Brave browser quietly slips a VPN service onto your Windows PC

I don't like brave because Brandon Eich (CEO, formerly with Mozilla) doesn't support gay marriage and was pushing anti-vax stuff on twitter. I don't look for this shit to titillate my tits like some folks, but when it hits me in the face I can't ignore it.

When fact checking myself I found even more controversies, but I'm not wasting time reading articles that feed a confirmation bias.

It’s crazy to me that people ever thought brave was “privacy focused” when it was clear that they were trying to jump on the crypto bandwagon with their own in-network crypto and ad network. It was always just a reskinned chrome with ublock built in and then their crypto and ad network tacked on top
He's also the creator of JavaScript if that irks you any more.
- it does

Ok. Chrome sucks. Brave sucks. What’s good. Firefox?

Firefox is great.
- Firefox with good plugins is even better!
- And LibreWolf is better. It's Firefox with all of the privacy settings preconfigured and uBlock Origin preinstalled. Also, crap like Sponsored sites and Pocket are removed.
- And the only thing greater than Firefox is Librewolf.
- I love Firefox, used it for years. However I eventually had to switch because of weird bugs and issues with functioning sites. In my sparing personal usage I didn’t run into many issues, but using it at work I ran into really weird issues all the time.
I'm team Firefox, very happy here. There's a small amount of optional telemetry to disable to maximise your privacy, and it has the best plugins because there's a lot of choice and they're not purposely crippled.
- Plus you can use pretty much any plugin on mobile. this is the biggest feature for me.
- I like Firefox because it allows, Atleast for now, customization via userchrome.css files. I once tried Edge and hated it's bloated right click context menu. Meanwhile, in Firefox, I can trim down the context menu to only basic elements.
  I do wish Firefox had proper PWA support, but otherwise I have been using it as the main browser on both PC and phone(since uBlock Origin is supported on it, the only Chromium browser to support it is Kiwi Browser on Android).
Firefox and Mull (a Firefox fork) have your privacy in mind. They work as good as Chrome and don't fuck you without asking.
- There is Fennec available on F Droid that is basically Firefox with some blobs removed. Not as hardened as Mull but still a worthy option. There is one more browser based on Firefox called Iceraven for Android but it is not available on F Droid even. Though it supports a much wider variety of extensions than mobile Firefox does as of now. The downside is that it gets security updates usually later than Firefox, being an independent project.
Firefox is the least sucky.
Vivaldi is a good Chrome replacement.
- It's really great! Been using it for nearly a year now and love the influx of privacy friendly features.
Floorp is my favorite Firefox fork!
- Cool, that kinda looks like vivaldi except based on firefox.
It’s got its problem but it’s my preference
- That feature was originally meant to be an image sharing platform, but had an unfortunate name and the button being called "Save" (although it did have a cloud icon on it) didn't help either. Long story short, people mistook it for a screenshotting tool.
  It was definitely a blunder, don't get me wrong, but it was dumb rather than malicious.
  Tbf, when Mozilla realized their blunder they cut out the sharing part and left it just as a screenshot tool because that's the part that people liked.
- PS: Depressing how many of you seem to consider such a drastic violation of privacy acceptable.
  It's more that I had hoped we left everyone who acts like any little thing Firefox does is the worst and most egregious privacy violation in the world back in r/Firefox where they let all the Brave astroturfing take over.
  Sure, you've got one significant issue (that was already mitigated and addressed), but you're ignoring how unique it was while also saying there is "many, many more" without any hint of what they would be. Is "The Megabar exists" one of them?
- A lot of people lost trust in them after they sneakily installed an extension on users' browsers to promote Mr Robot.
- Which browser do you recommend?

Just a reminder, any time you see a "tech" youtuber with brave installed, they're not going to be an excellent source of information

What browser signifies an excellent source of information? Ice weasel? w3m?
- Lynx
- raw dogging straight html
- I have Orion (macOS only for the time being) and it’s sooo good.
  The amazing part is that it even works as a daily driver if you’re a not-so-techie person/normal user… but then on top there are all these little extra features and optimizations that make it like Safari if Safari was actually good.
  I would at this point a) not be able to go back to either Safari or Firefox (edit: nor Ungoogled Chromium) as well as b) immediately trust an Orion user on most of what they have to say about a “tech” related opinion :D
Brodie Robertson is an excellent source of information ☹️
- Except in terms of browser choice apparently. Either they're ignorant or being paid. Either way it's not a good sign.

