Thoughts on Brave and Duckduckgo.

nige3367

Member
I recently switched my browswer to Brave and my search Engine to Duckduckgo. does anyone have any experaince with these and do they protect your privacey by removing ads and trackers. They seem to work well enough.
 
I've used Duckduckgo for a number of years and am very happy with it. I am basically a "google shunner" and have a strong dislike and distrust of the way that they and others treat us. IMHO it is worth getting used to Duckduckgo and the way that it works and some of the unique tools that they offer you for search . I am very happy with the general lack of track and trace when compared with using anything from Google et-al. That said, bare in mind that if you are using a service like Duckduckgo for search with the google-chrome browser, then you are rather shooting yourself in the foot............
I am also a Brave browser user and have been using it since it came out in beta form. I admire the objectives of their project, and whilst (if I am honest) I find that using Firefox with a minimum of the Privacy Badger and U-Block Origin Plugins preferable, that Brave does actually cut the mustard right out of the box. With a lack of display adverts and a general blocking of all of the other stuff that goes on in the back-ground that is hidden from plain view, there is also a general performance and speed advantage which is clear to see. Furthermore, one of the key objectives of Brave's project is to bring content creators and consumers together in direct contact with each other as a way or replacing the internet's dependency upon advertising, corporate surveillance, and data mining in all it's forms. To do that they have the BAT token (Basic Attention Token) which is an Ethereum based alt-coin that you can opt in to if you wish. I earn BAT simply by using Brave without being obliged to actually look at any adverts, and in turn I am happy to send a tip to my favorite content creators, web-sites and anyone else who has served me well or assisted me. I note (sadly) that Teckings is not registered to receive BAT, maybe they should consider it; I for one would be happy to bung a few BAT their way from time to time as it is a useful resource for me.

So in summary - Duckduckgo and Brave -- am happy to recommend both

The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane - Marcus Aurelius
 
Thanks for all that info xero50 thats what I was told elsewhere so it sounds genuinely interesting in what they are trying to achieve . I have installed both on my Windows 10 PC and tablet. regrettably ther is no support for my Windows phone.. thanks again
 
Is there any other sofware you can recommend that keeps us away from Google.. I have recently stopped using whatsapp as its no longer supported on windows phone. I have installed Viber instead which seems to work just as well i have it on all 3 devices . I am led to believe Whatsapp is now linked to Facebook and snapchap.. Neither of which i use. The Difficult ones are YouTube and twitter . no viable alternatives out there ??
 
Well, I can tell you how I tackle it.
To set the context:-
I am a believer in freedom pure and simple. So, that means for me using 'Free' hardware and hardware and software wherever and whenever possible. Now, having said that we need to firstly define "Free" - - what I mean by that is the GNU's and FSF's definition:-- What is free software? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation and should not be confused with any linguistic word/s that imply that you pay no money.
Now when you spend a bit of time with this, you'll probably rightly come to the conclusion that you are going to have to compromise these lofty ideals to some degree or another. Perhaps a good example of that might be the binary blobs (effectively software), that are embedded or burned into many of the chips and components of the devices that we all use and that are not even open-source let alone 'free' (note there is a difference). It is therefore a case of having to decide what the extent of those compromises are and the likely outcome of going in any particular direction.
You give good examples of this above in now shunning the likes of Facebook and Whatsapp. Yes they have not charged you money in the past, but you have decided that the cost to you in using them is too high a price to pay. - - and I do agree with you in that.
This in turn leads me to a conundrum. I personally have never used facebook. I have never signed-up, never logged-in, and never consented in any context to have anything whatsoever to do with it. The whole principle of it is abhorrent to me. (I am sure that you already know why that is from the things we have been discussing here). However, wherever I travel on the internet and elsewhere I am always tracked and traced (and presumably monetised) by facebook and their affiliates. For example, I would be willing to bet that if a photo of a group of people that included my ugly-mug was posted on facebook, or twitter et-al (as people are wont to do) then the chances are that my name could be accurately appended (tagged) on that image along with all of the other people in it automatically by facebook's systems, and yet I have never consented to that and if I had been asked, I would not have consented, and yet Mark Zuc' will tell the world that "you the users are in control" - - - - -yeah right, welcome to the Hotel California my friend.........

