I’m looking for another browser option for Windows besides Brave. What do you recommend?
Well, this is a new one. Most people I talk to are switching from Google Chrome to Brave, not away from Brave. So the question is: why do you want to move away from Brave? Is there something about the software itself that bothers you, or do you have objections to the company or? What are you looking for in a browser? Brave is still my primary browser.
My son is studying cyber security in school and came across an article talking about Brave adding their own referral code to cryptocurrency websites without user consent. I asked this question to you, and then asked him to send me more info on where he got his info. He sent me a few articles:
This one lists some sites that people said were showing a referral code added after the url. Brendan Eich, Brave’s CEO responded: “We made a mistake, we’re correcting: Brave default autocompletes verbatim “http://binance.us” in address bar to add an affiliate code. We are a Binance affiliate, we refer users via the opt-in trading widget on the new tab page, but autocomplete should not add any code.” So it seems that an referral code was being added via autocomplete, but that they fixed it. I went to the 4 websites that were mentioned in this article, and there was no referral code. So it does seem that they fixed it.
While I don’t buy cryptocurrency, my issue was that they were doing it without asking for consent. But, is this a thing that browsers do without consent? Add their own referral code to a website to generate revenue for their company? I’d love any clarification and/or correction needed if I’m misunderstanding this.
Thank you!
Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I had not heard about this. It doesn’t surprise me, nor do I find it particularly concerning. Brave is trying to make money, and it has a bunch of little annoying things it does in service of that.
It speaks to a larger question that I will be diving into at length on the podcast eventually, and that is the topic of “free”. The internet, and so many of the tools we use with it, like browsers, seem to be “free”, but of course have a lot of financial costs that have to be paid for somehow.
For most of the history of the internet, the primary method has been advertisements. Brave is trying a bit different approach on making money - less annoying to some, more annoying to others. But I don’t resent their efforts.
Should they have been more transparent about it in the first place? Or not done it at all? Probably.
Do I love Brave? Not particularly. It’s based on the same core engine that Google Chrome is (and most browsers are), and I find that unfortunate. I just feel like it’s better than Google Chrome. I have yet to find a browser that I love. There was a time when I loved Firefox. There were probably others. Browsers have changed so much, and I expect that to continue. Overall, I find them to be pretty disappointing.
Firefox is still in many ways a great option, you could give that a try. More websites will fail to work in it that Brave or Google Chrome. But that’s true of most browsers. And it doesn’t have the built in “Shields Up” protection from Brave, though with extensions you can get similar results.
After Firefox, the next on my list to try on Windows is Mullvad.
There’s also Opera, and Vivaldi, both of which have been around for a while, and I have played with for a while at points in the past.
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Thank you for this response. I will stick with Brave for now, even though it doesn’t work with an extension (Paprika recipe app) that I use quite a bit. I have found a work around for it on my desktop, and sadly, have to use Safari on my phone. I appreciate the thoroughness in your response!
Does the paprika extension work in Google Chrome on desktop? I have yet to experience an extension that works in Google Chrome, but not Brave. I would be interested in testing that out if that’s what you’re saying - I use Paprika myself.
On the phone front - sadly, Apple only allows browser extensions in Safari on phones, so there’s nothing to be done there.