I don’t like brave because Brandon Eich (CEO, formerly with Mozilla) doesn’t support gay marriage and was pushing anti-vax stuff on twitter. I don’t look for this shit to titillate my tits like some folks, but when it hits me in the face I can’t ignore it.
When fact checking myself I found even more controversies, but I’m not wasting time reading articles that feed a confirmation bias.
It’s crazy to me that people ever thought brave was “privacy focused” when it was clear that they were trying to jump on the crypto bandwagon with their own in-network crypto and ad network. It was always just a reskinned chrome with ublock built in and then their crypto and ad network tacked on top
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He’s also the creator of JavaScript if that irks you any more.
it does
Ok. Chrome sucks. Brave sucks. What’s good. Firefox?
Firefox is great.
Firefox with good plugins is even better!
Absolutely! Another really good fork of FF to check out is Floorp I’m thinking of making it my main and going steady :) https://floorp.app/en/
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he uses this post as the sole way to access the internet. He is forever trapped here with no way out. He weeps for there are no memes to him but his condition, as he slowly falls into the pit of insanity. He is forever condemned to read about Brave browser quietly slippin VPN services, and the occasional comment. But eventually the activity will die, and he will be condemned to a lifetime of loneliness until bit-rot will consume the thread or death will free him of his pain.
It’s like his personal version of when the sun dies for an immortal.
😆 How did I manage to do that? LMFAO
Wow man, you should write a short novel
😄
OMG fixed. Thank you :)
Unless browser fingerprinting is your concern, in which case the most generic, unmodified browser is best (e.g. Tor).
But that is a huge topic for another thread.
Overall you‘re right but in which world is tor generic and unmodified 😂
The Tor browser is a modified version of Firefox, but you are not meant to modify the Tor Browser, in order for everyone using the Tor Browser to look the same and blend in. This is done for maximum privacy and anonymity.
It’s not possible to identify you if you use the tor browser without changing the window size or any other settings, because the fingerprint is literally the same amongst everyone that uses it this way. So you kind of blend in with the masses, it’s neither generic nor unmodified, I give you that :D
Simply the OS already makes that difficult, true. Nonetheless, it’s one of your best bets.
For those who truly want to stay private, installing plugins on the Tor browser is obviously a no go. Changing any setting or even the window size should not be done. Seriously.
And I’d venture that Tor on phones might be the most homogenous, though that still isn’t saying a lot, sadly. Plus, smartphones are a privacy nightmare regardless (tip of the iceberg).
In the end, fingerprinting makes true privacy very challenging. Great introduction to the topic.
Edit: spelling
This is the way
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And LibreWolf is better. It’s Firefox with all of the privacy settings preconfigured and uBlock Origin preinstalled. Also, crap like Sponsored sites and Pocket are removed.
Been very happy with Librewolf. Thought it would be another one of those softwares recommended by linux-losers but which never actually works, but it’s quite the opposite.
Is LibreWolf still a version or two behind on Gecko?
AFAIK the most recent Firefox version is 118.0.2 and LibreWolf is based on that
Word. Last I had looked, they lagged a version or two behind on the base FF version. Likely just a lack of contributors or something then. Ty.
They used to lag behind, but now they caught up, so I can recommend LibreWolf to anyone without worries from a security perspective.
Good call
How is Librewolf different from Mullvad browser, which is supposed to be Tor browser (hardened FF) without the Tor?
The Mullvad Browser is based on the Tor browser, but it doesn’t use the Tor network, whereas LibreWolf is based on Firefox + arkenfox user.js. LibreWolf is better for normal day-to-day browsing, where as Mullvad is meant to be used for high privacy/security tasks. Mullvad is kinda hard to daily drive, because it can’t be configured to save cookies, you can’t really use extensions and it lacks some other things. These features were removed in the Tor browser, because as I said, it’s meant for high thread model usage. Edit: I like the Mullvad browser and I use it myself, but not as my daily driver.
High threat*
Not trying to correct you at all, only for ppl’s understanding :)
Btw ty for mentioning Mulvad Browser. I liked it honestly but it’s still new, you feel me.
Thanks, just realized that this is not !privacy@lemmy.ml and people here are probably not aware of threat modeling. But in this context just the word ‘thread’ might actually fit better as the threat model pretty much stays the same.
