I like vivaldi because adblocking is baked in and I can sync with other platforms and devices like android
If one wants a modern feature rich browser , the development needs to be financed somehow, some form of payment is in order, developers need a roof, food and a life to. Best I’ve found is to work ones way to a solution that makes one feel comfortable with the ‘transaction’. eg. I use a service so what do I want to give back in return?
I think so. Firefox has many annoyances but IMO, with Ublock Origin nothing beats it for thwarting ad networks and other infringements. I’m not into unified hosts files like I use for Android but Ublock Origin added to Firefox seems to be the next best thing.
I agree with @Locutus about Brave.
Bromite is Android only. I like it and use it. Its ad blocking is somewhat weak compared to Vivaldi or Firefox with an extension. Where Bromite really shines though is its webview apk on rooted devices. You wont’t find Bromite in the Play Store but you can download the apk from its web site. Or to stay on top of updates use the F-droid client configured with Bromite’s repository.
Thanks, everybody. I used Vivaldi before. I like its builtin adblock, but now I’m one of those people who are worried about those proprietary parts of Vivaldi.
The website where ads bother me the most is YouTube. Now I’m thinking about using Brave for YouTube and something else for other stuff. Maybe one of those minimal browsers? Although, I value security more than “minimality”.
LibreWolf might be a good choice. Too bad it’s not in the official repos.
I’m thinking about Falkon, too.
Firefox is still the best Browser when it comes to Privacy/Dataprotection/Anti-Fingerprinting , there is no way that other browsers comes even close to this freedom.
Brave is a terrific browser and very flexible and configurable. Based on the open source Chromium project, it will have a similar feel to Chrome, Vivaldi and other browsers that use Chromium.
One can disable the BAT token and Crypto wallet integration. Also one can disable the news feed, ads, and the dynamic tab pictures. Thus is can be a very private browser even more so than it’s default configuration.
Try it out for a week or so. It’s saved me gigabytes of data due to blocking.
Firefox is also very good on the privacy angle. Firefox uses a different web engine, and some sites are not compatible. Firefox needs more market share to keep an open web.
People really make a bigger issue out of this than it actually is. I
People love to hate on popular stuff. Brave is great and they’re doing a good job. Not perfect, but it never is. You can disable most if not all the things you say you’re worried about. On top of that, I think Brave is much leaner than Vivaldi is, from what I’ve heard, at least. There’s also the proprietary code issue on Vivaldi, which may or may not bother you.
I can’t trust Firefox, so that’s not a choice for me. If you really want to go full FOSS, get Icecat.
If Brave is open source, what are the ways it can compromise my system without getting caught?
In my opinion, Brave is the best OOB privacy browser right now. Yes, they have been found doing shady things in the past but it wasn’t too shady (IMO) and AFAIR they didn’t deny and changed those things. And BTW: The so much loved FF also did shady things. (Anybody remembers when they just installed and activated a addon without any user consent a few years ago?).
Anyway, back to Brave: I use it on desktop and mobile. AFAIK it’s pretty reliable in blocking ads and trackers and it was, at least when I did the last test a few month ago, the only browser on Android that passed the EFF fingerprinting test! Bromite didn’t, the DuckDuckGo-Browser didn’t and FF with uBlock, Decentraleyes and Privacy Badger also didn’t pass the test. Maybe just try it yourself, it’s quite interesting do see what kind of information your browser of choice does disclose: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
Just to add up a small detail :
what about Iridium browser ?
Any browser is probably the best front door from the open Internet to your computer. Viewing web pages and content, which comes to the browser to get laid out visually and helper apps (video, etc) are started.
Open source is probably better than closed source, as anyone can look at the Chromium code base and identify security issues that affect all Chromium browsers and get the issuers fixed faster, as well as scrutiny.
Brave is usually 1-2 days up to date with Chrome and Chromium security updates. That’s pretty good.
I’ve used Vivaldi for months but grew tired of its slugginess to launch on my 10 years old laptop. At 1st launch, and each time I’d close then reopen the browser, it took 10 seconds or more.
Brave is slow to launch the 1st time, but then it’s launching quite instantly if I close it then relaunch.
Vivaldi has tons of functionalities, and that’s cool, but I did not really use it. Brave is clean, fast, it works as I want.
When I started with Manjaro, I stuck with Chromium a while. Everytime I launched installed-by-default Firefox, I had an issue with Manjaro forum. The colored vertical bars for each forum categories are “broken” within Firefox. Each Chromium based browser renders well out of the box.
Hence I never kept Firefox more than 5 minutes. I don’t really care (to be polite) with FOSS-above-all. Promoting a (for me) less good browser because it’s full open-source and despising a better one because of some proprietary stuff, it’s dumb for me. Or ideological. Nevermind, it’s another debate.
Vivaldi, as well Brave, are excellent browsers, one cannot go wrong with them. For my current system, I favour the blazing speed of Brave.