Brave appears to install VPN Services without user consent

sculd@beehaw.org to Technology@beehaw.org – 237 points –
ghacks.net

From article:

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.

More reason to ditch the crypto bro browser.

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https://old.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/17b0pxl/brave_appears_to_install_vpn_services_without/k5kwd97/

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/33726

And crypto are disabled by default.

No, I wont' ditch it. It's the best browser out there, right now, since scummy/corrupt/hypocrite Mozilla (which, remember, is in bed with Google, Amazon and Facebook while criticizing them) decided that Firefox is just a side project for them and they're deceiving people making them believe that donations fund FF development.

Don't even bother to reply. I'm not going to fuel this shitty thread any further.

"In bed with"=takes their money to have their search engine and lets you change it in 30 seconds while being completely open source

I don't see the problem.

*9 seconds

Fine, for you I'll do it in 4!

0.980s by using ydotool key 29:1 20:1 20:0 29:0 -d 0 && ydotool type "about>preferences\n" -d 0 && sleep 0.26 && ydotool type "search engine\t" -d 0 && ydotool key 103:1 103:0 -d 20

Tbf, changing the default search engine probably has the effect that the vast majority of users will stick with it. So, although it is pretty easy for you and me to change the search engine, it still promotes Google quite a lot and thus undermines the independent character of Firefox as a whole.

Absolutely. I would prefer they didn't have google as the default, but I'd rather have Firefox with good funding and google as default than firefox with very little funding.

And brave being built on chromium is somehow markedly better?

I wasn't defending chromium or brave, not even commenting on them at all. I was just adding a caveat to what the other commenter said about Firefox.

You seem stable

Does anyone want to switch seats!?! looks around nervously

No one told you to ditch it. But can you fanboii a little less aggressively, please?

Have you ever interacted with a Brave user? No, they can't.

I swear they all have some sort of brain slug that makes them cultish and just generally unlikeable

If you look at what a raging tool the CEO is and the implications of the browser's association with crypto (no matter how optional), I think that Brave just attracts that type of person

Makes sense given that the Brave CEO is a member of an actual cult.

Which one is that?

the mormon church. it’s the reason he donates money to anti-lgbt causes.

Thought for sure the answer was going to be the Cult of Crypto

I actually didn't know that when I opened this thread!!!

True open source projects like LibreWolf, Ungoogled Chromium > Sketchy world of Brave

I applaud LibreWolf’s efforts, but the hard-coded timezone makes it unusable for me. Other than that, it’s a great browser. I used it several months until the timezone confusion got the best of me.

What's the deal with the timezone?

If I recall correctly, it was meant as a measure against fingerprinting. It’s basically one less thing to uniquely define a user based on the info that the browser gives to a website. I’m not sure if it’s still like that, cause it’s been easily a year since I used LibreWolf.

Yes, what is the deal? I can't say that I've noticed any issues. Am in UK if that makes a difference. And I usually run it through Proton VPN.

While I’ve never used LibreWolf before (I use Waterfox), that probably does make a difference as the UK is UTC+0.

Two issues.

First of all a lot of websites show times in your current timezone. Beehaw for example says you wrote your post "2 days ago". Depending what timezone my browser is in, that could display 3 days or 1 day. When I hover over it, it shows the exact date/time in my timezone. Which is handy.

Second it doesn't actually achieve the intended goal. Even if you use a VPN chances are you've set it to give you a public IP address close to you to have good performance. And if your IP address is in Proton's London datacentre but your timezone is UTC+0 when everyone else is UTC+1... well you stand out like a single black sheep in a flock of white ones and ad networks are absolutely fingerprinting you with that.

It's still a behavior like "we are the best software in the world, once we get admin permission we can do whatever we want without additional user consent, people appreciate it".

No. You must ask permission to install useless Windows services, even if they're disabled.

Don't even bother to reply. I'm not going to fuel this shitty thread any further.

Nah I'm gonna pile on. Firefox is better.

You a full of mins information that only benefit google having full internet monopoly. Brave is chrome. Chrome is google.

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You’re the one who made it shitty. But much to crap on the bed then get up and leave.

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