So, what do I use:-
GNU Linux based operating system for all of the things. Desktops, laptops, phones. I have no workloads that require the use of any closed-source or non-free operating system. However, I do use some application software that is non-free, simply because it does a better job than the free alternative forcing me towards pragmatism and convenience. An example of that would be the excellent Balena Etcher app which is issued under the Apache license.

Other examples of things to think about: Never use cloud services that are not under you control. Words like cloud and online usually mean 'somebody else's computer' in practical terms which in turn works out to mean that "you are the product".
For messaging about the best of breed right now today is probably Signal.
When you get comfortable using something, keep an eye on the community and people around it. You might find that all it takes is a change of finance director or CEO in order for the whole thing to swing in the opposite direction (I'm looking at you Plex, Emby, Oracle, Amazon, Cisco, LinkSys, VM-Ware, Citrix), and be prepared to re-examine it in the light of the ever changing landscape.
When browsing, sure use things like Brave and if you want to join-in with their community efforts to change things if you agree with them and want to, but you don't have to feel obliged to do so. You can do simple things yourself (and probably should be doing them). For example, make use of your hosts file in whatever operating system that you use to simply block those people that you object to -- -- (man you should see the length of my own hosts file) - - - an example of what I mean can be found here:- jmdugan/blocklists It's a bit old-fashioned I know, but hey it works and they can't do anything about it.
Use things like DNS over TLS or DNS over HTTPS for your DNS lookups so that they can't censor you or monetise your lookups.
Perhaps the main reason/s for doing stuff like that is to frustrate and limit their ability to monetise me. OK, so at the end of the day I am simply not actually going to see any adverts displayed, but that is actually the easy bit and for the big surveillance corporates only a drop in the ocean compared with the value they 'earn' from the hidden things like data brokering, and that is what I am trying to frustrate there.

It is also perhaps worth mentioning here the social aspects of all of this sort of thing. I see on a daily basis things like our children being forced into surrendering their biometric data in school as a matter of routine just so that they can use simple services that are actually a right. I see too the financial system of the world being weaponised against the everyman in the name of security and safety - - - to say that these things to my mind are wrong is a gross understatement..

I am keenly aware that I probably sound like a fully fledged tin-foil-hat-wearing member of..... well you get the idea. But hey in all honesty I have no problem with anyone earning a living anywhere. It's greed and dishonesty that I have a problem with.

In summary, it's all about trade-offs. Convenience -v- Freedom. We all do it in varying degrees, myself included.
 
Interesting read although i must admit I am not techincally in the know enough to understand all of that. Thanks anyway. how do you get on about a mobile Phone as there seems no alternatives available to Andriod (Google) and Apple. I have a windows phone but now that form is dead.
 
Is there any other sofware you can recommend that keeps us away from Google.. I have recently stopped using whatsapp as its no longer supported on windows phone. I have installed Viber instead which seems to work just as well i have it on all 3 devices . I am led to believe Whatsapp is now linked to Facebook and snapchap.. Neither of which i use. The Difficult ones are YouTube and twitter . no viable alternatives out there ??
I found this useful, including the comments
How can I remove Google from my life?
 
Interesting article thank you.. I find it strange that people would want to use a Microsoft Launcher on an Andriod phone .. just buy a windows 10 phone.. What a crazy world we live in.. An app used to be called a program and most of the stuff you can do in the app you just do on a browser
 
........how do you get on about a mobile Phone as there seems no alternatives available to Andriod (Google) and Apple. I have a windows phone but now that form is dead.
I am sure that devices running versions of windows phone will be with us for some time to come. Whether MS are maintaining them from a security point of view or not would need to be looked-up, and no doubt a view be taken on whatever comes out of that.

To say that IOS and Google Android are the only games in town is wrong. That said they (particularly google android) dominate the phone landscape by a very big margin. However, google android itself is simply a google curated spin of "Android". There are a number of examples of what I may call here "vanilla android", but perhaps the most common implementation is called LineageOS. LineageOS – LineageOS Android Distribution
Now, it is not possible to install a new OS all and any hardware, and therefore a view needs to be taken. However, for anyone who likes the idea of android that is not from google then go to LineageOS's hardware compatibility lists and make your future hardware choices from that. Remember too that there are a good many android app stores that do not rely upon google's play store.
Personally I hate using things with capacitive/touch screens. (medical reasons for that which I won't go into here), but suffice to say that if computing and internet meant using a phone or tablet device then I would simply take up golf or snooker and live my life off of the internet grid. I am old fashioned and simple enough to think of and use a phone as a telephony device (ie use my voice to talk to people). Also I am happy to use it for email and text type messaging services, and I ask no more than that of a portable "phone device" and absolutely will not use a "phone" for the purposes of browsing under any circumstances. My compromises when looking at devices and OS would include any Blackberry OS up to BBOS10. Operating systems like Sailfish, KaiOS, Maemo, UB Ports, LuneOS, PostmarketOS, (and Plasma mobile starting to look very promising). There will be more I am sure. There is also a whole raft of other options coming out of China these days too.
All of those offer a variety of choices in terms of freedom and varying degrees of functionality. Some organisations like (Pine, Librem and Jolla for example) are able to offer OEM hardware as well.
 
