Brave Software has announced plans to deprecate the 'Strict' fingerprinting protection mode in its privacy-focused Brave Browser because it causes many sites to function incorrectly.
  • YeetPics@mander.xyz
    12611·
    7 months ago

    The scam company brave? The one that scams people? With their scam based crypto rewards that don’t pay out? THAT brave?

    • Mikina@programming.dev
      2·
      7 months ago

      I’ve been having a pretty good experience with Mullvad, however I don’t hear many people talking about it. I wonder why is that, IIRC it’s being developed with Tor Foundation, and is basically a Tor browser for clear web, and that sounds perfect. So far, I didn’t run into any issues, so is there a catch, or are they just not well enough known yet? Or, maybe people are turned away by their optional VPN?

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        1·
        7 months ago

        Probably because LibreWolf is most of the way there, and the Mullvad branding + proprietary VPN is more than a bit much. I use(d) the VPN alongside it and found the add-on “hints” regarding the correct DNS settings more frustrating than helpful, too.

        • Mikina@programming.dev
          1·
          7 months ago

          I was using LibreWolf before, but I really like the idea of bundling VPN + Browser, and also the way they handle payments - not only is Mullvad VPN kind of cheap, I can just pay with crypto and don’t need any account (kind of - you just generate username that also serves as an password, without any other contact information required).

          But what I like the most about it is the idea of making a browser with the goal of having the same fingerprint between users (as much as possible), and offering it with a VPN - becuase that means that most of other users of the VPN will probably also have the same fingerprint from the browser, so you will blend in with them. I wasn’t really sold on the idea of VPN before that and didn’t use one, but this was what convinced me.

          But tbh I haven’t done much research into the company, or into the effectivness of their implementation. I’m kind of betting on their cooperation with Tor Browser, which should have most of this stuff already figured out. But it’s possible that other browsers are just better at it, I never checked.

          I do however still use LibreWolf for the occasional site that breaks with Mullvad, but it’s not something that happens too often.

          I use(d) the VPN alongside it and found the add-on “hints” regarding the correct DNS settings more frustrating than helpful, too.

          Hmm, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed anything about DNS. I think I’ve actually never click on the browser vpn extension, though :D Is it the encrypted DNS hint?

          EDIT: Found this, apparently it’s doing pretty well https://privacytests.org/

    • Samueru@lemmy.world
      626·
      7 months ago

      Firefox lacks a ton of features and its default settings have terrible fingerprinting protection to start.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
        28·
        7 months ago

        Yeah, Firefox lacks features like built-in pop-up ads, full screen homepage ads (those ones are enabled by default), and a VPN you probably didn’t even purchase.

        Truly, the features I wanted to clog up my hard drive whether I use them or not

            • LWD@lemm.ee
              21·
              7 months ago

              The affiliate link one certainly couldn’t. It wasn’t until people identified it and started complaining that the company had to backpedal.

              And even for the scam stuff that can be disabled, why should it be downloaded, installed, and take up space on the hard drive to begin with? If it’s so good, they can make it an add-on for people to optionally choose.

              • Samueru@lemmy.world
                1·
                7 months ago

                Well, the reason that is because brave wants you to use that, same way mozilla wants to you use their account services and the cloudflare dns that you can opt out of but can’t uninstall unless you use a fork of firefox.

                And also I don’t know why you put emphasis on space usage when firefox uses more resources on websites than brave and chromium, I tested it back when using xfce4 and for 3 tabs and the total system mem usage was 1.24 GIB for firefox and 1 GiB for Chromium and Brave. And when I did that test chromium hadn’t implemented a new feature that they added that moves inactive tabs to the disk.

                I also don’t think I’m gaining anything by replying to your comment after you didn’t even bother replying when I told you all the issues and missing features that firefox has and instead focus on hating brave. I hope you’re doing this because you hate the brave ceo and not because of some weird fanboyism with firefox lol.

                • LWD@lemm.ee
                  2·
                  7 months ago

                  Well, the reason that is because brave wants you to use that, same way mozilla wants to you use their account services

                  Brave cryptocurrency crap = a Firefox account? Come on, at least compare apples to apples.

                  And also I don’t know why you put emphasis on space usage when firefox uses more resources on websites

                  Because we were talking about how opting out of cryptocurrency crap doesn’t fix the issues with it being installed by default.

