Brave Browser, wiping history still leaves trace of visited sites
github.com
github.com
Of course it's not in text. It's a SQLite3 database:
$ sqlite3 ~/'Library/Application Support/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Default/Top Sites' .dump
PRAGMA foreign_keys=OFF;
BEGIN TRANSACTION;
CREATE TABLE meta(key LONGVARCHAR NOT NULL UNIQUE PRIMARY KEY, value LONGVARCHAR);
INSERT INTO meta VALUES('mmap_status','-1');
INSERT INTO meta VALUES('version','4');
INSERT INTO meta VALUES('last_compatible_version','4');
CREATE TABLE top_sites (url LONGVARCHAR PRIMARY KEY,url_rank INTEGER,title LONGVARCHAR,redirects LONGVARCHAR);
INSERT INTO top_sites VALUES('https://chrome.google.com/webstore?hl=en',0,'Web Store',NULL);
COMMIT;
Edit: Tried this on Chromium 86.0.4185.0, top sites db is cleared after clearing all browsing data, so probably not inherited from Chromium.
(Btw I wasn't able to repro on Brave because however many times I open news.ycombinator.com, it simply won't register in top sites -.-)
In particular it does close to nothing to solve the problem of chrome-only websites.
It is one of the reason the demise of edgeHTML/chakra was a bittersweet news for many (in this case Microsoft could have the resources, in extreme cases, to hard-fork blink/V8).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing
Use Firefox Focus instead: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fo...
Outrage and canned evangelical responses require very little effort and rake in the easy karma. Way easier to scream "Firefox" under every post about every other browser than trying to understand a technical issue.
Just look at the heaviest thread (now apparently downweighted by mods). A whopping 86 responses later, can you learn anything from it? Other than the root comment providing some context, I can hardly find anything of value that's not been repeated every single day on this site.
Firefox
Here X=Privacy so, where are the unit tests and patch? Faster now that it's Top on HN.
I'm not suggesting that there shouldn't an outrage against big tech companies. But small company should be held to the same standards, especially as they make those very features their main point of existence.
It pretty obviously has a lot to do with Brendan Eich.
Not really, their whole proposition is to do ads in a privacy respecting way, and you always have the option to just turn them off entirely. The payments model they have for websites is my favorite thing about the browser and I'd love to see more models like it catch on. Giving the ability to easily fund content creators by just filling up your wallet periodically (without having to view ads if you don't want) is a great idea. Perhaps the execution leaves something to be desired, but I wish people would at least discuss the important ideas it brings rather than simply dismiss it as an evil browser and recommend Firefox + ublock origin (which, while a good temporary solution, is ultimately just kicking the can down the road and doesn't do a whole lot to solve the root issues).
This is not fully accurate. You have to explicitly find and enable ads if you want them. They are off by default.
Not only is it opt in, but all the ad matching happens locally.
1) The browser periodically downloads an ad catalog (signal in, no signal out).
2) The browser now holds (1) the ad catalog (with some targeting keywords and terms set by advertisers); (2) your browsing history.
3) It then matches the ads from the catalog against your browsing history.
I am keeping an eye on Braver Browser, a fork of Brave with the intention of removing the questionable behavior: https://github.com/braver-browser
[1]: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/8793
[2]: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-br...
Seriously, if you want a browser that gives you control over your data and privacy, use Firefox. It doesn't do any of this shady nonsense.
As have I. The entire money making scheme behind it, while innovative, is a privacy nightmare.
> Seriously, if you want a browser that gives you control over your data and privacy, use Firefox. It doesn't do any of this shady nonsense.
Agreed, with the caveat that Firefox does have its own, completely different privacy issues[1][2]. Still, it's probably the best choice for a mainstream browser, and there are open source scripts out there[3] to plug up Firefox's few leaks. I used to use (and recommend) Waterfox as a more secure, private alternative to Firefox, but lately Firefox with Shawn's or a similar script applied is just as good. It's generally better to get FF from your operating system's repository and keep it updated that way rather than manually installing a fork.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield?as=u&utm_source=...