Waterfox is similar, though it doesn’t install additional extensions but comes with a bit of look and feel customization options instead. It restores those non-floating tabs from quantum by default and is pretty speedy.
Waterfox is more for look and feel, whereas LibreWolf makes significant privacy improvements. You can choose for yourself. Btw: You can also customize the UI on LibreWolf, just enable userChrome.css customization under Settings -> LibreWolf -> ‘Allow userChrome.css customization’. Now, you can customize everything you want.
Well yes, Wolf is a lot more focused on privacy, but it’s also a secondary goal for Waterfox. In 6.0 they enabled DNS over Oblivious HTTP (no idea what that means but you probably do) by default and incorporated yokkoffing’s Betterfox preconfig of user.js. It’s for those who are concerned about privacy but not nearly as much as the privacy community. For me, I’d rather have cookies.
they enabled DNS over Oblivious HTTP (no idea what that means but you probably do)
It’s basically the standard DNS-over-HTTPS functionality that is already present in almost every browser but routed over a special proxy server. Unfortunately though, Firefox uses Cloudflare services for this.
For me, I’d rather have cookies.
I also have LibreWolf configured to store cookies. It blocks 3rd-party cookies though.
And the only thing greater than Firefox is Librewolf.
Or hardened Firefox, which is pretty much the same thing (I use Librewolf myself for convenience).
I love Firefox, used it for years. However I eventually had to switch because of weird bugs and issues with functioning sites. In my sparing personal usage I didn’t run into many issues, but using it at work I ran into really weird issues all the time.
I’m team Firefox, very happy here. There’s a small amount of optional telemetry to disable to maximise your privacy, and it has the best plugins because there’s a lot of choice and they’re not purposely crippled.
Plus you can use pretty much any plugin on mobile. this is the biggest feature for me.
I like Firefox because it allows, Atleast for now, customization via userchrome.css files. I once tried Edge and hated it’s bloated right click context menu. Meanwhile, in Firefox, I can trim down the context menu to only basic elements.
I do wish Firefox had proper PWA support, but otherwise I have been using it as the main browser on both PC and phone(since uBlock Origin is supported on it, the only Chromium browser to support it is Kiwi Browser on Android).
@kirk781 @Deebster I’m using this, I’m not satisfied with the solution but that’s what we’ve got https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/
Yes, this one I think I tried some time before. It is not perfect as you said but it is the closest Firefox has. I think I will give it another go to see how the extension has matured.
There’s probably an addon for Firefox that gives some PWA support
There does exists one. But when I last tried it, the experience was worse than what a native integration would give. It wasn’t streamlined as in other browsers. It doesn’t matter much since I only use YouTube Music as a PWA, which I have a relegated to another window in another browser.
Off topic, but screw you Google, for not giving a native app. Spotify meanwhile has command line third party clients even(looks at ncspot) for Premium users.
Check out this custom YouTube Music desktop client: https://github.com/th-ch/youtube-music. It has neat features like an adblocker and a download feature and many more things built-in and it’s open source. It’s available for Windows, macOS and Linux.
It still uses electron though, but we live in this timeline after all.
Firefox and Mull (a Firefox fork) have your privacy in mind. They work as good as Chrome and don’t fuck you without asking.
There is Fennec available on F Droid that is basically Firefox with some blobs removed. Not as hardened as Mull but still a worthy option. There is one more browser based on Firefox called Iceraven for Android but it is not available on F Droid even. Though it supports a much wider variety of extensions than mobile Firefox does as of now. The downside is that it gets security updates usually later than Firefox, being an independent project.
Vivaldi is a good Chrome replacement.
It’s really great! Been using it for nearly a year now and love the influx of privacy friendly features.
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So? There is no way for the vast majority of users to read or understand the source for something like Firefox - to the point it may as well be closed source. Agreed of course plenty of security researchers will be examining the code which they can’t with Vivaldi - but presumably if that was a security advantage Firefox would have less vulnerabilities when compared to other browsers. (Actually would be interested to see if this is the case!)
Firefox is the least sucky.
Floorp is my favorite Firefox fork!
Cool, that kinda looks like vivaldi except based on firefox.
It’s the closest I’ve been able to find to vivaldi. Unfortunately no one does workspaces as good as vivaldi, but their implementation deleted all my workspaces one day, with no back up, and that was after several other total wipes of my windows/tabs.
