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Browsers do call home...

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Just like any other software on your devices, browsers do call home. What they say is the subject of a privacy study:

Study ranks the privacy of major browsers. Here are the findings | Ars Technica

The study evaluated the content of these calls with default settings for five browsers and the results are not really surpising:

  1. Best: Brave
  2. Average: Google Chrome, FireFox, Safari
  3. Worst: MS Edge, Yandex
Certainly default settings can be changed, but there are limitations to that. Beyond that limit, it requires extensive measures, that may or may not work. This is the main reason for Edge and Yandex received the lowest rating, they preserve surveilling end users activities via permanent identifiers, no matter the action taken. Fun fact, installing Yandex on a Windows system will also replace Cortana with Elisa, Yandex own virtual asistant.

The average browsers are just that, they still collect data that monitors the end user's activities via assisgned identifier, but easier to control than the worst browser.

The Brave browser provided the most privacy and no identifier, that can be further enhanced. Interesting fact... The extensions will veaken the end user's privacy, such as uBlock, Ghostery, etc., that Brave will warn about when installed.
 
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pigoo3

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Here's an article that lists the following results:

The best browsers for privacy at a glance:

The best overall browser for privacy: Brave
The best browser for customizable privacy: Firefox
The best browser for maximum security: Tor
The best browser for privacy on Mac: Safari
Alternative option: Microsoft Edge

The Best Browsers for Privacy: Brave, Firefox, Tor, and More

This article seems to agree with the arstechnica article linked above...that the Brave browser is the best for privacy.

- Nick
 
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I prefer firefox, recommended by an IT security expert, and I figure he knows more about IT security than I do. But everyone seems to have their preferred browser that they trust and use. Ive done tests on my old iMac with El Capitan where I've seen Firefox block phishing links that I click on that Safari will allow to open.
 

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I prefer firefox, recommended by an IT security expert, and I figure he knows more about IT security than I do. But everyone seems to have their preferred browser that they trust and use. Ive done tests on my old iMac with El Capitan where I've seen Firefox block phishing links that I click on that Safari will allow to open.
Maybe your IT security expert didn't know that the Brave browser even existed. ;)
Brave only launched its stable release version 1.0 on 13 November 2019

I had never heard of it until it came up in this forum not too, too long ago.
 
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Maybe your IT security expert didn't know that the Brave browser even existed. ;)
Brave only launched its stable release version 1.0 on 13 November 2019

I had never heard of it until it came up in this forum not too, too long ago.
Exactly. I've been proselytizing Brave for months now.

I try to keep abreast of all the latest developments with Web browsers for the Mac. I have about a dozen different browsers installed on my main computer.

I've been using Brave since it came out. It's been developed quickly and steadily since then.
When I switch to another browser, it's almost painful. Brave is addictively fast, and the absence of ads due to its ad-blocking is so refreshing.
Since Brave is free, I'm not sure why anyone wouldn't give it a test drive:

 
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Free isn't free in the digital world, one way or another it has to be monetized in order to exist. Brave is no exception, it certainly has telemetry and displayed at the default startup page:

(outdated link removed)

The fact that this information displayed implies that all of these metrics are measured and historical summary is displayed. What is not shown, but recorded somewhere, the websites where these trackers had been blocked. In another word, your browsing history could be collected locally and/or somewhere in the cloud. Is this data monetized? For the "free" software, it does have to generate income to be sustainable.

Cliqz, in general, had been the EU version of Brave, that after five years it closed shop. The farewell blog post does shed some light on the "free" browser and its source of income, quote:

Yet, we failed to make people truly aware of the problem; we failed to reach a scale that would allow our search engine to be self-financing. We have reached several hundred thousand daily users. But – and this is the disadvantage of running our own technology – this is not enough to run a search engine, to cover our costs.

Is there other monetizing options in the free browser? I don't know, but would not be surprising, if there is...

Brave has its own search engine as well and it is not far fetch to say, that it is monetized as well. Or at least trying to.

With that said, both Brave and Cliqz provide way more privacy than any other commercial browsers, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc...

And yes, I do prefer Brave and Cliqz over any other browser; well, maybe TOR is the first choice, if security is the primary goal.
 
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Free isn't free in the digital world, one way or another it has to be monetized in order to exist. Brave is no exception, i
There is nothing secret or nefarious about how Web browsers make their money. *All* browsers make their money by being paid by Google to serve up pages that Google promotes for advertising purposes. This is quite lucrative, and that's why there has been an explosion of new browsers and why they are all free. Fortunately, it's of no concern to end users.

Since none of these browsers compete on price, and they make more money if they have more users, they must scramble to distinguish themselves the only way that they can, and that's by providing unique valuable features and performance. Brave is currently at the leading edge of this.

The Epic browser took things too far, and they refused to serve up Google-backed pages. As a result, Google refuses to pay them. This means that Epic is the only browser that you have to worry where they are making their money. And, indeed, there are some real concerns about Epic:

Have a look at what they say about Epic here:
 
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I actually much prefer Firefox, or browsers based on Firefox, than any Chromium based browsers. At least in Firefox' "about:config" gives you control of the settings. Brave isn't as "brave" that made it sound to be, especially when it comes to privacy and ads:


I'll really miss the Cliqz browser...
 

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