Just use Firefox. Or LibreWolf if you want a pre-hardened Firefox. Remember to install uBlock Origin.

Thanks for pointing me to LibreWolf. I like to use separate browsers as information silos and have been using Brave as my secondary. Been looking forward to switching it out for a long time, LibreWolf sounds like just the ticket.

You have to be very brave to download that browser

- Ok but have you tried my nft browser?
- Well, they do have some sort of crypto integration in that browser, so it makes sense why they come off that way.
- Meanwhile there's Floorp xD

I don't understand when and why Brave became such a household name. It seems so many people use it and swear by it, but its reputation is "suspicious" at best.

Just use Firefox. It's been around way, way longer and it doesn't use the Chromium engine. Google doesn't need more of a monopoly on the internet.

But what's wrong with non Chrome Chromium based browsers?
(Just give me downvotes, I don't care if my question is stupid)
- Well Chrome(ium) has almost all of the browser market share and google is trying to push something called web environment integrity which would implement a sort of certification system where web servers evaluate the authenticity of the client. If you extrapolate that idea a bit further it boils down to "we won't serve you content if we don't like your browser, device, OS, etc". Which I would consider as hostile to the open but rapidly closing internet as we know it.
  Edit: I forgot to make my point lol. Firefox is a completely different browser engine from the chromium based browsers which is why you see a lot of people recommending firefox because they don't comply with web integrity. I don't think it's working though because this is something only the techbros and the cybersisters care about while everyone else just goes about their day.
- Chromium is still controlled by Google, so having an overwhelming market share of Chromium-based browsers reduces competition and increases Google's control of the market's position and future. Using Firefox (and Safari, if it were not locked to a single ecosystem) reduces that threat.
- It's not a stupid question, some people just don't know.
  Mainly it's because:
  Chromium holds too much market share which is bad for the health of the Web.
  Chromium is controlled by Google which is concerning because they have been known to plant trackers even in software that shouldn't have them.
  Chromium is inherently less secure, it contains features that might seem nice but are extremely risk to give access to websites i.e. letting websites access Bluetooth.
  There are probably plenty more reasons but these are the big ones, and of coarse this is a simplification, in reality things are always a bit more complicated.
I think if Firefox can find a way to have full parity with chrome extensions, that might be a big shift. I've talked to more than one person that has a specific extension they rely on that they can't duplicate with Firefox options. They have many of the big names, but also some holes
- It's the other way around in my experience
- Genuinely curious. What extensions are stopping people from moving to Firefox?
I use it as my YouTube/spotify browser because the ad block just works. Firefox is janky because I have other extensions running that screw up playback on some sites (this has gotten a lot better but I still just use brave out of habit)
- The only real problem I ever had with Firefox was this privacy option that would disable auto playback on sites like Twitch and TikTok but that was a setting I wasn't even aware of. Other than that, I rarely ever have an issue with FF outside of web dev when it doesn't yet support some cutting-edge web API feature.

Download a browser with a built-in VPN
Get browser and VPN services on your computer

Why is this news?

Because it's Brave and people like to jump on bandwagons. This is like the 6th time I've seen this article posted in lemmybin also.
And since we have the reddit-minded folk here, no, I do not support Brave and never will and I would much rather they disappear from the internet, but using ragebait to complain about the browser installing the necessary files to have one of their advertised services working, like pretty much every other software does, is not the way to move forward.
Yea i don’t get the hate boner for brave. I get it's sketchy and don’t use it myself, but they aren’t sneakily installing some VPN to redirect all your web traffic without you knowing. They tell you about it right up front because it's a service they want to sell.
If you don’t like the browser, don’t use it. There isn’t a need to go on some crusade to smear them with bullshit.
- It's a bunch of people upset with the company's CEO or whatever over personal views. The browser itself wasn't that bad after you disabled the ad and crypto stuff, which they heavily pushed on you.
  I had switched to it from Chrome last year but ended up not caring for it, so I went to Firefox and Librewolf. People can use whatever the hell they want, idgaf. But for those who will eventually end up complaining about YouTube ads and continue to use Chrome, I have no sympathy for if you can't take the few minutes to download and install a new browser and move your favorites over.
This community has some of the worst biased tech readers.

