Is Brave Browser still Private (because ai feature)

shhhNotmilk

I want to use the Brave Browser.
But is it still private?
Or does it's air feature talk to home all the time and tells its parents I don't know what?

Hat

shhhNotmilk On this episode How to use AI privately, Naomi Brockwell talk to the cofounder of Brave about the IA Leo.

In any case the use of Leo is optional as mentioned above.

FlipSid

shhhNotmilk Can be deactivated, which I (for example) did.
Problem solved.

jmo

I found this article interesting :
Stop using Brave Browser
https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/

axl

jmo
It looks like the author's 2 main points aren't good reasons to "stop using brave browser".

Whether you agree or disagree with the founder's personal political views has no bearing on the actual browser itself in terms of privacy or performance, both in which it excels.

The other point about ads & crypto is also moot since those features are, by design, private, and can be very easily disabled. I'll concede that it's still bloaty in the sense that you can't fully delete them, only disable; this takes disk space but I don't imagine very much.

yore

jmo I agree. The author chose to make those points on ethics which is not relevant to the software. The ads and crypto portion is also quite misleading and fails to mention that it can be easily disabled (ads and crypto wallet are opt-in anyway).

The weird people defending Brave online will point to the revenue sources for other browsers as the same thing

Ultimately, Brave Browser is the apparatus of an advertising company, a bloated and complicated experience for the average user, and the pet project of the person kicked out of Mozilla for continuing to defend harmful political donations.

This article is heavily biased and politically motivated. Not looking great for the site's reputation.

randomname

jmo it just look like he have personal griefs against the ceo and he's trying to cancel him

axl

While Brave does come with some bloat e.g. crypto, conference chat, AI, among others, almost all of them can be disabled or simply not used. It's a solid browser.

That said I still prefer Firefox for desktop and Vanadium/Cromite/Mull for phone.

Pocketstar

I also like Privacy Browser, (from Soren Stoutner) you can use it with Orbot, I2p, etc, even though it might be safer to use the TOR browser for onion sites.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.stoutner.privacybrowser.standard/
https://gitweb.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyBrowserAndroid.git;a=summary
But I prefer Vanadium due to its security hardening, it is an amazing project!

Dumdum

Pocketstar I also like Privacy Browser, (from Soren Stoutner) you can use it with Orbot, I2p, etc, even though it might be safer to use the TOR browser for onion sites.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.stoutner.privacybrowser.standard/
https://gitweb.stoutner.com/?p=PrivacyBrowserAndroid.git;a=summary

Privacy Browser is a Webview browser, see the following relevant information:
https://divestos.org/pages/browsers#webview

While WebView browsers utilize the Chromium WebView, they cannot offer any per-site process isolation.
Using any WebView-based browser is largely not recommended as they are inherently limited due to the WebView merely being a widget for adding web content to an app and are not intended to create a full browser experience.

Also, Tor Browser is the only recommended way to access the network.

Pocketstar

Dumdum Thanks for the information and the links, that is awesome!
I see that Privacy Browser might not be an ideal situation regarding security considering it is not a full browser packache as far as I can make out of the link you've provided. (I did read it in a hurry, my apologies, I stored it ofline and will read more later)
I also use the TOR browser for TOR traffic, I only use Orbot for several individual apps that support it, not for visiting onion sites.
At least now it is a bit more clear to me how webview-based applications function.

[deleted]

You can read about what data Brave collects and why when you use certain features here and for Brave Leo (AI) specifically you can do so here.
If you're not comfortable with any feature, you can always disable it. That's your personal choice.
In general, Brave is a phenomenal web browser WRT to privacy and security, read more here, here and here.

matchboxbananasynergy

This thread needs to stay on topic and on answering the OP's question, which was very specific and related to Brave's AI feature and if/how it affects privacy. Generic opinions on Brave or recommendations of other browsers do not fit.

Please keep the thread productive and answer the questions being asked.

Rizzler

matchboxbananasynergy You guys should start banning other articles that are harmful in a similar way to the recent cybernews article that caused problems. The article, @jmo posted was written purely based on politics and it has no technical backbone to support the sensationalist headline.

Pocketstar

matchboxbananasynergy
My apologies, I did not see your message in time.
Please feel free to remove my former messages about the other browsers.

Rizzler

@shhhNotmilk Brave's AI is just a chatbot. If you don't interact with it, you have nothing that should concern you.

Hat

I use it on PC and sometimes on my Pixel phone, since the official GOS account and moderators here recommended Brave.

I'm pretty pleased with this browser.
I would like a smaller app, actually ≈230 MB to download at each update. And no VPN silently installed on PC.

When it comes to privacy, it's worth remembering that Google owns a huge chunk of the internet. So even careful developers can't be 100% sure that free code is clean before users lose their data on big tech servers.

https://afficone.com/blog/chrome-hidden-extension/

...all Google domains are allowed to access this information.

This exclusive data collection may help Google to make its services run more smoothly on most devices than its competitors. This reminds me of another anti-competitive issue.