Try to disable telemetry.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
286 points (95.5% liked)
Privacy
42158 readers
683 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
From Wiki:
Brave Software was founded in 2015 by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and former Mozilla CEO who left the organization after coming under fire for his support of eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry [...]
and
In August 2016, the company had received at least US$7 million in angel investments from venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund [...]
Should tell you everything you need to know.
I'd say being 'privacy focused' is just a stick to get non-tech savy/gullible people that want to protect their privacy to use it, without thinking about it twice. Personally, I believe there is 0% chance they don't sell (or simply give) all data they can to Peter Thiel and Palantir.
....also to Facebook, also one of the investors. Brave has good privacy protections, but they are selective.
the crypto browser? it's not private and never was
better than stock chrome or edge. Not better than Mullvad Browser.
That's the lie they try to sell you.
I swear Brave ran a very successful guerrilla marketing campaign and it succeeded on Reddit. If you so much as question it or suggest an alternative, you get dogpiled on by Brave bros. I don't trust it one bit. I'll stick to FF and its forks.
Yeah, haven't they done a ton of shady shit? I always cringe when people recommend the Brave browser. It's like recommending a free VPN.
Brave is a protection racket wrapped in a cryptocurrency scam, created by a bigoted fuckwit. It is fractally shit.
Apparently Brave's got some cryptocurrency components, so I guess that's where the cult-like following is.
Exactly. Same with Opera GX whatever, which is just a weird chinese spying chrome, with nothing to do with Opera from the good old days when it was still Norwegian (Vivaldi is made by those guys still).
load more comments
(1 replies)
Just use Firefox for gods sakes, Brave is a complete joke of a browser especially when it comes to privacy.
Yeah, doing any kind of digging into Brave will immediately send up warning flares that the privacy claims are pure fluff. Just use Firefox or Librewolf.
Firefox is great. Librewolf if you're extra keen on privacy.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Why I recommend against Brave - Luca Bramè.
This article is a pretty good breakdown of why you shouldn't use Brave.
Brave is a scam.
I've never really had a comfortable feeling about Brave. I have no substantiating evidence, it just seems a bit squirrely. Besides the Tor browser, LibreWolf, Waterfox, and FireFox are the only acceptable browsers as far as I'm concerned, tho I don't come down on those seeking an alternative to Google Chrome.
Librefox has been awesome. Once you get the hang of enabling cookies for specific sites it mostly just works. Although Fastmail keeps logging me out for some reason
load more comments
(9 replies)
no, brave is just another crypto scam
Brave is like the ExpressVPN of browsers
Haha
Brave (the company) has a long history of doing dodgy stuff. They are just trying to do what Google did (directing clicks to their own shit), but they're using privacy as their marketing spiel.
People sadly believe so. Firefox, a few addons and you are good to go.
It boggles my mind how people still recommend Brave as a good browser for privacy.
The entire point of Brave from the beginning was their own Crypto currency that they wanted to shill.
In their early days they offered a bunch of Tech YouTubers some crypto (via affiliate links) in return for them shilling brave.
Brave is basically just yet another Chromium reskin with custom branding, extra tracking and crypto bullshit bolted to it.
No, the builtin AdBlocker does not make it "worth it". Stop recommending this pile of crap.
No. At least not in the way most people expect.
It does block some tracking and ads that Chrome alone allows or explicitly adds. But it simply shifts that tracking to Brave. The idea was that you'd still get the benefits of that tracking by giving all of your data to Brave instead. I honestly never was convinced by this considering your data is still being sold, just by a different company so it doesn't sound much better to me. Supposedly, according to them, Brave is more trustworthy and gives you more control over what they track and sell, but I don't trust that business model. There's no real incentive for them to do what they said they would.
Isn't Brave just a crypto scam? I have no clue why people trust it so much
It gets pushed often by reactionaries as an "anti-woke" browser LOL its a complete piece of shit. It's got crypto, tracking, NFTs, AI and ads baked in. Literally everything I hate about the tech industry rolled up into one package. I'd rather use Chrome, even.
load more comments
(1 replies)
even tho most low level searches and recommendations gonna point towards brave as the private browser, all you need to just look at the options. its datafarming, its running in the background randomly, its an nftbro chrome.
I tend to recommend Brave for the ones who aren't technically savvy. For that, its good.
For me who is really into privacy, I've always felt uncomfortable with brave or any chrome based browser. So I go with TOR and LibreWolf
No.
It sold out on it's privacy promise years ago. Brave Browser CANNOT be trusted if you are someone who must ensure Privacy Preserving featurs must remain on at all times.
I recommend the Tor Browser. DO NOT USE THE TOR BROWSING CAPABILITIES OF BRAVE! YOU WILL BE DEANONYMIZED! Likely anything you'd be using Tor for, you don't want your browser slipping up and leaking anything.
Personally I use a blend of hand-hardened Firefox (Via plugins), Librewolf and Ungoogled Chromium (for very rare cases where the site is actually trusted and requires Chrome to function predictably)
Don't a lot of browsers by default have pings set up to track usage? Check the privacy section. There is usually a check box about sending daily pings to whatever company made the browser to track usage.
Not sure about the variations though
load more comments
(1 replies)
It’s more private but doesn’t have 0 telemetry. You can disable some telemetry in settings. But it still has to make requests for update checks if using Windows or MacOS.
I'm a grown adult and can check for updates my own damn self. This phone-home telemetry in the guise of updating bullshit needs to stop
Then use an actual private browser and not some techbro cryptobrowser.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
I use Vivaldi, it's IMHO the only decent Chromium browser, apart European, with a good privacy, no logs, no tracking no third party investors. great services and community.
I think Vivaldi is source-available, but it's proprietary otherwise due to a BSD license that allows for source-availability.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Any decent person wouldn't use brave.
https://www.christiantoday.com.au/news/former-mozilla-ceo-ousted-for-opposing-gay-marriage-makes-comeback-with-new-internet-browser-brave.html this is who you're supporting.
You can disable this in the settings. Nobara ships with Brave now but with all of the telemetry and crypto BS turned off out of the box.
It's a shame this is necessary, to be honest. It's the same argument with Windows users: "you can just run a debloater and fiddle with the registry to disable tracking". It shouldn't be needed in the first place.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Idk what the first two are, but you should be able to disable the usage ping at the bottom of privacy settings
view more: next ›