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It’s got its problem but it’s my preference
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That feature was originally meant to be an image sharing platform, but had an unfortunate name and the button being called “Save” (although it did have a cloud icon on it) didn’t help either. Long story short, people mistook it for a screenshotting tool.
It was definitely a blunder, don’t get me wrong, but it was dumb rather than malicious.
Tbf, when Mozilla realized their blunder they cut out the sharing part and left it just as a screenshot tool because that’s the part that people liked.
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This was straight up from the malware dark pattern cookbook.
To what end? They didn’t do anything to exploit it and deleted the sharing platform as soon as the confusion became apparent. What was Mozilla’s nefarious goal, to dig through people’s screenshots? 🙂
It IS a screenshooting tool.
It is now. Originally it was just a tool to capture pages as images and share them online. If it had been called “Share” they could have avoided the whole debacle.
The sharing part was great.
This only goes to show how conflicted the whole thing was. You can’t find two people who liked the same two aspecte of it. 😅
Trust me, you can’t get such a confusing mess on purpose. Please also remember who you’re dealing with, this is Mozilla, the inheritor of Netscape, which previously gave the world such blunders as Netscape 6.
This was a Pilot program that mixed multiple goals together and ended up as feature gore. I also wish they could have salvaged the sharing platform too but rescuing the image capture as a screenshot tool was a pretty good outcome, all things considered.
PS: Depressing how many of you seem to consider such a drastic violation of privacy acceptable.
It’s more that I had hoped we left everyone who acts like any little thing Firefox does is the worst and most egregious privacy violation in the world back in r/Firefox where they let all the Brave astroturfing take over.
Sure, you’ve got one significant issue (that was already mitigated and addressed), but you’re ignoring how unique it was while also saying there is “many, many more” without any hint of what they would be. Is “The Megabar exists” one of them?
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That site isn’t a list of egregious privacy violations, it’s some random guys inane and hyperfocused ranting.
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A lot of people lost trust in them after they sneakily installed an extension on users’ browsers to promote Mr Robot.
Which browser do you recommend?
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Just a reminder, any time you see a “tech” youtuber with brave installed, they’re not going to be an excellent source of information
What browser signifies an excellent source of information? Ice weasel? w3m?
Lynx
raw dogging straight html
Haha, my browser is called curl
I have Orion (macOS only for the time being) and it’s sooo good.
The amazing part is that it even works as a daily driver if you’re a not-so-techie person/normal user… but then on top there are all these little extra features and optimizations that make it like Safari if Safari was actually good.
I would at this point a) not be able to go back to either Safari or Firefox (edit: nor Ungoogled Chromium) as well as b) immediately trust an Orion user on most of what they have to say about a “tech” related opinion :D
Based on your comment, I’ve just downloaded Orion to give it a shake. Very much enjoyed the OS X-esque intro video. Took me right back to installing Snow Leopard for the first time.
Sounds interesting. I’d thought I’d heard of all the browsers that exist lol. Gonna give it a spin .
Wow, Orion is pretty slick! And Orion+ doesn’t offer any actual features aside from early access and input on the roadmap. So far so good. Custom buttons is really cool, built in tree style tabs is slick. Also!! orion has workspaces that are as good if not better than vivaldi’s! This is really slick, thanks for sharing
Brodie Robertson is an excellent source of information ☹️
Except in terms of browser choice apparently. Either they’re ignorant or being paid. Either way it’s not a good sign.
Just use Firefox. Or LibreWolf if you want a pre-hardened Firefox. Remember to install uBlock Origin.
Thanks for pointing me to LibreWolf. I like to use separate browsers as information silos and have been using Brave as my secondary. Been looking forward to switching it out for a long time, LibreWolf sounds like just the ticket.
Information silos.
You can also use Firefox containers. One of the best features of Firefox.
Paired with the Foxytab plugin to automatically open websites in specific containers or restrict containers to a list of websites. Firefox also has profiles, and a simple extension (with a tiny thing to install in your PC) makes them as easy to use as they’re on Chrome
You have to be very brave to download that browser
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Ok but have you tried my nft browser?
I’m not downloading Brave, fuck off
Well, they do have some sort of crypto integration in that browser, so it makes sense why they come off that way.
Meanwhile there’s Floorp xD
I don’t understand when and why Brave became such a household name. It seems so many people use it and swear by it, but its reputation is “suspicious” at best.
