Our company does not store any record of people’s browsing history. We don’t write any personal data to the blockchain. The only way a user’s data is stored by Brave is if the user has switched on Rewards or Sync.

1. Brave Private Browser Download
2. Brave Private Browser Apk

Read this document to understand how the Brave Browser uses data.

Tag: Brave Private Browser Run Android 10 on your PC:: AndEX 10 (Android-x8664) with GAPPS (Google Play Store etc.), F-Droid, Brave Browser, VLC, Computer Launcher 2 and Spotify:. 'Brave is faster and more private than Chrome while maintaining support for Chrome extensions.” Feels like Chrome - all your Chrome extensions work Tour Product Pricing Download for free. The Brave browser is a fast, private and secure web browser for PC, Mac and mobile. Download now to enjoy a faster ad-free browsing experience that saves data and battery life by blocking tracking software. The Brave Private Browser App is your fast, secure, and private web browser that offers many features aimed at protecting your security and privacy on the web. It includes built-in blockers for ads, pop-ups, scripts, and third-party cookies to privately browse and search the internet without being tracked by advertisers and malware.

To learn how we use data to operate our websites, forums, and communications, visit the Website Privacy Policy. To learn how we use data for publishers and creators visit the Publisher Privacy Policy on the Basic Attention Token website.

In this policy “we”, “us”, etc. refers to Brave Software Inc, while “Brave” refers to the browser.

Security & updates

Brave automatically checks with us for updates. This ensures that you always have access to the latest security fixes. We count the number and type of these requests when we receive them to produce aggregate statistics. No particular person’s information can be identified in the statistics we produce.

You can also update to the latest version here.

Sync

If you switch on Sync then your bookmarks (and soon passwords and other data) will be saved in an encrypted file on a cloud storage service, to which you will have the only decryption key. The data¹ are entirely inaccessible to Brave and to the cloud storage provider. Learn how to switch on Sync here.(Note that only Brave version 0.59 and above have the Sync feature. You can update to the latest version here.)

Location

If you use Brave to visit a website that wants to determine your location, you will be asked whether you want it to be allowed to know where you are. If you click yes to this message, then the website will be sent an approximation of where you are based on your IP address. Your IP address will not be stored by Brave, but it may be stored by the website you have visited. See data processing detail.

Brave Rewards

If you switch on Brave Rewards you are assigned a “wallet” identifier by Uphold, our payments partner. We record this identifier on servers operated by Amazon and Heroku (a Salesforce company) in the United States. We take a range of technical and organisational measures to safeguard any personal data including the use of EU standard contractual clauses.

Brave uses your wallet identifier to determine when to send you a monthly gift of attention tokens (BAT). You can disable this in Preferences or Settings.

Tip: you can quickly access settings by copying brave://rewards into your address bar. Learn how Brave Rewards works here.

Each time Brave sends users a monthly gift of BAT it makes a record of their IP addresses that can be analysed to safeguard against fraud. Brave checks to see whether we are currently offering tokens to Brave users. This request includes the identifier of your unique Rewards wallet. See data processing detail.

Even with Brave Rewards enabled, we never collect your browsing history or similar information, and we can’t derive this information from your contributions to content creators and sites. Instead, we aggregate contributions among all Brave users, and we cannot trace contributions to individual users, or link any of your contributions together.

If you verify ownership of your Brave Rewards wallet with Uphold, direct contributions you make will be processed by Uphold as part of your Uphold account. When you make a direct contribution, Brave sends all the details of that transaction to Uphold so that they can execute the transaction. This is subject to Uphold’s privacy policy.

Ads

If you switch on Brave Rewards we automatically enable Brave Ads. This means you will receive ads in the form of notifications and in-browser sponsored content, and Basic Attention Tokens to reward you for viewing those ads. While the categories of ads that you see and when you see them are inferred from your browsing activity, the data are stored on your device and are inaccessible to us. We will receive anonymized confirmations for ads that you have viewed, but no data that identifies you or that can be linked to you as an individual leaves the Brave browser on your device. You can disable Ads by visiting Settings > Brave Rewards > Ads and turning off the Ads default.