        • Samueru@lemmy.world
          320·
          7 months ago

          FIrefox lacks vertical tabs, can’t change the default new tab page background color without having to use a custom .css file.

          Having to use a userContent.css for something so basic is insane. That is orders of magnitude more work than disabling the crypto ads in brave which you don’t even have to go in the settings to disable, it is right on the homepage menu.

          Also firefox lacks configurable keybinds and when I used librewolf I had to add two extensions for something that basic.

          One was to change the default keybinds to changing tabs from alt+123 to control+123 because for some reason they changed it on linux to that which is retarded (opening a new tab is still control+t so you can’t just say that it is all the control options that got moved to alt lol).

          The other extension was to deattach the tab which firefox has no keybind set for it.

          And one of the best features that firefox has, which is the userChrome.css has only gotten worse over time with it breaking with new updates and also now having it disabled by default and hidden inside the about:config menu.

          The default vpn on brave is terrible, although that only affected windows. And firefox is only slightly better on this because and pardon me if I’m mistaken (I don’t wanna install firefox to check lol) didn’t they change the default settings to send all dns over https to cloudflare? On librewolf they got rid of the default one and you have to provide one instead.

          Edit: Look no further, you even have to install ublock origin on firefox to get rid of ads and also configure its filter list if you want to get rid of cookie prompts, something that brave does by default already.

          • Pantherina@feddit.de
            121·
            7 months ago

            These are all UI things you can add with extensions or some modding. Firefox needs forks for that.

            Not to speak of actual features like sandboxing on android, user namespace sandboxing on Linux, and more.

            • unalivejoy@lemm.eeEnglish
              6·
              7 months ago

              Firefox needs forks for that.

              You’d be amazed what you can do with userChrome.css.

              • Pantherina@feddit.de
                2·
                7 months ago

                True. This needs better documentation though, and I would highly appreciate to have official templates.

            • Samueru@lemmy.world
              25·
              7 months ago

              Yeah no biggy, just some 7 extensions and some css and you will get somewhat usable experience on Firefox…

                • Samueru@lemmy.world
                  15·
                  7 months ago

                  That is horrible that you have to install a bunch of extensions for basic features, and one of those extensions to fix something that mozilla went out of their way to break on linux and not that they havent add.

                  And there is also things like syncing the user sessions and settings without an email which brave can do while firefox and forks can’t

                  edit: And you ignored half of my comment, doing css to get firefox to work IS NOT EASY lmao.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
        8·
        7 months ago

        Then customize it. Honestly they aren’t all that bad and by using Firefox you ate not supporting google.

        • Samueru@lemmy.world
          16·
          7 months ago

          I have done that, and it a horrible, it takes more work to make a useChrone.css on firefox than to setup a wm on linux lol

          You can also use any of the forks of chromium and not support google, what you said is like telling people not use grapheneos because it is a fork of android.

          • sir_reginald@lemmy.world
            32·
            7 months ago

            If we had a working alternative to Android as a whole, we would surely use it. But Linux on mobile works only in few devices and not flawlessly at all. But for the Chromium monopoly we have an actual alternative that works.

            • Samueru@lemmy.world
              14·
              7 months ago

              Linux on phones already work, just that phonecalls might not work sometimes, but if you are into privacy you might as well not use that anyway lol.

              So yeah, time to drop graphene and start using linux on phones, if you managed to get firefox to work you can use linux phones, sure some websites might not work on firefox (that is not fault of firefox, same way not all apps might work on linux) and you may need to do some coding to get some things to your liking (using custom.css files is like settings up a bunch of configs and scripts on linux) and you might need to add a bunch extensions to get basic features (like adding extensions to gnome lol).

    • Samueru@lemmy.world
      1316·
      7 months ago

      Braves default fingerprinting protection is better than the one that librewolf uses, or at least it is according to the EFF.

    • EvokerKing@lemmy.world
      1126·
      7 months ago

      I use it. I don’t get marketing because I use brave, which has a fucking indestructible adblocker. Like while everyone was panicking from the YouTube issues, I’ve never seen a single message to turn it off on YouTube. And there was a bunch of other things that users has reported, like slow videos, that brave just didn’t have problems with.

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      625·
      7 months ago

      Brave is simply usable Chromium. On GrapheneOS it is not the most secure as it has its own Chromium engine which is not as hardened poorly.

