I have seen many people in this community either talking about switching to Brave, or people who are actively using Brave. I would like to remind people that Brave browser (and by extension their search engine) is not privacy-centric whatsoever.
Brave was already ousted as spyware in the past and the company has made many decisions that are questionable at best. For example, Brave made a cryptocurrency which they then added to a rewards program that is built into the browser to encourage you to enable ads that are controlled by Brave.
Edit: Please be aware that the spyware article on Brave (and the rest of the browsers on the site) is outdated and may not reflect the browser as it is today.
After creating this cryptocurrency and rewards program, they started inserting affiliate codes into URL's. Prior to this they had faked fundraising for popular social media creators.
Do these decisions seem like ones a company that cares about their users (and by extension their privacy) would make? I'd say the answer is a very clear no.
One last thing, Brave illegally promoted an eToro affiliate program making a fortune from its users who will likely lose their money.
Edit: To the people commenting saying how Brave has a good out-of-the-box experience compared to other browsers, yes, it does. However, this is not a warning for your average person, this is a warning for people who actively care about their privacy and don't mind configuring their browser to maximize said privacy.
You're right, but you can't reason with them.
They just repost the same dozen articles from the same places about the times that brave did stupid shit to make money three-four years ago.
Ohh the start page is scummy! yeah i changed it Ohh they have crypto, yeah i don't use it Ohh there's an icon for it on the task bar, yeah i turned that off. Ohh they'll sell your data. My data's been sold by worse.
Ohh google will sell your data. That was already the worse.
I'll get downvoted into the ground, but right now, Brave with shields up + privacy badger is the only browser I can run with javascript enabled that does a half decent job at anonymizing my fingerprint, verifiable by https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
"your browser has a randomized fingerprint" I don't see that anywhere else that's more reputable.
I'm less worried about them selling my crap than Amazon and Google tracking me through my fingerprint.
As long as they manage to disable the ad bullshit google is shoving in the browser, I'll keep using them. I also have a copy of firefox kept in sync with brave in case I never need to walk away.
I was curious and got that same fingerprint result on Firefox for android set to strict with privacy possum, ublock origin and ghostery addons.
I'll give it a shot in windows. one sec…
No good.
I suspect it's because you're on Mobile. Not a lot of unique plugin combos and screen layouts.
Brave + Privacy badger outright lies on the browser interrogation.
I also just tested on windows with Strict privacy set and the 3 addons mentioned and I got my browser has "strong protection against web tracking" and unique fingerprint output.
Not trying to say you're wrong or anything just playing devils advocate and sharing what I'm seeing.
Unique fingerprint is bad.
Let's say you signed up on my econmerse website. Let's say you gave me your name phone number, address, what have you. I can collect information about your user agent screen resolutions and layout and list of plugins and generate a unique fingerprint tied to that data.
I can then sell that fingerprint along with your phone number and email address to anyone that is interested.
Something like Lexus Nexus goes and buys that fingerprint from me, and they can now correlate your "anonymous" browser session with name address and phone number.
DuckDuckGo does this out of the box.
Safari + Privacy Badger too (I use Safari as my work related browser).
But if Brave works for you then that's cool.
Can't do safari, but I'll check out ddg
edit: Did DDG install in windows, It still has a unique fingerprint, failed that part of the coveryourtracks test for fingerprinting
I figured I'd just install one of the privacy extensions. It does not support extensions. No privacy addons, no external password managers.
Of a lesser worry, they're still openly selling off tracker data to microsoft (data as of 2022) but to be fair brave might be selling my data to them in different ways.
I'll keep my eyes out, but it looks like for now, DDG is a no go.