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.

Brave Firewall + VPN is an extra service that Brave users may subscribe to for a monthly fee. Launched in mid-2022, it is a cooperation between Brave Software, maker of Brave Browser, and Guardian, the company that operates the VPN and the firewall solution. The firewall and VPN solution is available for $9.99 per month.

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Now we just gotta wait for the CEO to go on a marketing campaign for new users, in an attempt to drown out the story.

    • HurlingDurling@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Why is a server in Washington DC not safe and secure? I’ll give you private against government snooping it’s not, but it can still be safe and secure.

        • HurlingDurling@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          But it isn’t the entire point tho, I use it when connected to public wifi networks to keep my connection secure. Sure, not letting your local ISP spy on you and report it to the gov is one but not the entire point.

  • Treczoks@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    And spyware for free, and I would not be surprised if they included an insecure backdoor at no extra cost.

      • Treczoks@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Both shitty, yes, but an unsecure backdoor is opening the door to every hacker on the planet, not just one group.

        • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
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          1 year ago

          I was disagreeing that a backdoor can ever be secure, because by definition it’s a way to bypass security protocols and if one person can bypass them, there’s no guarantee others can’t too.

          • Treczoks@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Of course, no backdoor is secure, but among them, there are the just plain bad and the even worse.

  • donkeystomple@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Well I feel better about making the switch to Firefox now, and doing a custom user.js

    • chris@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I’ve posted a similar question to asklemmy but more over the focus on preference than privacy. In short the search engine Kagi is really good, Brave search was what I had used for a while. I think search engine choice is a case by case kinda thing, each person uses what they like. There are some other engines I forgot from my post which are more privacy centered.

        • chris@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Yes it is 10 dollars a month, but you can create an account and try it for free to see if it is for you. It also does not use your data nor push advertisements which explains the cost.

          • 👁️👄👁️@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            ddg does that for free

            $10/mo is also crazy overpriced for a search engine, they’re really not resource intensive at all

            • SnipingNinja@slrpnk.net
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              1 year ago

              ddg relies on Bing so it isn’t really comparable, idk about kagi’s costs but they claim 1.2 cent per search and an average of 700 searches per month (as what they are serving and hence pricing for)

  • Zerush@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I use Vivaldi, Andisearch and Mojeek. I’m going fine with these. As VPN Proton

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    1 year ago

    u/@Max_P said this at the !technology thread:

    Software installs services to make its features operate, including optional default off ones. More news at 10.

    This is just like any other optional feature of Chromium you don’t use

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    That doesn’t really seem that bad. There are issues with brave but that’s not one of them

    • Muehe@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      A VPN provider has the same level of insight into your traffic as an ISP does when not using a VPN. If having one installed without your consent isn’t a privacy issue I don’t know what is…

        • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          I just looked on a VM I spun up for risky shit. It seems to be opt-in only.

          Is it a good VPN? No. Is it worth the overreacting that Lemmy seems to do every time someone mentions Brave? No.

          But hey, social media.

        • Muehe@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Unclear to me, according to the OP the service is set to manual start. But there is an event trigger attached to the service and the article doesn’t mention what that event is.

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    1 year ago

    I don’t use Windows but if you install a program that requires a service on Linux, the service will be written to your system’s services daemon awaiting your activation. I don’t see what the issue with that is.

    • citytree@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      What’s to stop the installer on Linux from configuring the service such that the service always runs on boot? e.g. systemctl enable malware.service.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Linux doesn’t have “installers” as Linux uses package managers. The only way you can get malware is if you manually add a bad repo.

        So it doesn’t really matter in the long run

      • hottari@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        You still need to manually enable the service. The configuration of the service has zero effect on its activation or lifecycle.

        • calm.like.a.bomb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Huh? Any script can create a service, enable it and then start it. What would make you think the brave package (or just the application itself) can’t do this?

          • hottari@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Not possible to start or enable a created service without user intervention. You don’t know what you are talking about.

            • Ferk@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Systemd “enabled” services are literal symlinks… whenever a target runs, it tries to start also all the service files on its “wants” directory.

              You can literally enable any service for next boot by making a symlink in /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/ (or whichever other target you want it to run on) as root (and installation scripts are run as root).

              ln -s /usr/lib/systemd/system/whatever.service  /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/whatever.service
              
              
              • hottari@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                This is actually very close (just tested and confirmed it). I somehow stand corrected about requiring manual enablement but this is just using the package manager to do the dirty work for you.

                However the program itself cannot write into those directories without root permissions. You still have to allow your package manager to do this with root permissions as mentioned.

            • calm.like.a.bomb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              OK… challenge accepted. Maybe you don’t know about systemd user services.

              Content of mytrojan.sh:

              #!/usr/bin/env bash
              
              echo "Writing the service unit file"
              
              cat > ~/.config/systemd/user/my_test_service.service << EOF
              [Unit]
              Description=Script Daemon For Test User Services
              
              [Service]
              Type=simple
              User=
              #Group=
              ExecStart=/home/user/bin/myscript.sh
              Restart=on-failure
              StandardOutput=file:%h/log_file
              
              [Install]
              WantedBy=default.target
              EOF
              
              echo "Reloading systemd for the user"
              systemctl --user daemon-reload || exit 1
              
              echo "Enabling and starting the service"
              systemctl --user enable --now my_test_service.service
              

              Content of myscript.sh:

              $ cat ~/bin/myscript.sh
              #!/usr/bin/env bash
              
              while true
              do
                  now=$(date)
                  me=$(whoami)
                  echo "User $me at $now"
                  sleep 10
              done
              

              Now run the script (mytrojan.sh) and check service status after that:

              $ ./mytrojan.sh
              Writing the service unit file
              Reloading systemd for the user
              Enabling and starting the service
              $ systemctl --user status my_test_service.service
              ● my_test_service.service - Script Daemon For Test User Services
                   Loaded: loaded (/home/user/.config/systemd/user/my_test_service.service; enabled; vendor preset: ena>
                   Active: active (running) since Thu 2023-10-19 12:15:21 EEST; 6s ago
                 Main PID: 1666383 (myscript.sh)
                    Tasks: 2 (limit: 18757)
                   Memory: 556.0K
                      CPU: 4ms
                   CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/my_test_service.service
                           ├─1666383 /bin/bash /home/user/bin/myscript.sh
                           └─1666387 sleep 10
              
              Oct 19 12:15:21 tesla systemd[1866318]: Started Script Daemon For Test User Services
              
  • ser@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Check out thorium.rocks It is a fork of Chromium with performance and security improvement. Chris Titus recommends it.

    • Skimmer@lemmy.zip
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      Thorium isn’t good at all imo. They don’t really do much to enhance privacy/security, and have constantly delayed updates. It seems to be ran entirely by 1 college kid in his free time.

      I like Chris Titus, but I wouldn’t really use him as a source for privacy/security advice.