• ZeroCool@feddit.ch
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      9 months ago

      Yep, this news actually broke a couple days ago, I remember seeing a Brave fanboy having a meltdown over it and ranting about how Mozilla is the real shady company, blah, blah, blah.

        • jet@hackertalks.com
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          9 months ago

          To be fair. Mozilla foundation is shady. They keep pushing things that don’t follow their core mission. That try to expand their brand.

          You can use Mozilla to build solid privacy respecting systems, but Firefox out of the box not so much. They’re better than Google, but that’s a low fucking bar.

          Mullvad browser, Tor browser, mull for Android - all use the core Firefox open source engine, to make privacy respecting programs that work out of the box with privacy respecting defaults.

          So I would say Mozilla is a good guy in this conversation, but not a saint.

          • no banana @lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Though they are transparent with the fact that they are doing it. I’m not a fan of it either, but it’s not too shady when they’re open about it IMO.

            • jet@hackertalks.com
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              9 months ago

              Fair enough, they aren’t evil to be sure.

              The Mozilla telemetry, pocket, Mozilla synchronization, experiments, the new tab page basically being an advertisement page. That leaves the sour taste in my mouth, so I don’t trust them because of that… Shady good guy vibes:)

              • no banana @lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                They’re doing what they think they need to justify their existence, and although I personally believe being just a great browser would be enough I appreciate their communication around their ventures. It’s not great, but it’s not like they’re installing malware in the background.

                • jet@hackertalks.com
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                  9 months ago

                  https://itsfoss.com/firefox-looking-glass-controversy/

                  They get pretty close sometimes. I respect their mojo, but I don’t install vanilla Firefox anymore. On anything. For any reason. I don’t trust them anymore.

                  I wish them the best, if I could donate directly to Firefox development I would, but it’s impossible with them. So I don’t. I donate to mullvad, I donate to the Tor project, and I donate to servo. That’s what I can do to make sure we maintain an open and free web

  • MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

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

  • Kayn@dormi.zone
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    9 months ago

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

    For some reason people like to clown on Brave specifically.

        • jeremyparker@programming.dev
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          9 months ago

          there’s a term for appropriating the struggle of an oppressed group the way you just did, but I can’t remember what it is. Anyway - I feel like you’re assuming everyone is talking about you when we’re not… If we don’t like something that you like, you can just mind your own business…?

          If there’s a post about someone doing something bad, and people talk about how bad it is, but you think it’s good, are we all supposed to stop talking about it because you showed up?

  • Bloxlord@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago
    • Download a browser with a built-in VPN
    • Get browser and VPN services on your computer

    Why is this news?

    • hiddengoat@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      Because these idiots don’t know how software works.

      They’d shit their pants if they paid attention to the services on their computer.

      • Engywuck@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Just imagine: using Windows and being concerned about privacy. Big lol.

      • BananaTrifleViolin@kbin.social
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        9 months ago

        It’s good users are now aware that Brave includes redundant features that you have to pay extra for to activate. Users browser will update everytime the browser or the VPN software needs an update.

        For example Firefox VPN from Mozilla is separate software. They don’t force millions of users to download it even if they don’t want it.

        This is yet another example why people should not be using Brave and should be skeptical of its intentions.

        • lloram239@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          They don’t force millions of users to download it even if they don’t want it.

          Mozilla has been forcing Pocket on Firefox users for years, as well as Mr Robot ads and numerous other things. They don’t exact have the moral high ground here.

            • lloram239@feddit.de
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              9 months ago

              Pocket is Mozilla’s bookmark/sync pay-cloud-service. Comes with Firefox by default and can’t be easily removed. From a company that claims to care about privacy I would expect a self-hosted local-first approach for such problems, not a cloud service.

              • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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                9 months ago

                But its not active unless you turn it on right? Just preinstalled so if you decide to use it its already there?

                Cause that does sound like a little bloatware but if thats the only bloat they have and thats its only issue Im not sure Im bothered by it.

  • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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    9 months ago

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

    • twoshoes@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • Pazuzu@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        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.