Pay more to get less.
  • Brave sells Origin to strip added features—a $60 one-time fee (free on Linux).
  • Origin removes email aliases, Leo AI, VPN, Wallet, Speedreader, and more via a toggleable panel or standalone client.
  • You can buy Origin on Brave Premium or enable the panel at brave://settings/system.
    • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 hour ago

      i actually work in software security.

      grapheneos has talked about integrating shields into vanadium (and by extension, trivalent) which i would love. shields imo is a very top notch implementation of an ad blocker and is better than ublock origin in every way due to how it blocks in ram with rust rather than in userspace like ublock. brave does pretty well at integrating many things into the browser so that the user isnt tempted to install extensions, which reduces attack surface. i consider email aliases, automatic darkmode (can be enabled via chrome flags) on sites, and a built in adblocker (not an extension, it must also work on videos) to be critical for user experience, and ideally via no extensions. currently only brave offers each of these stock, which is very unfortunate. plus it has better sandboxing, there are many exploits to harvest fingerprints on many corporate sites that circumvent sandboxing in firefox and read other tab data. basically, the only options are brave with minimal changes, mullvad browser with no changes, or tor browser with no changes, and you should not open more than one tab on any firefox browser. the last two are not great for usability every day due to no automatic darkmode, among other features.

      i think the best way for brave to improve would be maybe to include something like sponsorblock in the browser as well and then work hard to cut off providing extensions altogether, as extensions are a main source of fingerprints becoming unique and data leaks. and of course remove all the crypto garbage.