Thanks for all that info xero50 thats what I was told elsewhere so it sounds genuinely interesting in what they are trying to achieve . I have installed both on my Windows 10 PC and tablet. regrettably ther is no support for my Windows phone.. thanks again

Have you ever thought about the fact that privacy and windows OS is a contradiction of terms,?
No matter what you install on a windows ( or OSx ) PC, they can collect as much data as they want to from you by default as you agreed to their T&Cs , and their is nothing you can do to stop it.
 
OK so if I try and install a version of Linux which I know nothing about but obviously there are plenty of tutorials out there. I am maybe thinging if I can dual boot between that and windows to start with until im happy with how it works. The question I have is if its open source software unlike Windows surely it is more likely to be hacked so people get to see what your doing ? or am I completely wrong in thinking that. The version I am being told to try as a beginer is Mint.. as there are lots of versions out there. I have dual booted between different Windows versions before but never between Windows and something else. Who knows I may grow to like Linux more than windows and become a convert.. I like to try new things Im sick and tried of having Google and andriod and apple rammed down my throat everywhere you look.. There has to viable alternatives. I suppose I have stuck with Windows because I have always had it, Ive never paid for it though and I havent really encounted problems apart from Vista which was chronic.
 
If you have ever bought a computer with windows on it from a retailer, then believe me you will have paid for it one way or another.........

You certainly can dual-boot a machine with both windows and linux, just as you have done in the past with different windows versions.
Where software is free or open-source then the code is available and visible, and clever people can look at it and audit it and tell us if this is OK or that is not OK. Whilst doing things like this in full public view and without any kind of obviously traditional governance model can seem unfamiliar and perhaps worrying, it is that very openness that actually keeps the system honest and ensures that bugs get fixed as they become apparent. By contrast with anything closed source you'll never really know what is going on or whether something is being maintained or updated, or whether there are known bugs that just get ignored by the developer/maintainer. Examples of that happening all too often would include microsoft, cisco, oracle and especially adobe.
Ordinarily for anyone expressing an interest in using linux I would recommend that they start using free and/or open-source applications on their existing windows installation before making the transition. It sounds to me like you are already doing this to a large degree, but it is worth perhaps looking at your own personal workflows and the tools and programmes that you use to get you work and stuff done. For example, some people are wedded to microsoft office and believe that it is the only game in town for things like document editing, spread-sheet work, and presentation building or viewing. There are of course a number of cross-platform office suites that are either equivalent or better, particularly Libre Office for example, and it is just a case of looking for and using the free and open-source equivalents to the traditional closed-source applications that one is used to using.
Basically you have to be prepared to change your historical workflows if you want to do it. It is perhaps worth pointing that a person transitioning from say win7 to win10 will be faced with changing their workflows, and this is very much the same in principle.

In an ideal world, I guess that we would all have a couple of 'spare' computers about us that would allow us to experiment and generally be irresponsible. Sadly the real world is not usually like that. That being said doing an installation of an operating system whether it be linux based or even windows is actually a very quick and easy thing to do these days, but sadly many people shy away from it for reasons I have never really been able to understand. All you really need is a bit of common sense and the ability to see and read dictionary words on a screen, (which sadly is also a challenge for many people).

At this stage I think that I should make a confession - - - - I am a selfish person -- -- -- Using linux and open source applications allow me to get my work done with a brutal efficiency and makes it all enjoyable because it frees my time and allows me to choose what to do with my time. When I need to undertake a task it's like having a tool kit with all the tools I need right there at my fingertips without really needing to think about it. By contrast, on my travels I see a great many organisations and people wedded to windows and closed proprietary applications who spend most of their time waiting to be able to get stuff done and having to manage a whole list of difficult and clunky work-arounds just to get the simplest of tasks done. I just hope that those organisations are able to charge their customers enough to support all of that dead down time that their people are forced to spend waiting or jumping through silly hoops.