[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report
[3] https://github.com/shawnanastasio/firefox-privacy-restorer
I had never heard of these before, but when I go to about:studies, I see that I have never participated in any studies, and when I click the link from that page to "Firefox data collection and use" setting, I see that I am opted out from everything. Pretty sure I didn't do that manually.
Your second link is to a page called "Firefox health report". I have no idea what conclusions I'm supposed to draw from that.
Can you provide more info about the privacy violations you're referring to?
Are you on Linux? Many distributions include their own tweaks to the Firefox package, including disabling data collection.
Are you in the US? I also have not participated in any studies but in the preferences it is marked as active. My guess would be that they either run very few of them or are restricted to the US.
Is it? An ad bundle is downloaded to your pc. Your pc tracks some usage, and stores every analytic locally. Using the analytics, your local client chooses which ads to target you with. You wipe your local data cache, your analytics disappear. I would guess people wished more advertising respected privacy this way.
This seems like much LESS of a privacy nightmare than Google, Facebook, Verizon, Microsoft, Amazon storing a named profile for each person.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1265029
But there are many others, just search "firefox privacy concerns" or similar keywords. Telemetry data -- Pocket suggestions -- etc.
I felt they should have made it an opt-in service that the user can choose on the first launch. Taking away user choice is rarely a good thing, and even less so when dealing with anything privacy related.
The original service was integrated a while ago, but it doesn't really have severe privacy implications. If you click a pocket button, it asks you to log in. If you don't click, it does nothing. This is the one that's hard to disable, but it's an annoyance more than a security problem.
Pocket suggestions are newer, showing articles on the new tab page. They are trivial to turn off, and for what it's worth all the sorting/filtering is done locally.
My point being, even if Pocket is 100% benign and never leaks any user data, the user should still have a say in whether it is turned on by default on a fresh installation. Anything less is user-hostile, a descriptor Mozilla should avoid if possible.
1. Block scripts on certain domains
2. Block ads & tracking (including on Android)
Those are my favorite Brave features. How do I get them on Firefox?
On desktop: regular Firefox + https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
In uBlock Origin, there is a setting that disables Javascript by default (which I use). You can then enable it temporarily or permanently on a per-site basis.
NextDNS has a more advanced version (you can add and remove domains) for $19.90/year
It's not quite as good as having a PiHole or similar setup because some devices have their DNS settings hard coded. You have to route those addresses to override your Chromecast, etc.
https://adguard.com/en/adguard-dns/overview.html https://nextdns.io/
For ad-blocking, I supplement uMatrix with uBlock Origin. It has its own block lists that it perodically
On top of that, I use privoxy as an http proxy. Unfortunately, it can't filter https.
Yet another part of my defense is DNS blocklists that I put in to /etc/hosts.[1]
Using this combination, I virtually never see any ads.
As the author of both uBO and uMatrix, I don't understand the need to use uMatrix to block scripts when already using uBO, since uBO can do the same.
Even better, uBO supports replacing certain blocked scripts with a local, neutered version (to lower likelihood of site breakage), something which becomes broken if you block the same script with another extension (i.e. in either NoScript or uMatrix).
If this is possible to do in uBlock Origin, I don't know how.
AFAIK, uBO does not have a similar matrix-like interface. So if the equivalent control is possible somehow, it must be hidden further down in its interface, which makes it much less convenient for me than the simple matrix that's behind a single mouse click for me in uMatrix.
I'd love to learn how uBO can be used like uMatrix, if that's possible. There's no need for both extensions if uBO can do it all, but as far as I know it can't.
Any plans to update uMatrix so it behaves nicer on mobile? The popup interface resists pinch-to-zoom and the text is so small as to be literally illegible on mobile devices. So I can't read the various domains to decide which ones I want to block or permit!
[uBlock Origin was recently updated to make it more mobile friendly. Although, ironically, out of the two, it was already more usable on mobile as it was possible to zoom and pan round the interface.]
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/google-chrome-reason-revealed...
But "chrome" to mean user interface is pretty far down the list of definitions for chrome, and even the most generous interpretation is similar to GUI/UI/UX and that doesn't exactly say "web browser".
I must admit that does not quite fit with a lot of the thing I've read about Brave over the years.