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In the cases where we collect high-level statistics relating to web activity data (e.g. what are the estimated amount of ads that can be served to different content categories that users encounter as they browse the web) we use proven privacy mechanisms like local differential privacy that guarantee that no information about individual users will ever be revealed to us. Read more about how we achieve this with Privacy Preserving Product Analytics and Private Advertising Analytics. To read more about Brave Ads and privacy have a look at our FAQ.

Brave Today

Brave Today is a private content feed integrated into the browser. While the content is collected from a content server and the content sort order is informed by your recent browsing activity, Brave Today is private and anonymous.

Content for the Brave Today feed is collected securely by your device through a private and encrypted proxy method. The proxy removes IP addresses before passing the encrypted request to the content server which sends the encrypted reply back to the browser through the proxy. The feed is temporarily stored on your device, and it is replaced upon starting or refreshing your Brave Today session. No personal data, behavior activity or browsing history ever leaves the Brave browser on your device. Your Brave Today sessions are not logged or saved. See data processing detail.

Note: IP addresses are only shared between the user’s browser and the independent proxy which subsequently drops them. At no point does Brave have access to users' IP addresses used for content requests for Brave Today.

Brave Together

Brave Together is a private video conference tool that you can use to call with your friends and colleagues. Nothing that you say or type in the service is logged or saved. See data processing detail.

Note: Your IP address is available to your Internet provider. If your Internet provider requires the use of a TURN server, then your IP address will also be available to a company called 8×8, which operates the TURN server. The content of your call is encrypted between your browser and the Brave server, so your audio and video stay private from intermediaries.

To avoid scams: For the avoidance of phishing attacks, note that we at Brave never contact Brave Browser users in a Together call.

Brave Firewall + VPN on iOS

Users of Brave on iOS can switch on Brave Firewall + VPN. This is operated on Brave’s behalf by Guardian. See data processing detail.

How we improve Brave

Crash reports

When Brave crashes, it creates a report that can be sent to us to help us fix whatever caused the problem. This report contains technical information about your computer system which is typically distinctive. We use a service called Backtrace.io to store them. You can choose whether to send us these reports. Even if you have chosen to send reports in the past, you can turn off future reports in settings.

Privacy Preserving Product Analytics

The Browser sends us anonymous reports to alert us to product problems and necessary improvements. None of the information it reports harms your privacy. The report only describes general use of the Browser, such as a general range of how many extensions are installed, a general range of how many tabs are open, and whether features like Shields, Rewards, and Ads are switched on. See the full list of questions here. These reports are stripped of metadata, and aggregated with measurements reported by many other instances of Brave. The data are not personal, and cannot be combined to identify you. You can deactivate Privacy-Preserving Product Analytics in Settings.

Your feedback

If you write feedback for Brave, we will use this to improve the product. See data processing detail.

Nightly, Dev, and Beta browser versions

Nightly, Dev, and Beta versions of the Brave Browser are experimental previews of new Brave Browser versions. They allow us to test new features so that we can find and fix errors before releasing a new version of the Brave Browser. These test versions of the Browser may automatically send crash reports to Brave so that we can identify and fix problems. A crash report can contain personal information. See data processing details.

How to switch this feature off.You can switch off “Automatically send usage statistics and crash reports to Brave Software” in settings.

Tip: you can quickly access settings by copying brave://settings into your address bar.

These incomplete versions of Brave represent unfinished and untested work on future versions of Brave, and their incomplete behavior may not be adequately described by this policy. More information about the safety & reliability of pre-release versions of Brave can be found in our development documentation.

Location

Brave Rewards

Brave Today

Brave Together

Brave Firewall + VPN on iOS

Brave IPFS Public Gateway

Your feedback

Browser testing and research (Nightly, Dev, and Beta versions only)

Help with privacy settings in Brave

You can find guides on how to change privacy settings in Brave in the Help Center..

Contacting Brave about your privacy

We are always interested in hearing and responding to questions and concerns at twitter.com/brave and at github.com/brave. More in-depth conversations can be had at community.brave.com.