Just use Firefox. It’s been around way, way longer and it doesn’t use the Chromium engine. Google doesn’t need more of a monopoly on the internet.
But what’s wrong with non Chrome Chromium based browsers?
(Just give me downvotes, I don’t care if my question is stupid)
Well Chrome(ium) has almost all of the browser market share and google is trying to push something called web environment integrity which would implement a sort of certification system where web servers evaluate the authenticity of the client. If you extrapolate that idea a bit further it boils down to “we won’t serve you content if we don’t like your browser, device, OS, etc”. Which I would consider as hostile to the open but rapidly closing internet as we know it.
Edit: I forgot to make my point lol. Firefox is a completely different browser engine from the chromium based browsers which is why you see a lot of people recommending firefox because they don’t comply with web integrity. I don’t think it’s working though because this is something only the techbros and the cybersisters care about while everyone else just goes about their day.
Makes sense.
Chromium is still controlled by Google, so having an overwhelming market share of Chromium-based browsers reduces competition and increases Google’s control of the market’s position and future. Using Firefox (and Safari, if it were not locked to a single ecosystem) reduces that threat.
When we say “controlled”, that’s still only accounting for the primary fork, right?
As long as it’s open source, it feels like the idea is that the day Google pushes “feat(): Users now automatically have $1 sent to Google a day” commit, someone creates a “chromium-nongooglefucked” fork repository from the prior commit, and everyone uses that.
K
It just means if they want to do something bad then they can
If Google wanted to they could ban VPNs on all Chromium browsers and all the forks downstream would have to comply
More likely they can make it so only verified websites will load and down the line charge to be verified. It kills the open internet and the ability for anyone to make a website/host it where they want
Damn.
It’s not a stupid question, some people just don’t know.
Mainly it’s because:
- Chromium holds too much market share which is bad for the health of the Web.
- Chromium is controlled by Google which is concerning because they have been known to plant trackers even in software that shouldn’t have them.
- Chromium is inherently less secure, it contains features that might seem nice but are extremely risk to give access to websites i.e. letting websites access Bluetooth.
There are probably plenty more reasons but these are the big ones, and of coarse this is a simplification, in reality things are always a bit more complicated.
Web dev here. Regardless of my opinion, I need to make sure my web projects work on chrome because of market share.
I think if Firefox can find a way to have full parity with chrome extensions, that might be a big shift. I’ve talked to more than one person that has a specific extension they rely on that they can’t duplicate with Firefox options. They have many of the big names, but also some holes
It’s the other way around in my experience
Genuinely curious. What extensions are stopping people from moving to Firefox?
Not OP, (and Firefox is still my main), but I keep Chromium-based browsers around for Ichigo, an addon which automatically translates raw manga - which is a godsend for avid manga readers like myself who frequently run out of existing translated manga to read. There’s also Scan Translator which works in a similar way, but sadly Firefox has nothing like them.
In my opinion best bet is ungoogled chromium for any extensions or applications that utilize chromium.
I just spent awhile trying to switch from Vivaldi to Floorp before going back. It just doesn’t work as smoothly, things like tabs wouldn’t save properly between sessions, pinning tabs doesn’t prevent you from closing them, UI elements would disappear, etc.
I use it as my YouTube/spotify browser because the ad block just works. Firefox is janky because I have other extensions running that screw up playback on some sites (this has gotten a lot better but I still just use brave out of habit)
The only real problem I ever had with Firefox was this privacy option that would disable auto playback on sites like Twitch and TikTok but that was a setting I wasn’t even aware of. Other than that, I rarely ever have an issue with FF outside of web dev when it doesn’t yet support some cutting-edge web API feature.
Yea, it was something with various extensions I had going. I’m not blaming Firefox at all. I love Firefox. Just easier to use the other browser on the occasions when my configuration causes issues than try to troubleshoot it.
I’ve had issues with add-ons on some sites too. For those times I just use a different Firefox profile (each has its own set of add-ons and settings :D)
That’s a good idea.
- Download a browser with a built-in VPN
- Get browser and VPN services on your computer
Why is this news?
Because it’s Brave and people like to jump on bandwagons. This is like the 6th time I’ve seen this article posted in lemmybin also.
And since we have the reddit-minded folk here, no, I do not support Brave and never will and I would much rather they disappear from the internet, but using ragebait to complain about the browser installing the necessary files to have one of their advertised services working, like pretty much every other software does, is not the way to move forward.
