Brave owns and ad company. They are absolutely tracking users.
Brave CEO claims news about Brave Browser tracking its users is “fake news”
Submitted 1 day ago by Beep@lemmus.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://cyberinsider.com/brave-ceo-denies-user-tracking-allegations-calls-claims-fake-news/
Comments
W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
MurrayL@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Don’t trust anyone who unironically uses the term ‘fake news’.
victorz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Was about to say, where did I hear that before… 🤔
cabbage@piefed.social 1 day ago
XLE@piefed.social 1 day ago
I’m sure Brendan Eich has a normal vocabulary when he isn’t talking about "glowies" or "h8ers"… Or when he’s talking like Sephiroth
ChilledPeppers@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
Idk, I use fake news to describe like, AI made “medical” videos talking about how MRI is actually bad for you and people older than 50 shouldn’t do it. Maybe misinformation is a better term?
RushLana@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
What a surprise… the web browser made by a racist bigoted guy who is a huge fan of mass surveillance and Trump is not private color me surprised /s
jimmy90@lemmy.world 1 day ago
careful you don’t smack youself in the face with that knee jerk
Brave does not collect user data at all by default, and any opt-in system, such as Brave Rewards or premium VPN, blinds us to user id, no record linkability either
is that THE cambeidge analytics? i assume .org is something using the name in irony
angrywaffle@piefed.social 1 day ago
The company that injected crypto referral codes in your links, if someone needs more convincing.
kewjo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
and blamed users for not knowing since it’s open source and anyone concerned should have read the source.
gointhefridge@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I never understood why so many “privacy focused” lists mark them as the top browser choice. Their company track record seems spotty at best.
cabbage@piefed.social 1 day ago
It’s all about the marketing and nothing about the technology or company.
I opened google for the first time in months (years?) to check out the results for “best private browser”. Predictably, the AI overview confidently responds as follows:
The best private browsers in 2026 for enhancing online anonymity and blocking trackers are Tor Browser, Brave, and Mullvad Browser. For maximum privacy with high security, Tor is top, while Brave is best for daily, fast browsing. Mullvad is ideal for anti-fingerprinting, and LibreWolf offers excellent privacy for Firefox users.
I would be very surprised if Brave did not at least at some point sponsor content to position itself as privacy oriented. This hidden advertisement then bleeds into both AI and human armchair experts with no deeper understanding of the tech they’re commenting on. And so the myth that Brave has good privacy becomes self-enforcing.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I would be very surprised if Brave did not at least at some point sponsor content to position itself as privacy oriented.
Yeah, this is standard SEO that all companies have been doing since people figured out how to game Google’s PageRank algorithm.
The only thing new is the AI who’s search strategy is ‘summarize the top n results’
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Because it has ad blockers built in, has Tor built in, blocks trackers by default, and is very upfront and open about how they use your data if you choose to let them. A big part of what this article misses is that the feature is opt-in. It is turned off by default. Some people are weird and want personalized ads, in which case this feature is a hell of a lot more secure than other browsers who have to opt-out of tracking and don’t give a shit about your PII.
MehBlah@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
“Fake news”. A term coined to describe deceptive media. In particular fox news. Now used by liars worldwide to dismiss the truth.
hector@lemmy.today 11 hours ago
You missed the part where the perpetrators of fake news then accused all the real news of being fake news.
Every accusation is a confession. Facebook’s cambridge analytica, and other bs was weaponized along with micro targeting, and it worked relatively well, and when that limey journalist lady bravely broke the story, it got some press, but that was it, the bad guys won, didn’t investigate, and the democrats wouldn’t have done shit either outside the fine.
Not quite it, the lady that broke the story got sued by Bannon. So she is the only one that got punished. She has a new book or something it’s supposed to be good she’s a real investigative journalist.
DoucheBagMcSwag@piefed.social 1 day ago
Stop using brave. CEO is a trump fucker
tengkuizdihar@programming.dev 21 hours ago
alternative with free sync and password manager?
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Don’t they basically all do that?
Widukin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
I would be interested as well. Been using Brave for a long time now, but I want to switch, just don’t know what to.
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
It is wild to me that Brave still maintains such a highly regarded position amongst privacy “enthusiasts” and websites. The godawful news about the browser, its company, and the CEO has been constant since the day it was first announced and it’s clear as water that the browser is not private nor even remotely ethical. Far as I am concerned, it should have faded from the public conscious back when they were injecting their crypto referrals to skim money without you knowing. Or all the times the CEO opened his mouth and revealed that he is a supreme piece of shit.
And even if it was private, just the fact that it’s yet another Chromium browser is a total non-starter for me. I am so sick and tired of the ocean of alternative browsers that directly or indirectly support Google’s browser monopoly, often while proclaiming they are a great Chrome alternative.
hamsterkill@lemmy.sdf.org 11 hours ago
A significant chunk of privacy enthusiasts are libertarians like Brave’s CEO. I think there’s some level of “same team” trust going on there.
0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
I remember that any little firefox controversy thread in reddit would have a “just use brave” thread going, even when it’s controversial or had negative karma.
But since online troll farms are cheap, shoe horning names like this work for brand recognition by sheer amount of times you hear about it. And soon people start believing them.
