eli5 – what is brave browser, tor and duck duck go ? Are they all the same product ?

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I installed brave to test it out and it blocked ads which was cool. But then it has Tor browser and duck duck go search. I’m confused as to what these all do and how to use them.

Edit : thank you all for your explanations !!

In: Technology

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Google and Google Chrome collect A LOT of data on their users. These browsers, and search engines, make the promise to not collect data about their users

Anonymous 0 Comments

Brave is a browser (like Chrome or Firefox) which explicitly doesn’t track your usage, and disables many of the tracking technology used by web services like Google, Facebook etc

TOR is a basically that thing you see on hacker movies, it bounces your internet connection all over the world to make it harder to trace (functionally equivalent to a VPN for most users)

DDG is a search engine like Google or Bing -. Which explicitly doesn’t track information about your searches

When you use them all together, the myriad systems which track and collect data on your internet usage for marketing purposes are greatly curtailed, thus providing you better online privacy

Anonymous 0 Comments

Brave is a web browser like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Explorer.

[DuckDuckGo](https://duckduckgo.com/) is a search engine like Google or Bing.

Tor is software that helps to hide some behind the scenes stuff so websites you visit can’t tell who or where you are.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I feel like a broken record, but I have to advocate in favour of not using a browser that [injects referral links without the user’s knowledge](https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/06/07/brave-browser-caught-adding-its-own-referral-codes-to-some-cryptcurrency-trading-sites/), among other shady stuff and a homophobic CEO

use Firefox, and if you like the adblocking install [ublock origin](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/ublock-origin/)

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Duck duck go is a search engine that recently started its own browser. It began as a privacy minded search engine to oppose Google. Firefox is an open source browser by Mozilla. Open source means that the way it’s program works is viewable by the public and one can verify that data harvesting isn’t happening or at least when it’s happening. That comes with lots of privacy compared to Chrome or Explorer.

Other browsers (Brave, Tor) are modified versions of Firefox. Since Firefox is open source, it can be changed and used in other browsers. Duck duck go’s browser is probably from Firefox also. Tor uses onion routing which basically means it shields much more information from the sites you visit than most any other browser and is the only browser that can access the dark web.

Brave is supposedly a good browser, but most privacy experts would recommend using a ‘hardened’ version of Firefox. You can look up how to set up Firefox this way on Youtube.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I say this as a brave user.

There’s a lot of silly ideas out there on brave. Yes, Google does collect a ton of data on you. But Brave doesn’t solve this at all. Brave is literally a skin on top of generic Google chrome. Google allows this because they don’t care who’s “browser” you use – they just want the data.

On top of that, brave does record information on you. That’s how they know which ads to serve you, how much of the shitcoin you’ve earned, etc etc. What wallets you’re connected to etc etc.

As others have pointed out, brave does shady things themselves. They also want to store all your passwords and crypto wallets and let’s just say I have a lot more trust in Google not getting hacked or having an inside job than I do in brave.

I do not do anything that has sensitive info or passwords for things like banking and crypto on brave. In fact, the one wallet of mine that there was a known hacking attack was the brave wallet I needed to create in order to collect the BAT which is a shitcoin. I found out of the attack because I got about 100+ emails at 3 am all set the same time that someone tried to access my account. Someone tried to brute force it and they didn’t even have a circuit breaker to prevent attempts after a certain number. Only like $40 there and they didn’t get it but was a nice reminder to never do anything for real money on brave because they’re clearly security compromised.

The positives of brave is that being chrome it has better capabilities over Firefox. The advantage to not being chrome is that they give you about $1-3 a month in their money printer shitcoin each month. I doubt bat will survive, the concept is stupid and there’s nothing backing it as it’s just a revenue sharing thing. But hey, it’s kind of neat to just have $20 at the end of the year.

Duck duck go is a search engine that doesn’t track you and is more transparent about ads. It’s pretty good but not as nice as Google. They also have their own mobile browser which is all about the non tracking but frankly it’s nice to have bookmarks/saved passwords/etc and not need to start from scratch every session. Near browser but not a daily driver, more the kind for a search you don’t want on your Google history like if you were searching for nearest std clinic. I believe duck duck go is making a PC browser but am unsure.

Tor is how people go about the dark web. If you need to ask then this isn’t for you.

The only legit reason to use brave is for the “hey I made $20 this year” otherwise if you care about tracking and privacy then Firefox is your friend