      On Linux it works well with hardened_malloc while Firefox straight up does not run. This is probably because Firefox has memory issues.

      It sucks relying on Chromium as Firefoxes UX is top tier. I have no idea why normies are using Chromium Browsers, they all suck for UX, especially Chrome.

      But on Android and Linux Chromium is very secure, while Firefox is at least questionable.

      Brave sets very weird priorities though, they dont focus on many features people need and instead bloat everything with news or crypto stuff that doesnt even support Monero.

  • moitoi@feddit.de
    557·
    7 months ago

    Brave to end ‘Strict’ fingerprinting protection as it breaks owns ad revenue.

    • Pantherina@feddit.de
      614·
      7 months ago

      No it literally breaks sites. I was using Firefox with Arkenfox user.js, basically Torbrowser, and nothing broke unless the site told me “your browser is not supported”. Braves strong defaults broke Github and more.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
          13·
          7 months ago

          Not much Brave can do there? I dont know what they did. You are probably better off with UBO and NoScript (both MV2 btw).

          But everyone is escalating about Brave removing a broken feature as if they where getting worse or something. The feature was broken, they removed it. Thats it.

      • AnonTwo@kbin.social
        2·
        7 months ago

        Was strict the default? I’d assume the standard would be the default.

        I’d imagine if you were using strict you want the sites to break because you absolutely do not want fingerprinting. That kindof restriction usually comes with the breaking being expected.

        • Pantherina@feddit.de
          1·
          7 months ago

          Yes probably. I have no idea what they did though, because Arkenfox / Torbrowser doesnt break anything.

          Noscript and ublock origin are both MV2. But Brave wants to keep supporting MV2.

          So I think they should not try implementing stuff extensions already do better, but at the same time something like this is the only way if they want to also go full MV3 and save themselves a lot of maintenance

  • ZeroHora@lemmy.mlEnglish
    42·
    7 months ago

    Another issue is that Strict mode is used by roughly 0.5% of Brave’s users, with the rest using the default setting, which is the Standard mode.

    How are they getting this data? If it’s with telemetry this data doesn’t seem reliable, I doubt that people who change the fingerprint setting don’t disable telemetry.

  • LainOfTheWired@lemy.lolEnglish
    365·
    7 months ago

    I used brave for a while, but left as I felt there was something fishy about them. Seems I was right

  • Byter@lemmy.one
    185·
    7 months ago

    I’d ask why they don’t make it optional (I’m not a Brave user) but it seems it was.

    Another issue is that Strict mode is used by roughly 0.5% of Brave’s users, with the rest using the default setting, which is the Standard mode.

    This low percentage actually makes these users more vulnerable to fingerprinting despite them using the more aggressive blocker, because they constitute a discernible subset of users standing out from the rest.

    Given that, I’m inclined to agree with the decision to remove it. Pick your battles and live to fight another day.

    • RandoCalrandian@kbin.social
      111·
      7 months ago

      Unless there’s a strong correlation between those who set fingerprint protection to strict and those that disable telemetry

      In that case they’re about to piss off a much larger portion of their users than they realize

      • sir_reginald@lemmy.world
        21·
        7 months ago

        but if they have all that disabled, they probably have their ads disabled too, which means they are not making Brave any money. So they don’t care.

    • averyminya@beehaw.org
      5·
      7 months ago

      So rather than fixing the issue they just removed it entirely.

      That’s kind of a joke from a “privacy” based browser.

    • LWD@lemm.ee
      1·
      7 months ago

      Both points are a bit BS.

      Strict mode is used by roughly 0.5% of Brave’s users

      Based exclusively on whether a user had not gone through the Brave’s browser settings and disabled the “Send statistics about my behavior to the Brave corporate HQ” flag.

      In other words, the number is useless.

      This low percentage actually makes these users more vulnerable to fingerprinting despite them using the more aggressive blocker, because they constitute a discernible subset of users standing out from the rest.

      This argument could be used to tell people to avoid using the Brave browser too. After all, only a minority of people do. The best way to blend in would be to use Google Chrome on Windows 11, and improve no privacy settings.

      Unless someone wants to argue that using Brave makes you an acceptable degree of unique, but using advanced tracking blocking makes you unacceptably unique.