I always joked that if you were really Brave you wouldn't need their browser, it should be more aptly named "Wimp".
Edit: forgot to mention you can install from 3p sources as I've done from my own site in the past. They just need to be signed by Mozilla first.
No they don't, xpinstall.signatures.required to false
I don't think there's really a good browser for both privacy and hacking. I use chromium when I have no choice (not sure what you're referring to concerning the disable modal ; if it's an issue with chromium too, I haven't hit it, and I have 11 extensions loaded from sources).
But my "main browser until it's not enough" is elinks (slightly modified by me to fix ruby support and offer a few more api methods to extensions). I can write extensions as simple ruby scripts, doing things like adding native markdown support, allowing to edit local files, adding proper indentation to HN comments, etc. It's the perfect browser for me (and with cookies disabled and js, css and images not fetch nor executed, it's a good privacy browser as well). But of course, you won't be able to use that to buy something on the web. Still, it's surprising how much I can accomplish with just that.
Forking a text browser is impressive. Though to be honest the older I get the less energy and time I have to be picky. (And building Firefox was so painful I vowed to only make changes via extensions.)
Actually, my first attempt to fix my problem was to try to find in firefox codebase where it deletes the extensions loaded from sources, either at the end or the start of the session, I supposed, to shunt that "feature". But after a week a free time spent on it, I made no progress. The codebase and the architecture are just too gargantuan to be tinkered with - at least for me.
'about:config' set 'xpinstall.signatures.required' to 'false'
So Firefox prevents this perfectly reasonable thing? WTF.
Not true. You can get them signed without publicly redistributing them.
[2] was fixed a while ago as mentioned in your link.
[3] was also fixed quickly.
I don't know if you've ever run a company but if you do, I hope your users won't attack you and remember every single mistakes you've ever made even if just 3.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Brave and rarely use it sometimes as secondary browser.
These aren't mistakes, though, at least not in the sense of accidents. They were bad ideas, but it certainly wasn't a case of "oops, I accidentally added affiliate hijacking, silly me".
I mean, I suppose you could interpret them as severe naiveté and/or incompetence? That's probably the most charitable way to look at them, but still wouldn't exactly encourage me to use the product.
For example, the decision to hijack links to insert their own affiliate links is not a mistake, it was a decision. These kind of decisions are not made by a developer in the team, it is a leadership level decision, coming from principles those leaders live by, and also one that does not put users first. On the contrary, it takes advantage of the users.
The principle of 'forgiving mistakes' applies only to honest mistakes. Otherwise we would all be browsing with Chrome/posting on Facebook/[insert currently hated company on HN here] and forgiving them all their 'mistakes'.
This is why Firefox decided for example to support non-free mp4 or EME (DRM), even though it goes against their mission of supporting the open web. They decided that not supporting these features would kill their market share, relevance and revenue making it hard to support their users in the future.
When Brave made the decision to insert affiliate, they saw it as a way to help with their revenue which helps their mission without hurting privacy too much (they still block more trackers than any other browser in the market including firefox). Still, they rectified this quickly showing that they are not stubborn and are ready to sacrifice revenue for their users. Anyway, it's not easy to balance all this and you will be hard put to find saints that do it all perfectly out there, good luck finding one though.
Although this can be a sound principle for many, I do not agree with it. Brave is not 'entitled' in any way nor should the world bend to make Brave possible. It's a company like any other, with a product like any other and with, IMO, questionable leadrship principles demonstrated over and over again. The market will 'price' it accordingly in terms of market share.
If I was to build a browser (which btw I am doing) I would put 100% user interest first, at the price of not succeeding in the market. That is the only way I could sleep well at night.
I never said it was entitled, I said it had to balance things to survive.
> If I was to build a browser (which btw I am doing) I would put 100% user interest first, at the price of not succeeding in the market. That is the only way I could sleep well at night.
A quick look at the history of humanity will show you that even the most moral entities had at a point of their existence have to compromise with morality to survive, or made bad choices out of self-interest. Just like every single human being who has ever lived. I don't think you can never ever ever compromise on anything while accomplishing anything significant. By the way, do you plan on taking out mp4 and user freedom hostile features such as EME support in your browser?
