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I’ve changed browsers


Periodically I go on a tear about Internet security. I take a look at everything — the browser I’m using, the browser’s security plug-ins, my Mac’s firewall, and pretty much everything I can think of. I check to see if there’s anything new that might help.

The Brave browser is pretty new. Version 1.0 of the browser was released last year. The browser code is based on Google’s Chrome. Brave claims that it is faster and more secure than Chrome. Brave even internally supports the Tor secure-browser network. You can open a Tor window in Brave.

In the browser business, there are no saints, and there never has been. Netscape, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera … I’ve used them all at one time or another, and all have had their failings and foibles. Brave is no different. A few months ago Brave was caught trying to steer web traffic toward its money-making sites, which have something to do with encrypted currency. Brave apologized, though, and cleaned up their act.

I took a fresh look at Firefox, and I was appalled. Firefox was slow and was full of memory leaks. But Brave has been running nice and clean for a week now. Fewer security plug-ins are needed with Brave, because Brave takes care of many security issues by default, no plug-ins needed. Switching to Brave is easy if you’re a Chrome user, because it is compatible with Chrome. I easily moved my bookmarks and saved passwords to Brave.

Like it or not, Chrome is the most advanced browser, not least because it’s based on Google’s Chromium open-source software project. That’s how Brave is able to make use of the Chromium code base. But Google, being Google, is evil, and I’ve always distrusted Chrome, knowing that Google makes software decisions based on what makes people money on the web, not on what provides the best security for browser users.

I continue to use Safari, but only for Facebook. I detest and distrust Facebook, but I’ve not yet quit it. I keep Facebook running in a separate browser to keep it more isolated. And, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m now using OpenVPN, with the VPN server running on my own virtual private server.

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