In the digital trenches of the internet, your browser is your shield and spear. Brave stands out, armed to the teeth with features designed for the vigilant user.
Privacy tools are now essential if you value keeping your data secure and locked-down, away from prying eyes. Big Tech is all about data (your data), so browsers like Brave run counter to what Google and Meta are doing.
If you’ve never heard of Brave or don’t know what it can do, here’s a primer on why more and more privacy-focussed internet users are switching from Chrome to Brave…
Brave Browser Privacy Features
- Built-in Adblocker: Brave cuts through the clutter of ads and trackers right from the get-go. This not only speeds up your browsing but shields your privacy more effectively than the standard ad-blocking extensions available in other browsers.
- Script Blocking: It halts scripts that might track you or harbor malicious intent, offering a level of security that, while available through extensions elsewhere, is ready on Brave without extra setup.
- HTTPS Everywhere: With Brave, secure browsing is the norm. It automatically switches sites to HTTPS encryption, stepping ahead of browsers that require an extension for this safeguard.
- Fingerprint Protection: Brave obscures your browser’s fingerprint, making it significantly harder for trackers to identify you uniquely. A step beyond the limited anti-fingerprinting techniques found in some browsers.
- Sleep Tabs: Inactive tabs are put to rest, conserving memory and battery. While not a unique feature, Brave enhances its efficiency, making your browsing smoother.
- Shields Up Dashboard: This exclusive feature offers a centralized control panel for privacy and security settings, simplifying management in a way no other browser does.
- TOR Private Window: Brave integrates TOR directly, offering a seamless experience for those venturing into the anonymity of onion sites, a feature that’s available but less polished in other browsers.
- Incognito Tabs with Tor: Beyond standard private browsing, Brave uses Tor in incognito mode, enhancing privacy to levels unmatched by its competitors.
- Search Engine Options: It promotes privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo, enabling you to start your internet journey on a secure foot—a choice presented by most browsers but championed by Brave.
- Cookie Blocking: Brave gives you the reins over cookies, allowing for a more nuanced approach to what gets stored, surpassing the generic controls found elsewhere.
- Payment Card Autofill Blocking: It guards against the automatic filling of credit card details, a feature more robustly controlled in Brave than in its peers.
- Password Manager Integration: The integration with various password managers fosters strong password habits, a convenience that’s also available in other browsers but seamlessly incorporated into Brave.
- Secure DNS: Brave employs secure DNS resolvers, protecting you from the manipulation of website addresses—a level of security you’d typically need an extension for in other browsers.
- Background Noise and Camera Access Blocking: It ensures websites can’t hijack your microphone or camera without explicit permission. While not exclusive, Brave offers finer control over these permissions.
- Rewards System (BAT): With Brave Rewards, the browser steps into uncharted territory. Users can opt-in to view privacy-preserving ads and earn Basic Attention Tokens, introducing an innovative model of user engagement and compensation.
Brave Blocks EVERYTHING
If you’re using an ad blocker or Chrome with a raft of privacy extensions, switching to Brave is going to be something you’ll want to do. Chrome is controlled by Google. Google uses it to monitor billions of clicks and interactions on web pages and devices every, single day.
Chrome is Google’s #1 data collection tool – even when its in Incognito Mode.
Brave is cool because, unlike Google, it is a privacy-first company. I mean, check out this statement from the launch of Brave back in the day:
At Brave, we’re building a solution designed to avert war and give users the fair deal they deserve for coming to the Web to browse and contribute. We are building a new browser and a connected private cloud service with anonymous ads. Today we’re releasing the 0.7 developer version for early adopters and testers, along with open source and our roadmap.
Brave browsers block everything: initial signaling/analytics scripts that start the programmatic advertising “dirty pipe”, impression-tracking pixels, and ad-click confirmation signals. By default Brave will insert ads only in a few standard-sized spaces. We find those spaces via a cloud robot (so users don’t have to suffer, even a few canaries per screen size-profile, with ad delays and battery draining). We will target ads based on browser-side intent signals phrased in a standard vocabulary, and without a persistent user id or highly re-identifiable cookie.
Brave
Talk about a mic drop.
Wanna bone up your online privacy chops? Check out these data protection tools you can start using today.