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
don’t sound like him if you want people to think you’re not sketchy
Fokeu@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
All chromium browsers are no-go for me.
grue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, this is what so many people miss: privacy in the moment of browsing is only one of several problems. There’s also the much longer term problem of web standards developing in such a way as to facilitate the stripping of privacy, and using a browser that facilitates Google’s hegemony over those standards enables that.
GMac@feddit.org 1 day ago
I wish vanadium was available independently of Graphene
grue@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Even Vanadium supports Google’s hegemony over web standards and is therefore evil (I say as someone who otherwise likes and uses GrapheneOS).
Bomnam@discuss.tchncs.de 9 hours ago
These systems still only operate once you’ve opted into them, meaning if you just never enable brave ads or disable it, these systems won’t reach you or have any of these possible problems. Personally I don’t use these browsers without disabling everything (ads, daily usage ping, ads on new tab page, etc) and once you’ve done that it is still a pretty great option for a privacy browser especially when considering its better web compatibility compared to Firefox which still lags behind.
**I am not saying Firefox or brave is definitely better than one or the other, I do not want to strike the hornets nest. **
IMO, if you disable all the aforementioned features, it is still good as a privacy focused browser. And especially if you disable things like ads and daily usage ping, you won’t be contributing anything to brave devs at all and can use it just as a browser without supporting or enabling the words of their founder.
angelmountain@lemy.nl 1 day ago
Cambridge Analytica accusing Brave? Who is the bad guy in this story? I am confused.
cenariodantesco@lemmy.world 1 day ago
they’re the same picture ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
XLE@piefed.social 1 day ago
Considering Mozilla basically did the same thing in Firefox, but turned it on by default instead of off (which is worse), it’s strange that they praise Firefox in the same article.
There are plenty of good reasons to hate Brave, but I think this whole article can be trashed, and the website itself put behind a blocklist
commander@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If someone doesn’t like Mozilla, use a Firefox fork rather than a chromium one. Brave and other chromium forks to get away from Google surveillance and dominance of web standards makes no sense to me
XLE@piefed.social 1 day ago
This is what Cambridge Analytica (the one that illegally profiled Facebook users to help Donald Trump) says about Brave:
When you browse in Brave, the browser locally records your attention—which ads you view, for how long, what you click. This data never leaves your device in raw form, a feature Brave emphasizes repeatedly. But then it gets converted into tokens that represent your interests and behavioral patterns. These tokens are sent to Brave’s servers, where they’re matched with advertiser demand.
This is also what the Mozilla advertising network claims they do.
But Brave claims their ad network is truly private, while Mozilla’s is not. I don’t know if that’s true, but it is true that Brave doesn’t enable their ad network by default, and Mozilla does.
Either way, remember to disable the ad network.
And consider writing Mozilla a polite letter about turning it off by default.Bazoogle@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
They explain it a bit more in the article:
According to Brave’s published technical materials, ad matching occurs locally on the user’s device. The browser downloads an ad catalog and selects relevant ads based on interest signals stored on the device. When a user views an ad and qualifies for a reward payout in Basic Attention Token (BAT), the confirmation process uses blind signatures to validate the event without revealing browsing history or identity to Brave’s servers. The company has repeatedly stated that it does not build centralized browsing profiles and cannot link ad activity to specific individuals.
I don’t use nor recommend Brave to people, but if advertising is going to be done this seems like the way it should be done.
XLE@piefed.social 7 hours ago
Maybe the right way in terms of privacy, but I find it all to be rather monopolistic. (Brave’s ad replacement is infamous in this respect; they trashed it but blocking publisher ads and creating their own is pretty similar to their initial proposal).
I’m also not totally sold on differential privacy because, as far as I know, it’s still relatively experimental and not very battle-tested. I remember Mozilla saying something to the effect of anonynization only working if a large pool of users commit to their tests.
Yama_Pattern_01@piefed.social 1 day ago
I used to work for cliqz- Burda media / Firefox strata don’t search engine which was later acquired by brave and now is labeled as brave search. This thing tracks you a every god dammed step, this is one of th core signals for ranking , irrespective of what you click
dumbass@piefed.social 1 day ago
We dont track our users, in fact, we have a list of people who were pushing this and looking at news about, so we shall be dealing with those individuals and their browsing history.
medicsofanarchy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
And they know exactly who is promoting this “fake news”, so stop it. /s
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Everyone quit using chromium browsers
RandAlThor@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Uninstalling Brave.
JenitalJouster@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
does anyone have any good recommendations for ios? (waiting for the grapheneOS phone to come out) but any temporary alternatives browser wise?
Lumisal@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Orion
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 1 day ago
I’ll take brave over Cambridge Analytica any day.
Also ublock blocks 31% of that “news” site as trackers, lol.
lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Or you could choice actual privacy and ditch both
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 1 day ago
I don’t use brave, I use Firefox. My point is I’ll still trust brave’s statement over anything from CA.
Xylight@feddit.online 21 hours ago
is there any android browser that isn’t abysmal? firefox is miserable on android and its only saving grace is ublock origin. and Cambridge analytica’s analysis only references the brave and network and other services they host and how those can collect behavioral data, and you can just…not use them.
Cantaloupe@lemmy.fedioasis.cc 23 hours ago
That ain’t sussy in the slightest.
deathbird@mander.xyz 1 day ago
Some of y’all hate Brave so much you’ll trust Cambridge Analytica’s assessments over what is actually described.
Prior_Industry@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
“Fake news” is the bat signal for “we’re actually doing this”