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] 79 points 1 year ago (5 children)

So Chromium?

Just use Firefox, its the better browser anyways.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ungoogled-chromium is a good substitute in that case

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year 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] 5 points 1 year 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] 4 points 1 year ago

They still disable CRLSets and have binaries built by "contributors" not in an automated fashion by the developer themselves.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year 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] 14 points 1 year 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] 12 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year 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] 11 points 1 year ago

Aye Firefox gang 🦊🤘

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Arkenfox is also good at protection from naive fingerprinting

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Adding add-on makes you more fingerprintable, not less.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year 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] 10 points 1 year 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

[–] priapus 17 points 1 year ago

You can turn that off in the settings

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year 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 1 year 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] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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] 13 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year 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] 11 points 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

[–] imrichyouknow 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

To me, Brave or DuckDuckGo are as malicious as Google

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year 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] 3 points 1 year ago

Mulch is tied to a specific Android ROM

Yes, that's because it requires webview to be patched, it's the same reason that Vanadium is only available for GrapheneOS. They do use some of Vanadium's patches though.

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

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

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

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year 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 1 year 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] 4 points 1 year 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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[–] Brunette6256 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The solution I chooses is using that along with hardened Firefox

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

firefox with betterfox user.js is my recommendation

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