Mint is certainly as good a place as any to start. Linux is all about choice and Mint is no exception in that regard in that it offers you a number of desktop environments to choose from. I'd say, take a little time choose which desktop environment you like the look of and give a dual-boot a try. Make sure that any valuable user data is well backed-up before you start and you really can't go wrong.
 
I have never brought a PC from a retailer.. I buy components and put my own PC together, I am ok with Hardware its software i could never get my head around , script and code and all that clever stuff, too clever for me.. I build the PC then use a copied version of clean Windows office etc. All my programs are on adifferent drive to my os so if need to reinstall them they are there. I dont think ive ever activated a copy of windows or Office.. whatever features they disable from that Ive never needed or noticed them... I will give this ago I think, i am geniunelly interested in seeing how this Linux works for me.. I will let you the results of if it Biggest program i use for work is Excel so as long as the office suites you suggest can do a similar job i will be happy. Im not a gamer and dont really run any heavy programs.. so lets see.. Thanks again for the info..
 
Having read this thread, thought I'd give Brave a go on my windws 10 pc. Impressed with the browser and speed etc however it threw up conflicts with Malwarebytes, therfore prefering to have Mbytes running properly I uninstalled Brave. Just thought I'd mention this in case others get the same.
 
I have never brought a PC from a retailer.. I buy components and put my own PC together, I am ok with Hardware its software i could never get my head around , script and code and all that clever stuff, too clever for me.. I build the PC then use a copied version of clean Windows office etc. All my programs are on adifferent drive to my os so if need to reinstall them they are there. I dont think ive ever activated a copy of windows or Office.. whatever features they disable from that Ive never needed or noticed them... I will give this ago I think, i am geniunelly interested in seeing how this Linux works for me.. I will let you the results of if it Biggest program i use for work is Excel so as long as the office suites you suggest can do a similar job i will be happy. Im not a gamer and dont really run any heavy programs.. so lets see.. Thanks again for the info..

I've always used Ubuntu as my main OS, although I have dabbled with Mint , Zorin and Kali , among a few others,
Zorin actually looks a lot like a windows desktop,
 
Thanks for the info Steptoe. it looks like your spoilt for choice when it comes to this different versions... I have looked at Mint on Live USB drive and everything seems to work fine. I just have to make sure all my work stuff works ok before I go full steam ahead as my thoughts are now to just wipe windows altogether and install a linux build. are you able to look at them all by booting from the USB drive before installing, that way I could look at a few more before making a decsion on the final build.. Zorin sounds interesting... Closed my Google account as well that felt liberating.. :LOL:
 
Thanks for the info Steptoe. it looks like your spoilt for choice when it comes to this different versions... I have looked at Mint on Live USB drive and everything seems to work fine. I just have to make sure all my work stuff works ok before I go full steam ahead as my thoughts are now to just wipe windows altogether and install a linux build. are you able to look at them all by booting from the USB drive before installing, that way I could look at a few more before making a decsion on the final build.. Zorin sounds interesting... Closed my Google account as well that felt liberating.. :LOL:
Most Linux builds have a "LIVE" version you can boot from USB, apart from the more hardcore versions, like redhat etc,
I'd say Ubuntu, Mint, Zorin, Kubuntu , are amongst the most popular, the only real difference in them is the look and feel really, they all operate much the same.
Kali is very eye opening if you want to see how insecure WiFi and most peoples networks are, with an average i3 grade PC and 4G ram will crack most passwords in a few hours, if not minutes if used properly,!!!
I'd advise to NOT delete windows, shrink it as much as you can, and run a dual boot until you are happy you won't need to fall back for something silly you may have missed/forgot about on windows,
Linux will run on under 40gig HDD if pushed.
 
Ok Great I will look at few before I install a final version. I can scale windows down no problem I also have a windows Tablet to fall back on in any case.. And a windows Phone :LOL: .. Probably the onlt 2 versions I have paid for.. HDD space no issues I have 4 drives in my PC with 5 and a half terrabytes sitting do nothing really .. Just built up over time.. 1 drive is used as back up..1 just has Photos Programs and videos but not full. I can handle Partitions ok so thats no issue..
 
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