Brave is cool

Brave fails at the very things it claims to promote.

First of all, it's built on Electron, which is built on Chromium. In essence, that means it's just Google Chrome with a different UI. Google has way too much control of the internet as it is and using their browsing engine just adds to that control. Brave making use of Google's browsing engine degrades their credibility of being secure and private.

Second of all, you can't actually withdraw BAT without doing KYC. This is a massive privacy invasion and further destroys Brave's credibility as a "Privacy Browser". On top of that, they essentially hold earnings hostage from creators and force them to go through KYC to claim anything left to them by their supporters.

---

If you want a browsing experience that gets as close as possible to what Brave claims without going through too much hassle, here's what you want to do.

1. Install [Mozilla Firefox](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/)
2. Go to Preferences > Privacy & Security > Firefox Data Collection and Use, set accordingly to what you want.
3. Install the following addons: [Nano Adblocker](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nano-adblocker-firefox/), [Nano Defender](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nano-defender-firefox/), [LocalCDN](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/localcdn-fork-of-decentraleyes/), [SponsorBlock](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/) if you watch YouTube, and if you want automatic dark mode everywhere, [Dark Reader](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/)

A small caveat about LocalCDN, it may break some older websites or poorly made websites. If a website seems to be broken, try turning off LocalCDN for that particular website.

There you go, that will provide as much privacy as you can get without starting to noticeably sacrifice conveniences.

---

Don't care about convenience? Want the absolute most privacy you can get, short of not using electronics and the internet at all? Here's what you do:

1. Download Tor Browser [from the official website](https://www.torproject.org/download/), or [from the official backup if the main website is blocked](https://archive.org/details/@gettor).
2. Don't use a VPN at the same time as Tor unless Tor is blocked and bridges do not help. Using a VPN can potentially compromise Tor's built in privacy measures.
3. If you wish to maintain an anonymous identity online, never log into it outside of Tor and never use any other identity within the same Tor session. Use the Reset Identity function within Tor between using different identities.
4. If it's not obvious, don't use any anti-privacy services like Facebook over Tor. Tor can only protect you as long as you don't hand over your info. You'll notice that services that really hate not being able to track you will begin trying to force you to stop using Tor by annoying you with CAPTCHAs or outright blocking you.
5. Don't install any extensions in Tor Browser, they can make your [browsing fingerprint unique](https://amiunique.org/) and allow you to be tracked. Tor Browser works by making all its users appear as identical as possible, thus making it impossible to track any specific one of them. The provided test I linked is not comprehensive and only serves as an example of how easy it is to fingerprint browsers.

If you want to take an extra step and make it so it's near impossible to unmask your identity, use the [Tails](https://tails.boum.org/) operating system. If that's a step too far, at least stop using Windows/macOS and [install Manjaro Linux](https://hive.blog/tech/@death-and-taxes/guide-to-installing-manjaro-linux-for-typical-usage-uefiac3890251c53d) instead.

---

That's about it for a basic rundown, while there's a lot more you can learn, this will get you started down that path.

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Brave is fast and cool. But it not secure. Also he may add referral links  some sites. And his referral program is not valid in all countries.

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