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Brave, the false sensation of privacy

ebin.city

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Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#291

Post by pmurt7 »

wmitty wrote: post #16

> Their adblocker is just a fork of uBlock Origin, This does not appear to be true. Here is the github repo for their open source adblock engine written in rust: https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust Here is a (somewhat dated) article describing it by the authors: https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ > Google will take decisions that benefit their advertisement business, like making impossible to use ad…

> If earning half a penny in a month is okay for you, in exchange of your privacy, because of course, they’re tracking you with Rewards, then enjoy your money.

Lie. Brave doesn't track you. Your ad data never leave your machine (a bit like your bookmarks). The ad engine works privately on your computer and not on Brave server.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#292

Post by imiric »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #11

I find Brave Rewards very egregious. You get lots of BAT and the marketing copy hypes it up immensely without mentioning, anywhere, that you need to provide your SSN and Driver's License to a third-party (Uphold) if you actually, you know, want to cash out. This seems particularly irritating because, let's say you set your browser to show you the max amount of ads for a while. You saved up for a few months, decided y…

It's a shame how Brave Inc. has fumbled the execution of this concept. It's a great idea in principle: users earn currency for their attention (watching ads) or by outright purchasing it and avoiding ads, they get to choose which services they want to support and with how much, publishers get paid without slimy advertisers and GDPR headaches, while still keeping advertising in the loop but in a much more indirect and controllable way. It's brilliant. It would eventually allow getting rid of advertisers from the loop entirely with novel ways of earning currency.

Of course this is a pipe dream with the modern ad-powered web. Why would tech giants have a desire to make changes that would affect their main revenue stream? Advertisers wouldn't be thrilled either.

Still, I think it's the best idea that actually has some merit of working at scale to change how the web is monetized today. And we need more of those. Just maybe not executed by Brave Inc.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#293

Post by jonathansampson »

h_anna_h wrote: post #184

>Brave has built-in telemetry. Brave will make a ton of requests to the domain p3a.brave.com as telemetry So does Firefox, yet this blog post suggests it as a replacement. >Brave isn’t more than Chromium with another skin and a built-in adblocker with reduced functionality. As far as I know it includes additional functionality such as build-in support for tor and ipfs. (and while it might not be the best choice if yo…

Brave's telemetry is private by design; you can read about it at https://brave.com/p3a. You're absolutely right about Firefox's telemetry though, which is often served up from a another process after Firefox is closed. This was covered in more detail on my post regarding network activity of popular browsers at https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/.

You picked apart the author's narrative pretty nicely here. I provided 3 comments (quite long ones) as well with more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27552530.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#294

Post by rch »

_fnhr wrote: post #234
wmitty wrote: post #16

> Their adblocker is just a fork of uBlock Origin, This does not appear to be true. Here is the github repo for their open source adblock engine written in rust: https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust Here is a (somewhat dated) article describing it by the authors: https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ > Google will take decisions that benefit their advertisement business, like making impossible to use ad…

There are more lies in that article. This one for example is so often repeated but untrue: > Rewards is their shitty program that will replace ads displayed on websites with their own. Brave doesn't replace ads with their own. Brave ads are displayed as desktop pop-ups. They can also be easily disabled (which, surprise, the author doesn't mention because of his bias). And the idea behind Brave ads is to give you toke…

I'd prefer it if I could contribute cash monthly, and let the browser distribute the funds based on my browsing.

The notion of getting paid to view a separate stream of ads seems bizarre. It's the 'Ad Buddy' model, but with crypto.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#295

Post by causality0 »

wmitty wrote: post #16

> Their adblocker is just a fork of uBlock Origin, This does not appear to be true. Here is the github repo for their open source adblock engine written in rust: https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust Here is a (somewhat dated) article describing it by the authors: https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ > Google will take decisions that benefit their advertisement business, like making impossible to use ad…

Does integrating it into the browser have any performance benefits over using an extension?

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#296

Post by AkshitGarg »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #266
gman83 wrote: post #18

I always find it odd that we worry so much about how much our browsers are tracking us, but almost nothing about what our ISPs are doing. Every time I've looked into it, it seems much worse. As far as I can tell, ISPs are legally allowed to sell your browsing history to third parties: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/for-sale-your-pr...

You can encrypt your DNS lookups with several different services.

That still doesn't hide the IP you are connecting to unless you are on a VPN. They still know that if you are connecting to 209.216.230.240, it _could_ be hacker news. With the widespread use of CDNs, and hosting of multiple services on a single IP, this won't be 100% accurate, but the ISP can still connect the dots I guess

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#297

Post by oofbey »

losvedir wrote: post #182

Can someone explain the point in the article that Facebook can still track you if the script is loaded from an edge cache and the browser doesn't send cookies? I can think of unique script URLs, but if it's coming from an edge cache, presumably it's not that unique. And maybe some sort of JS-based fingerprinting? But since Brave controls the browser, it's within their control to try to make the browser environment ho…

I think the OP is just wrong here. I personally agree with Brave's statement that they are protecting users here. The assertion that "Anyone who knows a bit about how JavaScript works and it’s [sic] capacities to track you without the need of using cookies will be laughing after reading that." I know a thing or two about JavaScript and I'm not laughing, I'm genuinely confused about what the OP thinks the problem is because I don't see one.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#298

Post by pmurt7 »

causality0 wrote: post #295
wmitty wrote: post #16

> Their adblocker is just a fork of uBlock Origin, This does not appear to be true. Here is the github repo for their open source adblock engine written in rust: https://github.com/brave/adblock-rust Here is a (somewhat dated) article describing it by the authors: https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/ > Google will take decisions that benefit their advertisement business, like making impossible to use ad…

Does integrating it into the browser have any performance benefits over using an extension?

Brave ad blocker is written in Rust and browser extensions in JavaScript, so it should be faster

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#299

Post by oofbey »

So ironic that the OP's website doesn't require HTTPS. The most minimum security practice on the web that's nearly enforced by even the worst browser, and this security rant either doesn't care or doesn't realize their site is misconfigured.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#300

Post by turminal »

didericis wrote: post #115
turminal wrote: post #60

Brave is a scam, but recommending palemoon or icecat a is (for different reasons) also a bad idea.

Can you elaborate on why palemoon and icecat are bad ideas? Haven’t used either. Am assuming they’re further behind on the latest web standards?

They both lack the manpower to keep up. I personally don't mind missing on the latest features, but I don't want my software to be full of old security holes that were patched long ago in upstream Firefox.

Besides, I have once witnessed a conversation between Palemoon developers and some distro's packagers about usage of palemoon logo or trademark or something like that. The developers spoke in a very entitled tone and it was quite off-putting.

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