Yea i don’t get the hate boner for brave. I get it’s sketchy and don’t use it myself, but they aren’t sneakily installing some VPN to redirect all your web traffic without you knowing. They tell you about it right up front because it’s a service they want to sell.
If you don’t like the browser, don’t use it. There isn’t a need to go on some crusade to smear them with bullshit.
It’s a bunch of people upset with the company’s CEO or whatever over personal views. The browser itself wasn’t that bad after you disabled the ad and crypto stuff, which they heavily pushed on you.
I had switched to it from Chrome last year but ended up not caring for it, so I went to Firefox and Librewolf. People can use whatever the hell they want, idgaf. But for those who will eventually end up complaining about YouTube ads and continue to use Chrome, I have no sympathy for if you can’t take the few minutes to download and install a new browser and move your favorites over.
This community has some of the worst biased tech readers.
Brave to me is like an online advertising racket. They push ad-blocking software by default in their browser, then extort companies into using their own ad network to advertise to their users. Brave Ads are of course opt-in and the main incentive of enabling them is to earn BAT (Basic Attention Token) which is their cryptocurrency. In terms of their intrusiveness, they’re like push notifications you get up to six times an hour, and from my experience using the browser, it was all mainly crypto marketplaces and VPN’s advertising.
Compared to 2020, when you could earn hundreds of dollars in a year from frequently being served Brave Ads, BAT isn’t really worth shit anymore thanks to the crypto crash, so the main financial incentive to use Brave is gone.
If you want privacy, Firefox is that way. Or if you absolutely need to use something based on Chromium, everyone and their fucking mother has forked that browser.
Generally speaking, any service or organization that has to pay youtubers or twitch streamers to drive traffic is…a racket. Avoid like the plague.
Blame YouTube for screwing over legitimate content creators and forcing them to be paid shills for shitty VPN and mobile game companies to pay the bills.
Anyone who claims “We’re the best most privacy conscious, secure, and safe product” is already extremely suspicious.
Brave has already been caught Red handed doing anti-privacy and crypto shilling before, yet people decided to forgive them. You don’t forgive these things EVER.
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I love that most people don’t realize how close Reston, VA (You know, where AWS 1 and 2 is located) is to DC.
The White House probably isn’t doing much illegal SIGINT dragnetting of US citizens, but I bet the Pentagon, NSA HQ, and the Hill all do.
Opera does this too and nobody bats an eye (anymore).
For some reason people like to clown on Brave specifically.
Probably because nobody cares about Opera doing that since the ones pointing this out are at least privacy aware people that won’t use Opera. It is also a problem when Brave does it because it is a “privacy focused” browser. They sure have the balls to do this.
Opera was also 100% up front about it and sold it as a feature. They didn’t sneak it into installers and crap. IMO that’s the issue, the lack of communication.
It’s crazy to me that people ever thought brave was “privacy focused” when it was clear that they were trying to jump on the crypto bandwagon with their own in-network crypto and ad network. It was always just a reskinned chrome with ublock built in and then their ad network tacked on top
Brave is doing the same: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/05/29/brave-partners-with-guardian-to-bring-a-paid-vpn-and-firewall-to-its-browser/
Did you do any research at all before making your statement?
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When was the last time you read any posts from privacy communities? Firefox is usually what people suggest and noobs talk about Brave.
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DDG did WHAT
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Sounded nasty so I looked out up. Seems it wasn’t intentional.
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-duckduckgo-gates-track-idUSL1N3792HE
The Brave team are basically a bunch of dodgy wankers at this point.
Why is installing a VPN considered bad? Is it because it is done without user consent? I don’t understand if there is any malicious intent.
Brave browser has been automatically installing VPN services on Windows computers without user consent, but it remains inactive unless the user subscribes.
They’re installing extra software that’s useless unless you give them money. Plus you really want to be aware of your VPN since all your traffic will be going through it.
It doesn’t auto enable and chromium also gives you a lot of unnecessary features. While I think Brave is bloat I don’t see how this is any more than the usual.
Because a vpn can monitor all the websites that you visit. Not directly what you’re looking at, but definitely where you’re looking. Just line your provider can, if you’re not using a vpn. But at least with your provider, you have a contract with them - you pay them to transport your data and nothing more. Some very scummy providers aside, that’s where it stops.