Brave to me is like an online advertising racket. They push ad-blocking software by default in their browser, then extort companies into using their own ad network to advertise to their users. Brave Ads are of course opt-in and the main incentive of enabling them is to earn BAT (Basic Attention Token) which is their cryptocurrency. In terms of their intrusiveness, they're like push notifications you get up to six times an hour, and from my experience using the browser, it was all mainly crypto marketplaces and VPN's advertising.

Compared to 2020, when you could earn hundreds of dollars in a year from frequently being served Brave Ads, BAT isn't really worth shit anymore thanks to the crypto crash, so the main financial incentive to use Brave is gone.

If you want privacy, Firefox is that way. Or if you absolutely need to use something based on Chromium, everyone and their fucking mother has forked that browser.

Generally speaking, any service or organization that has to pay youtubers or twitch streamers to drive traffic is...a racket. Avoid like the plague.
- Blame YouTube for screwing over legitimate content creators and forcing them to be paid shills for shitty VPN and mobile game companies to pay the bills.
Anyone who claims "We're the best most privacy conscious, secure, and safe product" is already extremely suspicious.
Brave has already been caught Red handed doing anti-privacy and crypto shilling before, yet people decided to forgive them. You don't forgive these things EVER.

I love that most people don't realize how close Reston, VA (You know, where AWS 1 and 2 is located) is to DC.
The White House probably isn't doing much illegal SIGINT dragnetting of US citizens, but I bet the Pentagon, NSA HQ, and the Hill all do.

Opera does this too and nobody bats an eye (anymore).

For some reason people like to clown on Brave specifically.

Probably because nobody cares about Opera doing that since the ones pointing this out are at least privacy aware people that won't use Opera. It is also a problem when Brave does it because it is a "privacy focused" browser. They sure have the balls to do this.
- Opera was also 100% up front about it and sold it as a feature. They didn't sneak it into installers and crap. IMO that's the issue, the lack of communication.
- When was the last time you read any posts from privacy communities? Firefox is usually what people suggest and noobs talk about Brave.
- DDG did WHAT

The Brave team are basically a bunch of dodgy wankers at this point.

Why is installing a VPN considered bad? Is it because it is done without user consent? I don't understand if there is any malicious intent.

Brave browser has been automatically installing VPN services on Windows computers without user consent, but it remains inactive unless the user subscribes.
They're installing extra software that's useless unless you give them money. Plus you really want to be aware of your VPN since all your traffic will be going through it.
- It doesn’t auto enable and chromium also gives you a lot of unnecessary features. While I think Brave is bloat I don’t see how this is any more than the usual.
Because a vpn can monitor all the websites that you visit. Not directly what you're looking at, but definitely where you're looking. Just line your provider can, if you're not using a vpn. But at least with your provider, you have a contract with them - you pay them to transport your data and nothing more. Some very scummy providers aside, that's where it stops.
A free vpn, however, needs to pay for transporting your data somehow. And if you're not paying for it with money, then who/what is?
See also Tom Scott's explanation about vpns, why you probably don't need one, and why he refused their advertisement money.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  Tom Scott's explanation about vpns
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- It's not even free, the service itself is a payed subscription. But it's there and it could be working and funneling data without the user knowing it if they wanted to.
It's "all your mail is now redirected to a third party that makes money by mining it for data without you knowing" level of nastiness. Absolutely deplorable and a reason to never touch anything made by the people behind Brave even with a ten foot pole. Brave is a scam and why people pretend its not is beyond me.
- that's what the new outlook 'app' (replacing win 10/11's mail 'app') does with gmail accounts. routes all your mail from gmail through microsoft servers before delivering to the app on your pc.
a service has far more privs on the system than a browser should have or need (which can be installed on a per-user basis, no admin/root required).

I don't trust Brave, there's too much money tied up in it for it to be good for users.

