• Lemongrab@lemmy.one
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    9 months ago

    Comparing brave and base Firefox is unfair IMO. Brave is security hardened out of the box, where as Firefox is a general purpose browser and has telemetry in the form of crash reports and the like (which can be turned off). It can be hardend well through arkenfox, or using a fork like Librewolf. Comparing Firefox and chrome is better imho.

    Firefox has many built-in anti fingerprinting flags (such as letterboxing, RFP, font limiting, and many more} which when combined with ublock origin are unbeatable. A baked-in content blocker like that of braves loses because it isn’t extensible. This website compares on only default settings which aren’t representative of the extent each browser can be taken but useful nonetheless: https://privacytests.org/

      • Lemongrab@lemmy.one
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        9 months ago

        Incorrect. It is created by someone who is associated with brave, but not a directly created by Brave. I am sure the tests is accurate (at least per test), but the testing criteria could be biased. It’d just be weird to the end up with Librewolf and Mullvad as a clear winner if the intention was to favor brave browser.

    • think1984@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      A baked-in content blocker like that of braves loses because it isn’t extensible.

      In what way? I use(d) Firefox since the very first Firebird days, and Netscape Navigator before it, and I’m practically married to uBO (don’t tell my wife!). That said, Brave’s ‘shields’ blocker is just skinned uBO with some tweaks. It can add custom cosmetic filtering rules, additional adblock format filter lists, disable or enable JS (globally or per-site) and has built in fingerprint resistance. Aside from the differing UI, I genuinely can’t think of anything overtly missing as such.

      • Lemongrab@lemmy.one
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        9 months ago

        I’m stated that because I know baked in features must wait for browser updates to get fixes (not talking about block list updates but the core itself). I also was basing it off a comment I read (can’t find sadly) on the limitations of implementing a ublock-style blocklist into brave. And thirdly, I have seen no mention of anything like ublock’s blocking modes (block 3rd party scripts/frames). Can you quickly select an element to block in brave?

        I might have considered using brave as a 2ndary browser if it werent for the ceo’s politics (spending thousands to support anti-lgbt legislation) which I feel are antithetical to privacy.

        • think1984@lemmy.ml
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          9 months ago

          And thirdly, I have seen no mention of anything like ublock’s blocking modes (block 3rd party scripts/frames). Can you quickly select an element to block in brave?

          You can enter as many custom filter rules as you like, with adblock syntax support. You can select an element to block, yes.

            • think1984@lemmy.ml
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              9 months ago

              Brave isn’t represented anywhere on the graph? Unless I’ve misunderstood you. That’s a comparison of Firefox with various ad blockers, and uBO with and without CNAME unclocking enabled. Brave also uncloaks CNAMEs, so that’s one place they are equal. Chromium based browsers do lack some abilities compared to Firefox, however. I have daily driven Firefox since the first day, but Brave and Blink/Chromium based browsers are undeniably faster at rendering (unfortunately).

                • think1984@lemmy.ml
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                  9 months ago

                  Yes of course. I hadn’t slept when I replied, how embarrassing to miss that. You can enable CNAME uncloaking in Brave, which I suspect draws them to a parallel. It would be interesting to see the test repeated with the setting enabled. Since one has to (or had to) enable it in uBO also, it would only be fair to compare apples to apples. As I said, the blocker in Brave is based on uBO anyway. To be clear, and as I’ve said before, I’ve daily driven Firefox since the beginning and run uBO in medium mode. I’m not shilling for Brave here, simply pointing out that the differences are small (much of the code is shared with uBO) and it does certainly render faster.

                  • Lemongrab@lemmy.one
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                    9 months ago

                    I do understand that you aren’t shilling brave. Ublock medium mode is great and I think worth the effort. I wish Firefox had some of the native features present in chromium browsers (mostly quality of life features like native force dark mode on web contents). But I love the extent that Firefox can be taken to reduce not just fingerprinting, but also avenues of attack.