this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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I have been thinking about switching to brave for better fingerprinting protection

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 2 years ago (5 children)

So Chromium?

Just use Firefox, its the better browser anyways.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Almost all of my Linux devices have both chromium-browser and Firefox installed. Firefox is my default, but there are some apps out there that work a lot better in something chromium-based.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ungoogled-chromium is a good substitute in that case

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Haven't used Ungoogled Chromium in a couple years, but I've seen some criticisms of it even compared to regular Chrome: https://qua3k.github.io/ungoogled/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Thank you for sharing this, I was unaware. I wonder if any of this has been addressed recently as the linked article is two years old (not demeaning its value, just wondering if the devs saw the article and decided to improve ungoogled-chromium).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Yeah, that's why I pointed out that I haven't used it in a couple years, I have no idea about the direction development took after that, so maybe some folks that work on the development of Chromium and its many forks can give us some insight. Personally, I just decided to stick to Firefox tweaked with Arkenfox as my main browser on desktop and I have Brave with all its annoyances turned off as a backup option

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Brave might have started as a basic Chromium fork, but the various privacy/security features they added do make them standout now.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

But they still contribute to google's monopoly over web standards.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

It is really disingenuous to say "X is just a skin of Y" just because they share the same browser engine or are forked from the same browser. Like you say, there are a lot of changes.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

Aye Firefox gang 🦊🤘

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I already use Firefox but brave is just better at fingerprinting protection

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

There's CanvasBlocker for Firefox that can do fingerprint protection.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Arkenfox is also good at protection from naive fingerprinting

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Why not use Librewolf? Fork of Firefox, hardened and resists fingerprinting. Scores pretty damn well on https://privacytests.org and pairs well with Mull on Android.

AFAIK there are no actively developed Brave forks.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I use librewolf on my work laptop it removes all cookies every time you close it, this wouldn't be a problem on mobile as I already set my phone browser(fennec) to do that but on my personal computer it crosses the border from I can deal with it to too inconvenient

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

You can turn that off in the settings

[–] Mihuy 6 points 2 years ago

And there won't be because brave doesn't like it when someone forks the browser.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Firefox. Or if you don't want to spend time configuring it, Librewolf.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I also recommend Librewolf. It's very good at what it does. They also have a list of recommended addons to enhance your privacy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

The only issue with librewolf is that updates sometimes take a few days. For that reason I’m still using ff+arkenfox

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (2 children)

All of the crypo crap can be turned off in settings.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

And the setting really does work. The crap is completely gone afterwards. There is no grayed out symbols, or nag screens or anything.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Or more accurately: can be turned on. Everything crypto is disabled by default.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

Just switch off brave rewards and sponsored content. And, your fork is ready.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I agree the crypto stuff is super annoying, but it's a really nice and clean browser after you disable all that and tweak the settings (which you'd probably want to go through and configure with a new browser anyway)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

even as a crypto user & dev, brave's crypto shit is annoying af, it's inferior by far to what everyone else uses & they push it on ur face & make u have to remove it.

i'd rather just use firefox or even microsoft edge, even for crypto stuff

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We recommend just switching to Brave and disabling the 'crytpo crap' yourself rather than using a fork that is liable to go unmaintained and miss updates.

[–] deafboy 6 points 2 years ago

So much this. I've seen countless of spite forks. Very few of them merged the updates.

Even large projects like Electron can't keep up with chromium, and then there is downstream crap like Discord that can't even keep up witch Electron.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you want Brave without the crypto crap then spend a minute or two and turn it all off in settings. You'll never see it again.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Except on Android, unfortunately. The overflow menu is full of all of those features right at the bottom -- prime thumb real estate.

[–] wasd4321 7 points 2 years ago

firefox with betterfox user.js is my recommendation

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Looks like Brave is the best for privacy over all.
https://privacytests.org/

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

That site and testing is run by a Brave employee, right? I'd be very skeptical of Brave's high scores.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

That's with firefox on default settings. If you turn it on to 'strict' and install uBlock, then it wins.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Bromite used to be great, but unfortunately the dev seems to have abandoned it.

I've seen people talking about Mull, Mulch, Fulguris and a couple others. I think Mulch is tied to a specific Android ROM, and the others are Firefox forks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I use fennec as my regular browser on android and mulch as the webview implementation

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i left a big comment regarding this in another thread, TL;DR combination of brave on desktop and a lot of non-brave things on android, privacy browser + mull + DDG

https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/comment/84466

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I wouldn't want Brave on anything myself. The company has proven it isn't trustworthy many times over.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i agree, but my unpopular opinion is that mozilla has also proven this repeatedly, with nothing and nobody being universally better. privacy people love firefox, but i spend a lot of time with each major version's release notes figuring out how to undo the new telemetry (increasing integration with pocket, firefox suggest, location that won't turn off).

my threat model is 'they're all evil, including mozilla', so there are additional rings around everything

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If fingerprint protection is what I want, LibreWolf comes with a very sensible default as compared to stock Firefox. If I am familiar enough with about.config and stuff then hardened Firefox can reach bonkers levels of privacy as well

If a Chromium-based browser is required that has Brave's level of privacy protection but none of the crypto nonsense... Yeah I'm not aware of any as of right now. Maybe once the Duckduckgo Browser becomes available?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

well, brave's crypto is opt in anyways, it wont be used unless you manually enable it yourself

Firefox paired with arkenfox's userjs, or librewolf which basically configures all of that for you, are also good options.

[–] Clocker108 4 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

At that point just use Firefox / Librewolf, os just turn off all of the brave rewards crap ( crypto )...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Never noticed the crypto stuff Don't use it Also, I use Vivaldi

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

The solution I chooses is using that along with hardened Firefox

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