Please Brave: cutout the bullshit defaults game. Everybody's getting smarter and companies are getting stupider

Edit: said this b4, don't fuck with your own competitive advantage where you haven't had a joint and duly qualified computer science lawyer who explains how easy it is to lose trust and commercial viabillity for a sketchy, underhanded product (see LastPass). Also FUCK LastPass, may this Pass be their Last

The ol' bait and switch...classic. Opera used to be good too, then chinese people bought it, then emerged opera vpn. Shaddy af. Same as camscanner

- And those devs working at Opera that objected to the sale of Opera started Vivaldi, literally “one of the kings of opera” as a competitive browser. It uses chromium under the hood but they’ve made strides in a power user browser. No crypto, built in ad blocking. The only revenue they get in the actual default browser install is that there are like 20 bookmarks to commonly used sites to start, and they have affiliate tags if you keep those bookmarks and use them. Other than that, they’ve turned off chromium’s new DRM features
Some of the OG devs who made Opera have made Vivaldi. It’s chromium under the hood, but with googles tracking and telemetry turned off. It’s not perfect, but it adds a significant number of power user features, includes its own (limited) ad and tracking blocking. I alternate between that and Firefox dev edition as my daily driver
Camscanner hurt. I used it constantly. Then boom, absolute 180. I guess that's the goal. Make a legit app that people love. Then sell it to someone who will exploit your loyalty customers. Cool!
- Pretty much everybody has a number they will sell out at, for some it’s astronomical, for others it’s basically what you’d expect
Can you elaborate on CamScanner please?
- It’s a Chinese app that lets people “scan” a document using the camera on their phone. It was “free” for a long time, turns out it was dropping injected adware on people’s phones.
  To be honest, Microsoft lens has had the same features for a long time, but didn’t have “scanner” in the name and most app searches are piss poor so people just literally searched “camera scanner” and got the adware result. Microsoft has their own long and shady history, but dropping an adware payload wasnt part of that.

Sick. Thanks brave.

Installing VPNs without telling the end user isn’t a good thing.
- And that’s what we call a Trojan horse

Firefox over everything. use Vivaldi if you insists on rendering blink

So what?

Are people upset about this? I honestly don't understand.

I honestly don't understand someone that would accept anything from a stranger.
You member U2 and the forced album through iTunes?
- No, I have no idea what you're talking about.
  But I still don't understand why people would make a big deal about a piece of software that installs multiple software packages...
  I mean have you ever installed Microsoft office? Did you ask it to install Microsoft access? What does Microsoft access even do?
  Or have you ever installed nvidia drivers? Did you ask for the whole "GeForce experience"? Wtf does that even mean?
  Installing extra software packages is definitely par for the course, bit in the brave example, at least the extra shit isn't required for the main app to work, in fact it's disabled by default, that's great!

Question: why would they do that? If you don't even know it's there, what good is it doing for them?

It's also enabled by default.
Edit: Apparently it's not enabled by default. I tried brave some time ago and remembered that it was enabled, which promoted me to uninstall it immediately. Maybe it was enabled by default then, maybe I misremembered.
Having a VPN basically just means sending your traffic (albeit encrypted) to someone else's server, before sending it to the wider internet.
That means if you don't specifically disable it, everything you do in the brave browser could theoretically be logged, processed and analyzed by the owners of brave.
Even if the traffic itself is still encrypted, like with online banking, just knowing how many people in a certain city use which bank for example, could be very interesting to advertisers.
Depending on how evil they are, they could also log extensive amounts of user data, just waiting for the day it becomes legal to sift through it (just like a lot of governments do).
Or maybe they just log and sell your data even though it's illegal. Like a lot of companies do all the time (see Cambridge Analytical scandal etc.).
Or maybe they don't. But if I was a browser company I'd sure enjoy having all my users route all their traffic through servers I control.
- the toggle shows up by default, but without a paid subscription the vpn is unusable. even then you need to enable it. you can disable it completely in brave://flags and set "enable experimental brave VPN" to disabled. it's shitty that they include it by default, but it's disingenuous to say they're rerouting traffic of all brave users through their own vpn servers.
- Holy fuck, well that is a whole other issue...

Independed browser from Google when?

please let us make bad choices and don't talk about why they're bad