In a world where many websites use trackers to track you and sell data and to target ads toward you, many of which can be annoying, people are concerned about privacy. We've become so reliant on the world wide web for work, play, and other recreation that sites like Facebook and Google are taking advantage of that, tracking your interest and searches, and either selling that data or targeting you with specific ads. I personally don't mind the ads if it's something I'm truly interested in, but the privacy aspect can be alarming.
Enter the Brave browser. This Chromium-based browser claims to give you a safer and faster web browsing experience while supporting content creators through an attention-based ecosystem of rewards. It blocks ads and trackers, so different websites aren't following and collecting data on you. Most websites have Google code on them to help out with their SEO. If the adoption of this browser takes off, it could be bad news for marketers and business owners who just rely on the data for search engine optimization, and I say this from my web developer perspective. At the same time, this is great for the user who wants to keep their browsing history as private as possible.
When you load a new tab, you're presented with a beautiful page that informs you of the number of trackers it has blocked, how many ads it has blocked, HTTPS upgrades - and I'm not sure if this is how many have bad or outdated certificates or how many you've come across that are good, but I assume the latter-, and the time you saved.
And from using the browser, it is fast - most of the time. Web browsing, when it's not syncing, is a breeze and quite snappy. Many of us have come to rely on the syncing that browsers like Google Chrome offer so that we have the same bookmarks and other data on both our desktops and laptops and other devices we use. And the way this browser syncs is interesting. You go to "settings" and then "sync". And you'll see that this feature is actually in beta, so you can expect some issues. You'll sync your first computer, which you can give a name.
When syncing your second computer, first you'll need to get a code, a long string of words that will need to be typed in. By the way, be mindful when it's a new line in your string of random words, it's actually a new line. There is no automatic word-wrapping going on here. You'll need to hit enter. This is essentially your login and password, in a sense. No two sync-setups are going to have the same list of words. But I did notice when you sync your second device, you cannot name it. My official name for my desktop is Megatron, and my official name for my laptop is Jarvis. But in my device names, I will only see Megatron. The laptop is blank.
And when it is in the middle of syncing, the browser slows down significantly. This is my only complaint about the browser. For me, it can be quite unusable during sync. But this is not the majority of the time. As I'm typing this review in Brave right now, it's working very well. Since this feature is a beta feature, I do expect improvements in the future.
Most websites I've been on work well with the trackers blocked. But I do play one particular game on Facebook, Words With Friends, that apparently requires the tracker or whatever script is blocked. What can you do in that situation? It's easy! Turn off the blocking for that particular site you're on.
To turn off the blocking, you turn the shields off for that particular site. For Words With Friends, it turned it off for all of apps.facebook.com. This may not be desireable to have off for that particular site all of the time, so when you're done, you just want to turn the shields back on. You also have individual settings you can change for the shields such as ad control, cookie control, and fingerprinting settings. Just changing the right setting could help whatever page you are looking at to load correctly if you are experiencing any issues.
Back to the speed, though. I am very pleased with the speed at which I'm browsing and loading websites.[ DTube loads ](https://d.tube/#!/c/joeytechtalks)quickly for me, as well as my website, [Cagle Web Solutions](https://caglewebsolutions.com). Both are pictured below.
And finally, you're blocking ads. So how to content creators get paid, exactly? First, Brave has a Publishers page on their website. There, you can sign up to be a verified publisher, whether you run a website or are a Youtube creator. On the current web, the fact is, you rely on the ad revenue, no matter how frustrating ads may be for some. If you have no revenue, you're dead in the water. For the person viewing the content, they can go into their browser settings and set up Brave Payments. This is also in beta, and these payments are made in a cryptocurrency called Basic Attention Token (BAT). The payment amounts seem to be fixed, however, which may discourage any who want to give less than the amount specified.
And while typing this article, I came across one other problem with the browser - some extensions may cause it to lock up and crash. I like using the Honey extension because it helps me find the best deal when purchasing products on sites like Amazon. However, when I try to set it up here, I guess I put in the incorrect login information and then it caused the browser to freeze up or slow down severely. This could be a problem, and the crazy thing is in the extension settings, honey is one of the extensions I could enable. I'm not sure if this was imported from my Chrome browser or not. But extension compatibility could be an issue. This should be resolved over time.
Overall, I'm happy with this web browser, even with it's flaws, and I have mostly made the switch to Brave. I'm still using Chrome for some things but it's mainly because I don't have all my passwords set up on Brave yet. Give it time. I will. But I can confidently say that using this browser, if you don't mind a few hiccups along the way since certain features are in beta, you can bravely surf the web without worries of being tracked or ads bugging you or disturbing you because of the tracking data that's used on many sites! My grade is an A-, which will easily become an a+ when the issues that I mentioned are fixed!
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