Is Firefox any more private/secure than Brave?
Is Firefox any more private/secure than Brave?
I've been using Brave for the past three or so years but I do know that Linux/privacy enthusiasts tend to swear by Firefox. Wanted to get people's thoughts on this topic to see if I should be making a potential switch. Thanks!
I haven't done an audit of either but here are some points to consider:
- Brave is built on top of chromium, so it "by default" exposes lots of new APIs that Google is introducing that make fingerprinting easier if not outright invade your privacy. For example see https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ and look at the "negative" items. Many of them such as Web NFC, Web Bluetooth and WebUSB API are against because they don't have adequate protections against fingerprinting or other privacy or security concerns. Brave seems to do a pretty good job removing or disarming these APIs but they are basically trying to keep their balance on a shaky and antagonistic foundation.
- On a similar note Google pushing these APIs work because of the greater market share. Again, derivatives can provide some resistance by disabling these APIs but unless all of them block the same APIs they will still be available widespread. So using a Chromium-based browser harms the entire web over time by allowing Google to have control. Right now Firefox (and derivatives) and Safari are the only browsers that you can use to truly oppose Google's control over the web platform.
Agreed! Many times I faced the fact that the Chrome developers don't follow the W3C standards, but they require it from Mozilla. Therefore, some functionality will only work in Chrome, but not in Mozilla (it's not their bad!).
Brave has tried one scam after another before. I wouldn't trust it for a second for any use.
Please provide any evidence for your false claim.
Depends on what you call a scam. I am not sure it's the right word, but duplicitous behavior and definite privacy violations (even if by negligence) are absolutely true.
They have sent out direct mailers that basically equated to a customer list leak; also I'd take a peek at the wikipedia entry about their business model, which mentions some stuff that isn't the most savory:
... Brave earns revenue from ads by taking a 15% cut of publisher ads and a 30% cut of user ads. User ads are notification-style pop-ups, while publisher ads are viewed on or in association with publisher content.
On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users navigate to Binance
In regards to the mailers, they messed up and passed blame,
In this process, our EDDM vendor made a significant mistake by not excluding names, but instead including names before addresses, resulting in the distribution of personalized mailers.
With regards to the CEO, he made a donation to an anti-LGBT cause when he was CEO of Mozilla in 2008. He lost his job at Mozilla due to his anti-LGBT stance.
He also spreads COVID misinformation.
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Is it more private than brave? Normal Firefox: no Librewolf (Firefox Fork): yes Hardened Firefox: yes
Good answer. Hardened Firefox or LibreWolf with some extensions are awesome options for privacy!
LibreWolf nd Brave are on the same Level if both are hardened.
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Mull on android too, hardened firefox
Mull is awesome! And you can install normal desktop extensions with it. Killer feature 🔥
As hard as it is for me to admit, and based on some tests, Brave had better fingerprinting resistance than Firefox. I don't trust the guys behind Brave, but their product is good.
Iirc isn't it more like Brave is better out of the box, but given sufficient configuration, both are more or less equal?
Out of the box - yes, maybe. But I think that with some extensions (uBlock Origin, CanvasBlocker, Chameleon) and tweaking hardened Firefox (LibreWolf, Mull) would be way better!
Not the point. Using a chromium browser is a vote for Google domination of the web. Just no.
Short version: Firefox on desktop, something chromium-based on Android. See https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/ for the long version!
For security - yes, chromium-based. But for privacy Mull (Fennec) with extension support would be superior!
Maybe the explanation is somewhere on the site you linked, but I didn't see it. Why is Firefox on Android less secure?
On Android, Firefox is still less secure than Chromium-based alternatives: Mozilla's engine, GeckoView, has yet to support site isolation or enable isolatedProcess.
I did not find any justification of why they arbitrarily did not considered Gecko browsers in privacyguides. They just made that statement. I am not surprised that certain chromium browsers are more secure simply because Google has a bigger budget, but I did not see any justification for it. Then again the EFF will say that Tor Browser is better then Brave so we can argue about these minor points forever.
Then again none of that minor stuff matters to me. I care more about the goals of the organizations themselves and I am not convinced that any of the Chromium browsers take us down a sane path. So I will be staying with Firefox thank you very much.
On Android, Firefox is still less secure than Chromium-based alternatives: Mozilla's engine, GeckoView, has yet to support site isolation or enable isolatedProcess.
