Me as well, which is why I switched to Brave.
What about ungoogled-chromium or LibreWolf ?
For me, Brave is non-starter. I could never trust my privacy to Brave.
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I like chromium also.
This.
One. Dodgy. Company.
Just a big MITM scam.
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In what way?
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I highly recommend you dig into the history of Brave, like seriously read up on it. If you do, the fact that Brave is essentially a voluntary MITM that you sign up for by installing their browser should become obvious to you. They claim they don’t track you, they do. Brave does not phone home as much because Brave steals your shit in the open, until they get caught, then they find another way to continue doing it in the open, all the while laying it thick with the mea culpas. Trusting Brave is like trusting the guy trying to sell you the Brooklyn bridge.
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If that’s your reasoning, I think I’ll continue to use it. Sounds like little more than the issues already highlighted here for example.
A lot more people, with a lot more knowledge of privacy and security than most people, including both of us, recommend Brave as an option.
Hell, it’s one of the recommended browsers on privacytools.io, which is a site I trust for its recommendations.
Side note: Few months ago I found some drama on Reddit about owner of the privacytools.io and it looks like majority of the privacytools team and community already switched to Privacy Guides (website), Reddit announcement. Privacytools reddit is marked as inactive and there is info to switch to r/privacyguides as well.
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Interesting read from the PG twitter thread!
Seems like a spat because the original PT dev disappeared for over a year, they forked, then he came back and started updating again.
Either way, even Techlore, Naomi Brockwell, among others state it’s fine/recommended to use.
As far as Chrome-based browsers go, it’s the best (least-worst) option IMO. I love Firefox, but recently Mozilla’s design decisions have left a lot to be desired, and until they start designing the browser with users in mind I’ll stick with Brave.
There seems to be quite a few things missing from that link.
- Their original business model of replacing ads on a site with their own ads
- Their whitelisting of facebook URLs
- The fact that they re-marketed completely and claimed to be a privacy browser before they implemented their privacy controls
- The way they have reacted to and handled all of their…“mistakes”
There is probably way more but that is just off the top of my head.
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The first 3 issues there should be considered irrelevant to a current installation of the browser.
The last one however is a point they should have learned from by now.
For me privacy is at least partially about trust. Brave has time and time proven that they don’t deserve any trust at all. In fact, I think they deserve the opposite of trust based on their track-record.
The other factor for me, which is less objective, is their apparent desperation towards monetization. Honestly, I am not against monetization of software. However, Brave seems like they will try anything to achieve it based on their history.
That being said, I am not trying to tell you which browser you should or shouldn’t use.
Just sharing my own thoughts.
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Yeah no worries. I mean Mozilla isn’t immune from worries about their funding model either, being near-wholly dependent on Google of all things for continued existence.
Using FF atm, but still hating the current UX, and any time it’s raised with Moz, all you get is brusquely told “that’s how it is”, despite how many complaints there’s been.
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Someone’s trust, once lost through some act of dishonesty, is much more difficult to regain than to gain it in the first place.
When your trust towards someone falls below the level of trust you feel towards a complete stranger (which, unless you’re completely paranoid, is not 0, but some reasonably small value), you have no reason to do anything to do with that individual or organisation that requires any trust. You also have no reason to give them a second chance (everything else being the same), since a complete stranger gets a head start compared to them, so you’ll likely be better off investing time and effort into relationships with complete strangers.
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I don’t follow ALL the arguments - although I understand many of them. For my own use, I use 2 different browsers depending on task.
When doing things with financial implications, I use a modified FireFox. I do not do other things with it, so as not expose it to any unknown cross-contamination possibilities - IF they exist.
I use Brave for most other things for 2 reasons:
- It is convenient, and reasonably easy to use in a more secure manner than many - by default, with only minor tweaks (easily accessed).
- Despite the missteps they are known for (and I don’t count the ad thing - that’s just a poor idea, and it was always opt-in only) - at least the code is open source, so that betters some of the alternatives right there. Given the ‘rep’, one can be quite sure that someone is looking at it with a critical eye!
Not having the ability to code my own, this seems the simplest (and so far effective) way forward for now. After all, I’m too old and too poor to be a major target! 
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Looks like Nick isn’t happy with the browser he chose 
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Exactly … everything else just doesn’t work. Firefox for me!
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On your phone also?
No … it’s Google Android. I just use Firefox on my desktop in Linux and windows.