A free vpn, however, needs to pay for transporting your data somehow. And if you’re not paying for it with money, then who/what is?
See also Tom Scott’s explanation about vpns, why you probably don’t need one, and why he refused their advertisement money.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Tom Scott’s explanation about vpns
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s not even free, the service itself is a payed subscription. But it’s there and it could be working and funneling data without the user knowing it if they wanted to.
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I’m interested to hear what you think a vpn will protect you against. Or what you think the flaws in Toms arguments are.
Edit: I don’t know about you, but I trust my own, GDPR-backed isp far, far more than I trust whichever foreign based vpn company. Especially if they for it for free or cheap.
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The only thing you’re “protecting” yourself from by using a vpn to surf the Internet, is your own provider. It won’t stop any spying software on your phone, or any nefarious scripts on the websites you visit.
Tom’s argument was more nuanced than that, which is why I linked it. I suggest you watch it and explain where he’s wrong if you want to give your argument to ignore him any weight. Ad hominems and “imagined” arguments alone won’t get you very far, I’m afraid.
I actually work in cyber security and I was really happy Tom Scott released that video. VPN companies are some of the scummiest companies out there, and their rampant sponsorships on YouTube were shameless misinformation and fear mongering in order to scare you into giving all your internet traffic to them. Seeing so many sellout tech YouTubers take their sponsorships despite knowing better COUGH NetworkChuck, was one of my biggest pet peeves.
There are seemingly legit VPN companies out there, and there are some legitimate use cases for them, but what Tom is addressing are the shady ones that lie to you about what they’re for and how they help you for their own monetary and in some cases data mining benefit. In most cases you do not need a VPN, and it doesn’t do anything to protect you from “internet criminals”, or provide extra “security” and it only “protects” your privacy by shifting the for-profit company that gets to see all the websites you visit.
I too would like to know why you think a VPN is needed “on today’s web”, I would bet money it came directly out of one of theirs ads scripts.
I doubt either one of you will ever hear from them. I guess they haven’t even watched the video to begin with.
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I’m sorry you felt the need to denounce claims in videos while openly admitting you don’t even know what the claims are.
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When I’m away from home, I use my own Wireguard VPN back into my private network, where all of my traffic is filtered.
That’s your own VPN, not a commercial VPN service and you’re using that for what I would assume is DNS filtering. Thats entirely unrelated to what a commercial VPN service does and what Tom Scott’s video is about. And that’s not even a benefit of your VPN, your VPN is just a tool you’re using for remote access to your DNS filter/server which is what’s actually providing you that service. I could do the same exact thing with a recursive DNS server and Pihole using DOH without a VPN at all.
I use a VPN for my job as well, and it isn’t to protect company products (we don’t make a product). It’s to keep prying eyes out.
That is again an entirely different use case and product than what a commercial VPN service is offering. That’s not even for privacy, it’s for secure remote access to your company network.
I’m sorry, but when my wife and kid’s phones are showing them ads for things we talked about 5 minutes ago, they appear horrified by it. Then they move along like nothing happened. That’s the typical user.
That’s not a problem a VPN service solves.
I will continue to not be spied on 24/7 by corporations and my government.
With a VPN service like ProtonVPN, all you’re doing is changing the corporation that can see which sites you visit from your ISP, to Proton. It isn’t inherently any more private or secure, you’re just choosing which corporation you allow the ability to spy on you.
I don’t remember if I saw that video from Tom Scott or not, but I imagine his argument was along the lines of, “if you aren’t doing anything nefarious or you don’t live in a nation state that censors you, then you have nothing to worry about”.
No, his argument was that outside of spoofing your location, and hiding which sites you visit from your ISP specifically, VPN services don’t provide the average consumer with any additional benefit over what you get for free by default due to the wonderful inventions of TLS, and HSTS. The point is that VPN service companies use scare tactics to get you to purchase a product you don’t need to solve problems you don’t have. NetworkChuck made a whole sponsored video about how somebody can man-in-the-middle you at a coffee shop to steal your credit card information to demonstrate the effectiveness of a VPN service and the attack he demonstrated was literally impossible. He created a fake, non-real world scenario straight out of 2003 to deceive the less tech literate public in order to shill a VPN service.
