From article:

If you have the Brave Browser installed on your Windows devices, then you may also have Brave VPN services installed on the machine. Brave installs these services without user consent on Windows devices.

More reason to ditch the crypto bro browser.

    • funkajunk@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Not that I’m defending anybody but how is this touching your “network stack” any more than any other application?

      • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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        8 months ago

        because a VPN is both a new network interface, and it has the ability to change how your traffic routes. Most applications don’t do that.

        • funkajunk@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          I see now that it was adding a wireguard interface, but without seeing the configuration being used, there’s no telling if they are routing anything more than the traffic from the browser.

          As an aside, are you serving applications from your workstation?

          • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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            8 months ago

            Whether they route only the browser or traffic or not, that is messing with my traffic routing, and that’s dangerous. If they control the VPN exit node (but especially if they control that AND the browser), they can do almost anything they want with/ to your browser traffic.

            Not sure what me serving out applications from my endpoint device has to do with this, but yes, I sometimes do (LAN games, netcat listeners, python servers, etc).

          • abhibeckert@beehaw.org
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            8 months ago

            there’s no telling if they are routing anything more than the traffic from the browser

            Yeah that’s the problem “there’s no telling”. Messing with network settings is opening a can of worms and highly likely to cause problems one day.

  • Engywuck@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    https://old.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/17b0pxl/brave_appears_to_install_vpn_services_without/k5kwd97/

    https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/33726

    And crypto are disabled by default.

    No, I wont’ ditch it. It’s the best browser out there, right now, since scummy/corrupt/hypocrite Mozilla (which, remember, is in bed with Google, Amazon and Facebook while criticizing them) decided that Firefox is just a side project for them and they’re deceiving people making them believe that donations fund FF development.

    Don’t even bother to reply. I’m not going to fuel this shitty thread any further.

    • WastedJobe@feddit.de
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      8 months ago

      “In bed with”=takes their money to have their search engine and lets you change it in 30 seconds while being completely open source

      I don’t see the problem.

      • flora_explora@beehaw.org
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        8 months ago

        Tbf, changing the default search engine probably has the effect that the vast majority of users will stick with it. So, although it is pretty easy for you and me to change the search engine, it still promotes Google quite a lot and thus undermines the independent character of Firefox as a whole.

        • WastedJobe@feddit.de
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          8 months ago

          Absolutely. I would prefer they didn’t have google as the default, but I’d rather have Firefox with good funding and google as default than firefox with very little funding.

          • flora_explora@beehaw.org
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            8 months ago

            I wasn’t defending chromium or brave, not even commenting on them at all. I was just adding a caveat to what the other commenter said about Firefox.

      • ByteWelder
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        8 months ago

        I applaud LibreWolf’s efforts, but the hard-coded timezone makes it unusable for me. Other than that, it’s a great browser. I used it several months until the timezone confusion got the best of me.

    • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
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      8 months ago

      It’s still a behavior like “we are the best software in the world, once we get admin permission we can do whatever we want without additional user consent, people appreciate it”.

      No. You must ask permission to install useless Windows services, even if they’re disabled.

    • lukini@beehaw.org
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      8 months ago

      Don’t even bother to reply. I’m not going to fuel this shitty thread any further.

      Nah I’m gonna pile on. Firefox is better.

    • Mika@beehaw.org
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      8 months ago

      I’m considering it, but how does thorium handle Google’s recent Web manifest updates that break true ad blockers like uBlock origin?

      I’ve been pretty happy with the customizability of librefox with the userchrome.css and ublock still works with YouTube.

      • penquin@lemmy.kde.social
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        8 months ago

        Well, you have two options. The same developer of thorium does have a Firefox one and it’s called mercury. Blazing fast, too. Or you can install adblock detection bypass extension on thorium. It is an extension that’s made to work with chrome alongside ublock origin to bypass YouTube adblock detection. In fact, I literally just ran into that issue today and the other extension fixed it.