I don't think you can never ever ever compromise on anything while accomplishing anything significant.
Not with that attitude you don't.
ps: Edge's reader mode and narrator are top-notch.
Firefox does not send your unencrypted browsing data to Microsoft and it does not send Windows 10's advertising ID to Bing Ads.
---
You may trust Microsoft enough to run Windows 10, but it does not follow that Microsoft already has that data. And giving even more data to a company that already has plenty on you is always unwise.
If you care about privacy or security for that matter, compartmentalization is key.
If I was going to plump for one company, Microsoft might not be the worst choice simply because their business model doesn't revolve around monetizing my personal information.
Yet they seem intent on collecting as much data as possible.
Compared to google which continues to make their UI more hostile to users with each iteration.
Try ungoogled-chromium:
https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium
Put uMatrix, HTTPS everywhere
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/9929#issuecomm...
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/firefox-hardening...
Implementing this is problematic because depending on the filesystem, it might not be possible to "wipe" a file by repeatedly writing over it. For instance, if it's a log structured filesystem. On the other hand, you might not even need to overwrite in some cases, eg. filesystems on SSDs with trim support. Also you don't need 35x overwrites. There's no evidence that even 1x overwrite can be recovered on contemporary hard drives.
Storing the history in memory also solves this half of this problem, and surviving a reboot is not necessary to ensure and audit privacy.
edit I'll stop. I can understand the flaws in this setup, I don't understand why you think it isn't possible/wouldn't solve the problem.
What actual evidence do you have that incognito mode is wiping the history at session end?
No it isn't. You said nothing about a browser. You said storage medium.
There comes a point where I simply won’t believe in magic. Whether it’s 3 writes or 7 writes, at some point there is not enough contextual information left on rigid magnetic media to recover any amount of useable information.
cat /dev/urandom > /path/to/mount/point/temp.bin && fysnc && rm /path/to/mount/point/temp.bin dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX bs=1MWiping the encryption key takes care of that problem, as well as being much faster.
Sometimes I do just that, I'll install Linux encrypted, and then reinstall later without migrating any bytes. My main concern is work related / personal finance documents being left over on a laptop. I've tested plenty of forensic utilities on my system after erasing files.
an easy alternative is just to encrypt the drive using software-based encryption and just delete the key. Windows 10 has now stopped relying on hardware-based ssd encryption because it was found some of it was just garbage.
Edit: Additional caveats: some drives can move data in and out of the non-system viewable area and dead cells cannot be written if they're no longer viable so data can still remain there.
“Currently bloated Firefox” is a baseless claim in my opinion.
My experience is 100% on Linux, and perhaps Firefox on Windows or OS X is quite different.
And to clarify you do use the DDG search engine, just not their browser.
2. Invested in Locately TWO YEARS after founding DDG.[2]
Locately, for those unfamiliar with the company, had built a proprietary data-mining engine which collected data from customers’ (opted-in) mobile phones in order to understand more about what sort of behaviors they were engaging in out in the real world. It could tell how a customer moved from one location to the next, what stores they passed along the way, how long they visited stores, what sort of lifestyle or shopper segment the user fell into, which competing stores a consumer would frequent, how a business compared to its rivals, and much more.
3. The DDG favicon issue since 2018. Was only promised to be fixed four days ago after it got to the front page of HN.[3]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_Database
[2]https://www.crunchbase.com/person/gabriel-weinberg
[3]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23708166
> What’s the evidence that DDG itself is not privacy centric as claimed?
Past behavior is a predictor of future behavior. (see: Zuck, Thiel, Facebook, Palantir)
------
Why the downvotes again? I gave a reasonable reply to their question.
At least give me a reason for them... =)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709270
founder has a bad track record on user privacy. Founded Names Database[1], a social media website designed to collect user information as aggressively as possible, before selling all the information to classmates.com.
Locately is pioneering the science of Location Analytics. Locately's software analyzes semi-continuous GPS data from mobile phones to better understand what consumers do and how they shop.
Edit: why the downvotes? :/ I like my HN points...
Someone who?