From this page (which has links to Mozilla if you want to read more)
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At least Librewolf is a thing. I use both, really, mainly Librewolf, and for anything I can't open with it that is absolutely necessary, Brave. Librewolf is still my main choice more out of principle, both are equally good feature-wise in my opinion.
By default? I think so.
(these test are done with browsers at their defaults). Librewolf is on par with Brave, but I vehemently hate its interface and refuse to unfuck it wasting my time on CSS.
I'm on Brave as well since 2021, after almost 20 years of being an avid FF user and supporter. I don't like how FF is evolving and what Mozilla is doing and I don't buy the "Chromium domination" argument. If the sole reason to use FF is that "it is not Chromium", well, the developers aren't doing a great job.
However, let's be real: privacy on a browser matters until you go to whatever website that track you on the server side (Google/Facebook/Youtube/Whatever), or when you write an email from from you Gmail account, or when you buy stuff on Amazon... And so on. Just use the browser that works best for you and don't be paranoid.
Don't forget that https://privacytests.org/ is run by a Brave employee!
It discloses that on the front page, below the test table. Anyway, the tests are open source and they check pretty common stuff. I can't see the problem there if Firefox comes out having actually worse defaults.
It is how it is, there isn't much more to say. As a matter of fact, Librewolf gets a lot more green ticks, same or more than Brave. Thus, I can hardly see bad faith on what the website does.
@Engywuck do you mind expanding on this? Genuinely curious: “I don’t like how FF is evolving and what Mozilla is doing”
No, sorry. I have had endless arguments and discussion about this topic. I'm tired of talking about it. I'm just using a browser that works better than FF for me and I don't want to support Mozilla anymore (after 20 years). That's it.
Brave is more secure, in terms of safety, because it's base on chromium and has unique Privacy Features. If you won't use Brave, LibreWolf or hardened Firefox is ur best choice.
While Chromium itself is a very solid platform, and correspondingly Chrome is a hard exploitation target, it's quite easy to screw up a fork of it. Comodo Secure Browser was a chromium fork that was fixed to an old version of the renderer with known security issues and was built to disable the sandbox. It also added libraries that were compiled without ASLR that worsened security for every application that loaded them.
Chrome has an enormous security team behind it in addition to P0, so bounties on Chrome exploits are around $500k. FF bounties are a fifth of that, which is probably a portion of less security, and a portion of lower target market. Brave could be doing terrible things that without an audit would be unknown. Web3 code is pretty terrible on the whole, so adding that to a secure base may not be great...
Brave is so unsecure because it uses chromium. The only unique thing i saw on brave was the crypto miner included. Chrome can easily just change terms so that brave looses his licence for chromium. Firefox is more secure in the way it is more secure, because they are not focused on stealing your data and there is librewolf yeah that one is open source and is the most secure of those 3
Unsecure how exactly? Being chromium makes the browser more standard. It blends in with other browsers easier which means it can add protections while still showing itself as chromium compatible. I'd like to learn more about how chromium can just kill forks by updating the license, last I heard it was a BSD compatible one and I wasn't aware of it retroactively restricting access. Of course google can just fork and deprecate chromium with a more restrictive license given their the key copyright holders but as their project that isn't surprising. Firefox isn't interested in harvesting your data but that isn't security, it's privacy. Most chromium forks are the same. Brave doesn't harvest your data. It did once (and it can be argued you should avoid it just for that) but you seem to care less about which browser is best for your online privacy and more for just shilling firefox. For reference I use and love librewolf, but I like to consider myself open minded enough to try the other options... such as they are.
Brave is more secure in terms of security. Security and safety are two entirely different attributes from a technical pov. And privacy and security are also not the same, though privacy is greatly impacted without security as you implied.
Firefox is more private than Brave but less secure. Neither is necessarily safer than the other, it depends on how much either app tends to misbehave within the constraints of your own use case. Since the use cases are different (privacy vs. security), it's harder to compare safety on an even playing field.
While Chromium itself is a very solid platform, and correspondingly Chrome is a hard exploitation target, it's quite easy to screw up a fork of it. Comodo Secure Browser was a chromium fork that was fixed to an old version of the renderer with known security issues and was built to disable the sandbox. It also added libraries that were compiled without ASLR that worsened security for every application that loaded them.
Chrome has an enormous security team behind it in addition to P0, so bounties on Chrome exploits are around $500k. FF bounties are a fifth of that, which is probably a portion of less security, and a portion of lower target market. Brave could be doing terrible things that without an audit would be unknown. Web3 code is pretty terrible on the whole, so adding that to a secure base may not be great...
Just an FYI, looks like you double commented