Stop using Brave Browser, now!

I made a post in February about Brave Browser. I recommended my followers and everyone reading the post to make the switch to Brave. However, after certain events over the past year or so, I have decided to stop using Brave.

I initially made this statement about the browser:

I would recommend making the switch from Chrome to Brave, it drastically improved my browsing experience. Brave also has very active developers — security and privacy is not an issue.

While I will not lie, it did improve my browsing experience. The main issue lies with the second part of my statement: security and privacy. The developers gave us a false sense of security. They disappointed me, and every other Brave user out there.

Several months ago, Brave was involved in a “scandal”. Unfortunately, this indicent did not get much media attention, and it’s hard to search for and discover as of today. The report I first saw was by https://androidpolice.com/:

In summary, Brave had been injecting their affiliate codes into popular crypto-currency websites. This means that they had been intercepting your traffic, that they promised was secure by the way, and modifying it.

Additionally, AndroidPolice points out:

The nature of these affiliate programs also allows the referrer — in this case, Brave Software — to view some amount of data about the customers who sign up with the code. Coinbase’s program provides “direct access to your campaign’s performance data,” while Trezor offers a “detailed overview of purchases.”

This means Brave Software has access to all of your information on those crypto-currency sites as well. They can see your payments/purchases, and your activity on the websites (through affiliate statistics).

Brave doesn’t seem so privacy-focused anymore, does it? They did all of this, without telling the user. This meant that they intentionally didn’t tell the user because they knew it would cause backlash and disruption. They knew one hundred percent what they were doing, and they knew it was unethical.

Alternatives

Now that Brave is out of the picture, where should you go?

I would honestly just go back to basics. No fancy stuff, just a good reliable browser: Firefox. Firefox has plenty of customizable privacy options, without the ownership of the scary conglomerates. I naturally trust Firefox a large amount more than I trust Edge, Chrome, or Safari.

I would highly suggest you download Firefox. You can do so below:

There’s a great guide on how to maximize privacy with Firefox. You can find it here:

While this might not seem like a big issue to people who don’t deal with cryptocurrencies, it definitely is. It’s the fact that Brave Software has been doing all of this behind our backs, and still claiming to be a completely privacy-focused browser. It makes me think, what else could they be hiding?