This might have been discussed to death by now, unfortunately I couldn’t find any discussion on it on Lemmy. Though I would love to be corrected on that!
How does an always on incognito Chromium with uBlock Origin on medium mode (and other hardening/privacy settings enabled) compare to Brave (with e.g. Privacy Guides’ recommended settings) with respect to security and privacy on Linux[1]?
Commonly heard whataboutisms:
- “With the looming advent of Manifest v3, this discussion might not be very relevant for long.” I’m aware.
- “Just use Firefox/Librewolf or any other privacy-conscious browser that isn’t Chromium-based.” I already do, but some websites/platforms don’t play nice on non-Chromium-based browsers due to Google’s monopoly on the web. Sometimes I can afford to not use that website/platform, but unfortunately not always.
- “Brave’s [insert controversy] makes them unreliable to take services from.” Honestly, I think that if both solutions are as effective that a reason like this might be sufficient to tip the balance in favor of one. Because ultimately this all comes down to trust.
- "Just use Ungoogled Chromium." Some more knowledgeable people than me advice against it. Though, I’d say I’m open to hear different opinions on this as long as they’re somewhat sophisticated.
- “Just use [insert another Chromium-based browser].” If it has merits beyond Brave and Chromium with respect to security and privacy, I’ll consider it.
Thanks in advance!
- I can be more specific about which distro I prefer using, but I don’t think it matters. I might be wrong though*.
I believe Brave is the most private chromium browser, at least with the installation defaults.
As for the controversies with the company, there were some at the beginning stages, but I haven’t heard anything new in quite a while.
Regarding the crypto, vpn, etc bloat, I use Brave on all my devices and all I have to do is hide that stuff after the installation and I’ve never been bothered by pop-ups or similar annoyances. I don’t think it’s more annoying to remove than having to remove the recommended sites and Pocket with Firefox.
Since you want private browsing, I would also say that a big plus for Brave is that it has built-in Tor browser.
I haven’t come across anything that surpasses its defaults yet within the realm of Chromium-based browsers.
Like I said in the original post, those would be secondary reasons after their respective merits in security and privacy had been resolved to a tie. Though, so far, Brave seems to be the clear winner. I would like to thank the Privacy Guides community over at lemmy.one for their engagement and contributions for that*.
Yeah, the linked article by Privacy Guides in the original post already shows what should be applied. Some kind of hardening seems to be done first by default anyways, it seems*.
For whatever it’s worth, the Privacy Guides team is against using it:
“Brave is not as resistant to fingerprinting as the Tor Browser and far fewer people use Brave with Tor, so you will stand out. Where strong anonymity is required use the Tor Browser.”
Brave itself also don’t recommend there “private Tab with Tor” over the Tor browser, they said as far I remember in a blog post that u still should use the Tor Browser for anonymity