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Brave taking cryptocurrency donations “for me” without my consent

(twitter.com)
323 points plusCubed | 13 comments | 21 Dec 18 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 1.176s | source | bottom
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aphextron ◴[21 Dec 18 19:26 UTC] No.18735814[source]▶
I'd been really loving Brave and using it as my daily driver for a few months now, until that I noticed that little "Brave Ads" icon at the end of the address bar. That's when I realized their entire business model is just in the usurpation of existing Google ad revenue, dressed up with "privacy concerns" for the good PR. This sent me on a journey to find a really solid, free, Chromium based browser that is totally de-Googled, which seems absolutely impossible. I've tacitly settled on Vivaldi, but it's just impossible to really know if they are trustworthy as a company in the long run. Ultimately I feel like I can only trust a browser who's entire build process is open source at this point.
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rthomas6 ◴[21 Dec 18 19:28 UTC] No.18735832[source]▶
Honest question. Why not Firefox? What are your concerns with it?
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1. aphextron ◴[21 Dec 18 19:33 UTC] No.18735870[source]▶
I've tried over and over for decades to like Firefox, but I just don't. I can't say it's a rational decision entirely. But beyond that, I just think that Mozilla's motives can't really be trusted at face value with the amount of revenue they have these days, and their whole profile sync service. It just comes down to incentives, and any company which collects any kind of data has the incentive to profit at our expense regardless of ideology. Especially where people's salaries could depend on it.
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2. ceejayoz ◴[21 Dec 18 19:37 UTC] No.18735897[source]▶
What about the profile sync service can't be trusted?

It's end-to-end encrypted. Mozilla doesn't have the keys.

replies(1): >>18735952 #
3. asadotzler ◴[21 Dec 18 19:37 UTC] No.18735899[source]▶
What about the whole profile sync service? It's designed to be privacy preserving by encrypting everything locally with a key only you have. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/11/firefox-sync-privacy/
4. gaadd33 ◴[21 Dec 18 19:40 UTC] No.18735920[source]▶
Is Mozilla run that lean even with >$500M in revenue?
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5. reidrac ◴[21 Dec 18 19:44 UTC] No.18735951[source]▶
Sorry if I misunderstood you, but you said you were using Brave. Perhaps you should review how you evaluate the products you use because your record isn't great.

If you were wrong about Brave, your concerns about Firefox and Mozilla could be wrong as well.

6. aphextron ◴[21 Dec 18 19:44 UTC] No.18735952[source]▶
It's just an attack vector I wish didn't exist at all. There's also metadata. Sure Mozilla doesn't have your passwords, but they know who you have passwords with. That creeps me out.

There's nothing wrong with the all-purpose heavily featured approach of stuff like Chrome and Firefox, and I get that other people like Sync, I just really wish there was a totally stripped down basic internet browser I could trust.

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7. notyourwork ◴[21 Dec 18 19:51 UTC] No.18736018[source]▶
If we didn't do business with any company that was run inefficiently we would not do business with a lot of places. I'm not sure how the efficiency of the business is entirely coupled to whether or not the product is usable and meets user needs in ways that other competing products cannot.
8. danso ◴[21 Dec 18 19:55 UTC] No.18736067[source]▶
The majority of that funding seems to come from royalties ($504M of $520M) [0]. What would be the leaner way of collecting those royalties?

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2016/

9. danso ◴[21 Dec 18 19:56 UTC] No.18736078{3}[source]▶
Isn't profile sync opt-in?
10. jlg23 ◴[21 Dec 18 19:58 UTC] No.18736086[source]▶
"Face value"? Try "source value".

What exactly is your problem with an opt-in service?

11. jlg23 ◴[21 Dec 18 20:05 UTC] No.18736138{3}[source]▶
>Sure Mozilla doesn't have your passwords, but they know who you have passwords with.

Do they? I just skimmed the source and could not find anything that hints at that (and implementing it the way you said it is makes for much more complex code..)

12. geofft ◴[21 Dec 18 20:10 UTC] No.18736180{3}[source]▶
I just don't enable it. It's not on by default.

For the average user—think your uncle who's about to ask you tech support questions this weekend—using Firefox Sync is way better for their privacy and security than reusing the same password everywhere. And for those of us who have and use password managers, Firefox Sync is not on by default—unlike Brave's attention-tracking or Chrome's Google logins.

13. ◴[21 Dec 18 20:51 UTC] No.18736534[source]▶