Brave is a free and open-source web browser developed by Brave Software, Inc. based on the Chromium web browser. Brave is a privacy-focused browser, which automatically blocks some advertisements and website trackers in its default settings. Users can turn on optional ads that reward them for their attention in the form of Basic Attention Tokens (BAT), which can be used as a cryptocurrency or to make payments to registered websites and content creators. Taken from Wikipedia.
Terms of Service, Privacy Policy
Disclaimer: This is for Brave Premium accounts required for using Brave Talk. Custodial accounts linked to your Brave Wallet are not covered. Also you can use the browser without one.
Only thing they need apart from a password. Stripe will be the one processing the payment.
Glass half full, people.
Brave Ads are off by default but automatically turned on when you enable Brave Rewards. To turn them off, Go to Settings > Brave Rewards > Ads.
More commonly known as P3A or Privacy Preserving Product Analytics. They're enabled by default so you have to manually opt out, although they claim the reports are anonymized, aggregated, and stripped of metadata.
They'll usually have checkboxes (which are ticked by default) pop up on first use, untick them. Otherwise, go to Settings > Privacy and Security then uncheck "Allow Privacy Preserving Product Analytics (P3A)".
I highly advise against using it as Brave has a different fingerprint from Tor Browser. Disable it and use Tor Browser when you need to dive in the onion.
The only exception to this is their IPFS Public Gateway feature, which store IP addresses indefinitely. Again, turn off everything you don't need.
Remember folks, private = open source but open source != private.
A real shady one at that. Although there are some people who still trust Brave despite their controversies. Personally I think they respect your privacy a lot more than other companies. I'm just gonna include an extra score to not account for this option.
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Analysis: Even if you don't like the company, you gotta admit that Brave Browser is a lot more private out of the box compared to Firefox. It also would have been one of the best browsers out there if not for the crypto stuff they put in it. I doubt the average web surfer will go out of their way to harden their FF so you can go check out Mullvad Browser first, and if you don't like it then you can use Brave if you want to. Do note that Brave has had its fair share of controversies which, coupled with the Brave crypto stuff they put in the browser and the fact that its a Chromium browser (which indirectly supports Google's monopoly over web browsers), can lead people to recommend against it. Despite all that, there are still people who use Brave. Some argue that Brave is still trustworthy, some use the "separate art from artist" approach, and some just like the crypto (yikes). Regardless, Brave is a solid choice in terms of privacy browsers and an easy recommendation for your family and friends who are still using Chrome, wondering what's a ManifestV3 and why their adblocker doesn't work anymore.