We are represented in Europe by Brave Software Europe Ltd (based in the UK). You can contact our data protection officer and the rest of our privacy team at privacy@brave.com. However, from the 1st January 2021, given the UK’s exit from the EU, Brave has appointed an EU nominated representative and which you may contact if you would prefer not to contact Brave directly:

Brave EU Nominated Representative
Care of Castlebridge
Unit 7, 12 Mountjoy Square,
Dublin 1
Ireland

You can ask to know what information we have about you, update incorrect information, delete it, object to our use of it, or get a copy of it. If you’re in the European Union, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection authority (though everyone should have this right).

We’ll update this policy whenever we make material changes to our practices, and we’ll announce it to let you know. We hope you’ll find any changes agreeable, but if you’re not comfortable with changes to the info we collect or how we use it, we understand your choice to stop using Brave.

1. Data are personal if the data can single a person out (on their own or in combination with other data), without an unlikely degree of effort or expense or technological development. The GDPR definition of “personal data” includes any data that can indirectly contribute to singling out an individual, including unique IDs codes, certain types of IP addresses, and encrypted data that one can decrypt without disproportionate effort. But data that are entirely impossible to access are not personal. ↩︎

Last updated Nov 5, 2020

Have you ever been browsing the Internet, viewed something randomly, and within a few hours seen an ad for that exact object appear somewhere else? Almost everyone has had one of those stories. While many are slightly amusing, the activity behind them is much darker. These stories illustrate an important point - the Internet economy relies on watching and tracking your browsing habits.

If that idea makes you a little uncomfortable, you’re not alone. More and more people rely on a private browser to keep their Internet habits away from prying eyes. With lots of options out there, what is the best private browser?

What makes a browser private?

All Internet users rely on web browsers to access, process, and display information from the Internet on their devices. Aside from direct interactions through an app, almost all of your actions on the Internet flow through your web browser. As such, private browsing has two aspects to it.

First, does your browser protect you from third-party observers? Much of the current Internet economy relies on third-party cookies and trackers to follow your actions on the Internet. This lets them build a profile on you and tailor ads more likely to catch your attention. This external privacy - keeping your browsing habits safe from prying eyes - is what most people think of when we talk about private browsing.

There is another aspect to a private browser that goes under the radar; that’s what your browser does with your own information on its own. Most browsers are the products of companies that are heavily invested in the current Internet economy. Google is essentially an advertising company. Microsoft invests heavily in advertising via its search engine Bing. The Chrome and Edge browsers, among others, have a vested interest in promoting their own products and affiliated services.

With that in mind, which browsers succeed at keeping your actions concealed from third parties, and also treat your data carefully internally and externally?

Three ways to browse more privately

Short of a truly private browser, most users turn to a number of next-best steps. Unfortunately, the most common one is also the worst.

“Incognito mode:” not-so-private browsing

Almost every browser has its own version of Chrome’s well-known “Incognito mode”, like Brave’s Private Browsing. Most users assume that when you open a private tab, your actions are hidden from the world. Unfortunately, for most browsers that isn’t the case.

Unlike Brave’s Private Browsing, Incognito mode on Chrome never tries to hide your actions from anyone on the Internet; it is only intended to hide your browsing history from other users on the same device. The privacy is all on the user’s end; after your incognito browsing tab is closed, there is no record of your browsing on that device.

Incognito mode has a lot of uses; checking hotels and reservations for a surprise getaway or researching a controversial or personal topic that you do not want others in your household to see. But the privacy it offers is all one-way. The websites you visit in Incognito mode can still track you, and the sites and your ISP will still have a good idea of what you did.

In short, Incognito mode does nothing to actually protect your personal information from outside actors while browsing the Internet. If you want a private browser, you will need something more.

Privacy extensions: good, but not great

Many savvy Internet users realize that Incognito mode isn’t that private after all, and look for a better way to browse. Without switching browsers, most people turn to one of the many ad-blocker apps and privacy extensions that are available.

Why use an ad-blocker for better privacy? In their quest to block ads, most good ad-blockers also block or limit third-party cookies, known as trackers, which follow your browsing habits. You can read about the best ad blockers out there, but it is worth noting that ad-blockers bring their own set of challenges to browsing securely.

