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Brave browser quietly slips a VPN service onto your Windows PC
(www.androidcentral.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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It's good users are now aware that Brave includes redundant features that you have to pay extra for to activate. Users browser will update everytime the browser or the VPN software needs an update.
For example Firefox VPN from Mozilla is separate software. They don't force millions of users to download it even if they don't want it.
This is yet another example why people should not be using Brave and should be skeptical of its intentions.
brave is basically installing a future minefield with system-wide access waiting to be triggered by them, or an exploitable bug by others, on all brave users' pcs and not just those who sub to their vpn service.
Mozilla has been forcing Pocket on Firefox users for years, as well as Mr Robot ads and numerous other things. They don't exact have the moral high ground here.
Whats pocket? And why is it bad that its on the browser?
Pocket is Mozilla's bookmark/sync pay-cloud-service. Comes with Firefox by default and can't be easily removed. From a company that claims to care about privacy I would expect a self-hosted local-first approach for such problems, not a cloud service.
But its not active unless you turn it on right? Just preinstalled so if you decide to use it its already there?
Cause that does sound like a little bloatware but if thats the only bloat they have and thats its only issue Im not sure Im bothered by it.
that's exactly what people are complaining in this thread, just about different browser
Just imagine: using Windows and being concerned about privacy. Big lol.
Why would someone who uses Debian care about Windows?
I don't, because I have better use of my time than to learn to use someone else's computer
They have a point though.
Windows automatically means you don't have privacy and you cannot have privacy.
On Linux you at least may or may not, depending on configuration.
Nobody does. Windows is closed source and its inner working is a trade secret. This means you cannot know how to lock down windows. Of course there are best practices based on info from microsoft or people who know a thing or two about info sec but it's all guess work and/or trusting the developer by its blue eyes.
Thats something Ive never understood about closed source.
The OS, in its entirety, is on your computer. Why are you not able to open it up and root around within it? Is it just encrypted to a degree it cant be cracked? Or is the legal ramifications of unraveling it just not worth unraveling it?
Exactly, that's the point he was trying to make.
You can't harden windows to the point of an acceptable level of security. That is the inherent nature of proprietary software.
How do you harden windows?
Prove to me that your windows system is actually "hardened" and that you have no backdoors or telemetry broadcasting at all. At the very least, Microsoft still knows what you are doing, you cannot trust your 3rd party firewall because windows can still sidestep it.
I don't even know who the fuck those people are, all I can tell you is that there is a reason that any professional application that requires legitimate security, runs on foss systems, or at the very least source available. If you are too stupid to realize that, then you really don't have any say in this matter whatsoever. It doesn't even just include baremetal Linux either.
I don't know who you've been arguing with on this, but I actually make a living working on Linux machines, I'm not even coming at you from a freetard perspective, solely work experience.
ahem
Active directory, Azure, Windows Server. Those three things are on my resume. I have extensive systems administration experience, being a good systems administrator requires you to be able to administrate more than one operating system.
Yes, windows will ignore your firewalls rules if you try to block certain applications from broadcasting telemetry. I don't need a citation because you can very easily test this for yourself. The fact that you need a citation tells me you don't know shit about what you are talking about because it is incredibly easy to reproduce.
You can rip these components out at the expense of usability, to the point where you could potentially have a secure windows system that is so useless, that you might as well just run desktop Linux or BSD. You will never see patches to potential backdoors, you will never see any bugfixes, hell to even begin the process of hardening windows, windows update is the very first thing you have to disable. Even windows AME's team says that their spin of windows is not as secure as the average Linux distro for these very reasons.
So you don't have basic reading English comprehension is what I'm seeing here. Weird flex but shut the fuck up.
Imagine claiming to be technically competent and using Windows, being obliged to "lock it down" to made it a "non spyware". Take your meds, dude.