Tom Scott provided a fantastic public service by educating people on what a VPN actually DOES and what it DOESN’T DO. So people can actually make a decision as to whether they need one due to the facts, not misinformation and false advertisement. You on the other hand still can’t seem to articulate what exactly you think a VPN services does for you and how it does it. You have a lot of buzzwords and vague statements about “being spied on”, and never actually said why you think commercial VPN products should be used by the average user “On todays web”.
It’s “all your mail is now redirected to a third party that makes money by mining it for data without you knowing” level of nastiness. Absolutely deplorable and a reason to never touch anything made by the people behind Brave even with a ten foot pole. Brave is a scam and why people pretend its not is beyond me.
that’s what the new outlook ‘app’ (replacing win 10/11’s mail ‘app’) does with gmail accounts. routes all your mail from gmail through microsoft servers before delivering to the app on your pc.
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They’re apprehending ALL of your browsing activity to their lucky vpn provider of choice.
a service has far more privs on the system than a browser should have or need (which can be installed on a per-user basis, no admin/root required).
I don’t trust Brave, there’s too much money tied up in it for it to be good for users.
Please Brave: cutout the bullshit defaults game. Everybody’s getting smarter and companies are getting stupider
Edit: said this b4, don’t fuck with your own competitive advantage where you haven’t had a joint and duly qualified computer science lawyer who explains how easy it is to lose trust and commercial viabillity for a sketchy, underhanded product (see LastPass). Also FUCK LastPass, may this Pass be their Last
The ol’ bait and switch…classic. Opera used to be good too, then chinese people bought it, then emerged opera vpn. Shaddy af. Same as camscanner
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And those devs working at Opera that objected to the sale of Opera started Vivaldi, literally “one of the kings of opera” as a competitive browser. It uses chromium under the hood but they’ve made strides in a power user browser. No crypto, built in ad blocking. The only revenue they get in the actual default browser install is that there are like 20 bookmarks to commonly used sites to start, and they have affiliate tags if you keep those bookmarks and use them. Other than that, they’ve turned off chromium’s new DRM features
Camscanner hurt. I used it constantly. Then boom, absolute 180. I guess that’s the goal. Make a legit app that people love. Then sell it to someone who will exploit your loyalty customers. Cool!
Pretty much everybody has a number they will sell out at, for some it’s astronomical, for others it’s basically what you’d expect
Mine is staggeringly low.
At this point that seems to be the case everywhere. The future looks bleak, and so for most, trying to get what they can out of life before the climate wars, or WW3, or whatever happens seems to be the case. I don’t criticize it. I think there’s a high probability that the reason that we see little extraterrestrial life is that they did the same shit we are doing. The universe has a fractal nature. There are likely many species that also had planets that could support intelligent life. However since the competition for resources is baked into existence, they probably did what we are doing and are themselves no longer alive because they ended themselves before they could really end their stupid arguments about their gods, or work for the collective good more than the individual good
Some of the OG devs who made Opera have made Vivaldi. It’s chromium under the hood, but with googles tracking and telemetry turned off. It’s not perfect, but it adds a significant number of power user features, includes its own (limited) ad and tracking blocking. I alternate between that and Firefox dev edition as my daily driver
Can you elaborate on CamScanner please?
It’s a Chinese app that lets people “scan” a document using the camera on their phone. It was “free” for a long time, turns out it was dropping injected adware on people’s phones.
To be honest, Microsoft lens has had the same features for a long time, but didn’t have “scanner” in the name and most app searches are piss poor so people just literally searched “camera scanner” and got the adware result. Microsoft has their own long and shady history, but dropping an adware payload wasnt part of that.
Thank you!
I use it a lot during my study. But when CamScanner started serving ads, intrusive ads, “cloud backup”…i tried searching for alternatives and use microsoft lens. TBH, microsoft lens is shit compared to camscanner. The detection is slow, janky, cant do multiple pages scan and a lot more troublesome to use. CamScanner detection algorithm was way better at that time. So i bite the lbullet and just use it until end of my study.
I’m not so sure that’s true anymore with Windows 11.
Showing in app ads is one thing. Installing a Trojan specifically meant to circumvent App Store ad requirements is another. Windows 11, and most MS products at this point are ad delivery platforms, but they still follow the rules of app stores with the basic requirement of “shows in app ads” and “won’t try to inject a Trojan that beats your phone’s app sandboxing”
