We continue this series dedicated to analyzing how Brave Browser works, through my experience using the search engine for 7 continuous days. This time we will talk about the privacy that Brave offers you as a user. Especially referring to two features: the use of DuckDuckGo, and its private browsing mode with and without Tor.
Why didn’t I use DuckDuckGo during my Brave experience?
We all understand that Brave Browser was specifically designed as a private browser. That is, one whose business is not focused on collecting user data. Rather, their goal is to offer you such great private browsing features that they can download and use it with confidence.
So it should come as no surprise that the first (in) decent suggestion Brave Browser made to me when I downloaded it, was to use DuckDuckGo as my header search engine. Although I already knew DuckDuckGo by hearsay, and I knew that it was a search engine that does not collect absolutely any of your data, I must say I have never given it a chance until now.
And it seemed like the perfect pair, a browser that allows me to use the Internet without collecting my personal data, and a search engine that does not store any of my searches. Unlike Google, which even while using Brave and not Chrome, continues to collect all my activity in its search engine.
I say “continue” because I finally decided not to use DuckDuckGo. And, as soon as Brave recommended the search engine, I decided to do several test searches, from the simplest, as actors, to more complicated things, such as historical data.
And although DuckDuckGo worked decently each time, it does not have the breadth of results, organization, or ranking that Google provides. Which together with the disadvantage of not having Google products on hand, made me decide to stay true to the big G, at least in this regard.
How private is the browser?
But, speaking of privacy, there is still an important topic to comment on. We refer to the private browsing mode of Brave Browser, one of the most popular features of the browser. And of which, I must confess, I was more curious during my experience using Brave. Well, it allows you to use Tor, the program that masks your IP while browsing the Internet, directly from the browser.
This, for those of us who live in countries where censorship appears from time to time on the Internet, is a very important feature. Not to mention the advantage that in private browsing mode without Tor, your data is not collected either. Something most browsers fail at.
However, at the end of the day this feature of Brave was not practical for my day to day. Well, using Tor in the browser made my Internet connection so slow that I couldn’t go a couple of pages before giving up. A situation that did not improve on the following occasions that I tried the application.
Despite this, I am aware that the connection speed in Venezuela was probably the main cause of this problem.
And despite this, the private browsing mode without Tor was satisfactory enough that I consider that just for the ease of being able to navigate, knowing that no one is collecting a single letter of what you write, it is worth the worth downloading Brave Browser.
