Brave browser review
Unbiased by a software engineer in detail.
We all know how the big tech companies collect as much data as possible about us and how hard it is to escape their surveillance. This browser is a private browser out of the box. This is ideal for people who don’t like configuring a lot of settings, and still want to be private.
The appearance of the brave browser
First, the new tab page gives you a quick overview of the amount of data and time you saved. On the right side, it could also show you the amount of cryptocurrency you hold, which is also a nice feature. This page looks better than Chrome & Firefox in my opinion.
Build-in Adblocker
Brave is an out-of-the-box privacy browser with a built-in advertisement blocker. In the top right corner, there is a small brave icon. This little lion is the build in tracker- & adblocker. Besides the built-in advertisement blocker, there is also a third-party cookie blocker.
Usually, you have to download this yourself. There are a lot of low quality / bad adblockers out there. This solves the problem of knowing you got the right adblocker.
Anti browser fingerprinting
What is also unique about this browser is the build anti-browser- fingerprinting-blocker. Which will make it harder to detect if I’m using the same system over different accounts/sessions. This is done by randomizing information about the browser.
Browser fingerprinting is detecting all the unique features of your browser and identity you based on those unique features. It is like a real biological fingerprint, but for browsers.
I tried to bring this to the test with the following websites
Cover your tracks
Tells me that my fingerprint is randomized. This is a good sign, but we don’t know how unique we are yet. The less unique we are, the harder it is to track us.
Am I unique
This is the site I’m looking for. There is a lot of information visible, which I can use to see how fingerprint blocking works. Opening the same website in another incognito window show different results. This is good since this means brave is actively randomizing the fingerprints!
What is my browser
What I think is about this one is you can see the attempt of brave browser lying about what kind of browser it is, but somehow the website detected that I’m using the brave browser.
Superfast
The brave browser is one of the fastest browsers I have used. The moment I click on the Brave browser icon, it appears on my screen. It is even more instantaneous than Google Chrome.
Browsing the internet is also faster on brave since it blocks unnecessary advertisements, which will speed up your browsing experience.
Build-in news feed.
The Brave news feed is a built-in feature that makes it able to see the most recent news articles on your new tab screen.
No personalization.
The brave news feed isn’t built on top of your interests, which is good since you also see news which you are not interested in, or you don’t like. These days, machine learning algorithms decide what kind of news you will see. This is bad since you will only see the type of news you want to see / you’re interested in.
Another bad thing about this is that brave decide what kind of news articles you will see and what you won’t see. It moves the responsibility from a machine-learning algorithm to a company build for privacy.
Build-in tor proxy
For people who really care about their privacy and don’t even want to leak their metadata, there also exists a built-in tor proxy. Accessing the internet through tor is the only way some people can access the sites they need. For example, in some countries, the government prevents whistleblowers or journalists from sending their messages. This is the ideal way of hiding yourself from governments or your internet service provider.
Of course, using the Brave browser to access websites doesn’t have the same level of security as accessing the web through the tor browser.
Using the built-in feature of accessing websites through tor is an easy way for “normal” people to use a bit more privacy in their life.
Open in Tor
Some websites have a button “Open in tor”. This will redirect you to the tor version of the website. This is an amazing feature since onion websites are more secure than normal ones.
Glows in the dark
To improve privacy on the brave browser, brave changed the default search engine of the tor windows to DuckDuckGo, which is great. Since DuckDuckGo is known for being privacy-friendly. I rather see brave change the DuckDuckGo domain to their onion counterpart, since this protects the user their privacy more.
When you’re comparing the tor browser to the Brave Browser the tor browser absolutely wins. Especially on onion routed traffic. It is possible to see if someone their traffic is routed through tor. Generally, all onion routed traffic is from the tor browser. But when you access websites from Brave it is much easier to fingerprint them since their user agent and the way the browser behaves gives it away.
Interplanetary file system or IPFS
This is by far the coolest calling project I know. IPFS is a decentralized file-sharing platform like the torrent protocol. Except, it is also possible to host websites on here to make an immutable web. Which is great in times of deplatforming, governments taking down websites or when a large DDoS attack takes down a website.
The thing I would like to see is an “Open in IPFS” button like the “Open in Tor” button shown in F.4.
Build-in Ethereum wallet
This could be nice to have when you are a cryptocurrency trader, and you want to access Dapps (Decentralized Applications). I don’t think most people will use it. So it is not something that adds much to the brave experience for me. The Ethereum wallet is not installed by default, thus this feature doesn’t bother me too much
Build-in torrent downloader
This is another feature I’ll use seldom. But I can see the positive use cases for this, since most torrenting clients show a lot of intrusive advertisements. It is nice to be able to download your Linux ISO without looking at intrusive advertisements and probably tracking advertisements.
Build on top of chromium
This is a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that almost all sites work on the brave browser. The bad thing is that if there is an exploit in the Chromium then 60% of all browsers will be exploitable.
Another good thing about chromium is that most browser extensions also work on the brave browser.
Another “bad” thing in my opinion is the chromium-browser based developer tools. The developer tools on Firefox are much easier to use and there are more features in the Firefox developer tools.
The last thing I do not like about the brave browser is the way the tabs look. As a software developer, it is common to have 30+ tabs open. When I open a lot of tabs, the tabs get smaller and smaller. This is frustrating since you can’t read the text in the tab. If you know add-ins that could change this, please leave a comment!
Things you need to consider yourself
By default, Google is the default search engine. As we all know, Google is a tracking machine. So I would recommend you to switch from Google to a search engine that respects privacy more. For example, duckduckgo.com or Qwant.
A strange thing about Brave is that they don’t disable the biggest trackers by default. For example, social media trackers. I recommend disabling all the social media trackers except the one from Google when you use Google to log in to certain websites.
Moves the trust from Google to Brave
A lot of traffic that usually directly goes to google gets proxied through Brave. This could be a nice feature if you trust brave but not trust google. Again, this up to you who you trust the most.
Bloated
The brave browser by default has a lot of features you might not need. For example the torrent client or crypto wallet. If hard drive space is a problem you need to keep in mind that it is optional to download those features.
The reward system (Basic attention token)
This is by far the unique feature I have ever seen in this browser. Since the browser prevents advertisements, content creators won’t earn money for their work. Basic attention token tries to solve this issue (and a couple of other issues).
Basic attention token (BAT) is a cryptocurrency given to you for your attention. When this is enabled you get paid to view privacy-friendly & not disturbing ads. The BAT you get can be used to donate to your favourite content creators like Wikipedia or Khan Academy.
It is also possible to withdraw the BAT you get from viewing ads to your bank account. Don’t expect to earn a good amount of money from viewing advertisements.
Privacy concerns in withdrawing bat
To withdraw your BAT you have to do KYC with a third party company. This means you have to share identifiable information to withdraw your online private currency. This goes against the whole idea behind the Brave Browser. If you see this as a concern, I would recommend donating the BAT you earn to creators or other online figures you like.
Conclusion
Brave is by far the most innovative browser out there. It is good for non-tech people to get started in crypto with BAT & take better care of their online privacy without too much hassle of setting up adblockers / anti fingerprinting tools. I use the brave browser as my daily driver for a year now.
