If you have the Brave Browser installed on your Windows devices, then you may also have Brave VPN services installed on the machine. Brave installs these services without user consent on Windows devices.

Brave Firewall + VPN is an extra service that Brave users may subscribe to for a monthly fee. Launched in mid-2022, it is a cooperation between Brave Software, maker of Brave Browser, and Guardian, the company that operates the VPN and the firewall solution. The firewall and VPN solution is available for $9.99 per month.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    10416·
    1 year ago

    Brave, owned by Brendan Eich who has donated to homophobic charities and whose browser promotes a load of crypto bro shit on the new tab page.

    Unironically, using straight up Google Chrome is better IMO

    • seaQueue@lemmy.world
      475·
      1 year ago

      Bro missed his crypto scam chance by 6-12mo and just won’t give up.

      I tell people to use open source Chromium, Firefox or … Hell, use Vivaldi or something. Brave is a bad time waiting to happen at this point.

    • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
      363·
      1 year ago

      Now we just gotta wait for the CEO to go on a marketing campaign for new users, in an attempt to drown out the story.

    • HurlingDurling@lemm.eeEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      Why is a server in Washington DC not safe and secure? I’ll give you private against government snooping it’s not, but it can still be safe and secure.

        • HurlingDurling@lemm.eeEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          But it isn’t the entire point tho, I use it when connected to public wifi networks to keep my connection secure. Sure, not letting your local ISP spy on you and report it to the gov is one but not the entire point.

  • Sygheil@lemmy.worldBEnglish
    524·
    1 year ago

    I’ve seen this software behaviour back in the day, oh wait its called trojan.

  • Treczoks@lemm.ee
    144·
    1 year ago

    And spyware for free, and I would not be surprised if they included an insecure backdoor at no extra cost.

      • Treczoks@lemm.ee
        11·
        1 year ago

        Both shitty, yes, but an unsecure backdoor is opening the door to every hacker on the planet, not just one group.

        • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
          2·
          1 year ago

          I was disagreeing that a backdoor can ever be secure, because by definition it’s a way to bypass security protocols and if one person can bypass them, there’s no guarantee others can’t too.

          • Treczoks@lemm.ee
            21·
            1 year ago

            Of course, no backdoor is secure, but among them, there are the just plain bad and the even worse.

  • donkeystomple@lemmy.mlEnglish
    112·
    1 year ago

    Well I feel better about making the switch to Firefox now, and doing a custom user.js

    • chris@lemmy.mlEnglish
      81·
      1 year ago

      I’ve posted a similar question to asklemmy but more over the focus on preference than privacy. In short the search engine Kagi is really good, Brave search was what I had used for a while. I think search engine choice is a case by case kinda thing, each person uses what they like. There are some other engines I forgot from my post which are more privacy centered.

        • chris@lemmy.mlEnglish
          82·
          1 year ago

          Yes it is 10 dollars a month, but you can create an account and try it for free to see if it is for you. It also does not use your data nor push advertisements which explains the cost.

          • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.eeEnglish
            36·
            1 year ago

            ddg does that for free

            $10/mo is also crazy overpriced for a search engine, they’re really not resource intensive at all

            • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
              62·
              1 year ago

              ddg relies on Bing so it isn’t really comparable, idk about kagi’s costs but they claim 1.2 cent per search and an average of 700 searches per month (as what they are serving and hence pricing for)

    • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      I use Brave Search on Firefox, but I mostly use the shortcuts it provides like !yt and !g. A few months back I mostly used it over google, but the search results more times than not have been worse in comparison for me.

        • Kras Mazov@lemmygrad.ml
          1·
          1 year ago

          Oh, thanks I forgot it was called bangs. I used DDG a few years ago but missed some features from Google, so I ended up giving up on it, maybe I’ll try again soon.

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
    12·
    1 year ago

    I use Vivaldi, Andisearch and Mojeek. I’m going fine with these. As VPN Proton

  • Aatube@kbin.social
    816·
    1 year ago

    u/@Max_P said this at the !technology thread:

    Software installs services to make its features operate, including optional default off ones. More news at 10.

    This is just like any other optional feature of Chromium you don’t use

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    313·
    1 year ago

    That doesn’t really seem that bad. There are issues with brave but that’s not one of them

    • Muehe@lemmy.ml
      92·
      1 year ago

      A VPN provider has the same level of insight into your traffic as an ISP does when not using a VPN. If having one installed without your consent isn’t a privacy issue I don’t know what is…

        • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.caEnglish
          10·
          1 year ago

          I just looked on a VM I spun up for risky shit. It seems to be opt-in only.

          Is it a good VPN? No. Is it worth the overreacting that Lemmy seems to do every time someone mentions Brave? No.

          But hey, social media.

        • Muehe@lemmy.ml
          2·
          1 year ago

          Unclear to me, according to the OP the service is set to manual start. But there is an event trigger attached to the service and the article doesn’t mention what that event is.