Ad-blocking extensions can see everything that your browser sees: when you add an extension to your browser, you add another potential gap in your Internet security. For that reason, it is vitally important to only add verified, reputable apps and extensions that you trust. Even then, there are risks: apps can be bought and sold, and an app that started out secure could end up serving a more dubious purpose.

Private browsers: the best way to browse privately

If you are concerned about your Internet safety and want to browse the Internet without letting a bunch of anonymous trackers into your life, you don’t need to be content with Incognito mode or third-party apps.

Consider a private browser instead. There’s no strict definition of what makes a browser private, but in general, a private browser is one that comes with the most extensive focus on keeping your data safe.

Which is the best private browser?

The good news is that most of today’s browsers give at least some consideration to protecting your browsing privacy. The bad news, of course, is that they do not all do a good job of it.

Here’s a quick rundown of the most popular private browsers from best to worst, along with how each of them does at keeping your data private.

1. Tor

The Tor Browser uses an anonymous network of computers to connect to the Internet. Your connection is forwarded from one computer to the next, with each step only knowing the next one. This makes for a highly private connection, but one that can be considerably slower than other browsers.

Tor commands a good reputation as a highly private browser, but it requires more patience and technical know-how than most other browsers. To take advantage of Tor’s privacy but Brave’s ease of use, consider Brave’s Private Browsing with Tor, which allows you to browse privately from within Brave via the Tor network.

2. Brave

Privacy is Brave’s default priority. Even on initial startup, Brave sends the fewest requests to other websites. Automatically, Brave Shields block third-party trackers and unwanted ads. Ads that are shown are stored locally, and Brave upgrades site security whenever possible.

Those are just the start of Brave’s privacy-first approach; Private Browsing with Tor provides an anonymous browsing experience that’s easy to use. Brave’s approach to the Internet puts users first and foremost. You control your own data, and you choose who to share it with.

3. Firefox

Firefox’s non-profit nature gives it less incentive to track your habits; it is not an advertising company like Google. That’s not to say that Firefox is entirely private, however. Much of Firefox’s financial support comes from lucrative deals with Google to keep Google as Firefox’s default search engine.

In general, Firefox has a good reputation for providing decent privacy in its default mode, with the added ability to customize the browser with security extensions. With a little bit of work, you can configure Firefox to default to a private-browsing mode and block third-party trackers.

4. Safari

The default browser for Mac and iOS users, Safari offers some nice security features such as pop-up blockers but doesn’t offer anything above and beyond the normal for privacy. Safari doesn’t block trackers or third-party cookies and doesn’t automatically upgrade website security from http:// to https://.

Additionally, Safari suffers the major drawback that it is only available to Mac and iOS users; the browser ceased cross-platform support several years ago.

5. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-based search engine, also offers a privacy-first mobile browser. DuckDuckGo blocks trackers and assigns each website a privacy score, allowing you to see at a glance what each site does or tries to do with your data.

DuckDuckGo’s search engine has an excellent record for treating your data carefully and not collecting it or selling it on to other third parties, and the browser does a similarly good job.

6. Vivaldi

With a strong emphasis on customization, it is no surprise that Vivaldi provides a number of tools for users to enable a more private browsing experience. These include options to block first-party cookies as well as third-party trackers.

As far as a private browser goes, Vivaldi does a good job of keeping user data private - provided you take the time to configure the browser correctly.

7. Opera

Opera has long been an outsider in the browser world; it originated in Norway in the mid-90s. Privacy-wise, Opera offers some useful features, such as a built-in VPN service to hide your IP address from prying eyes.

Unfortunately, Opera also has a couple of known privacy issues. On startup, Opera sends requests to a number of sites known to track your activity - notably Yandex (the Russian search engine). Opera is also owned by a Chinese corporation, raising some questions about its dedication to user privacy.

8. Microsoft Edge

Edge largely fails as a private browser. From the beginning, Edge sends requests to Microsoft that contain information that identifies the sending hardware. In other words, Edge tells Microsoft what you are. That info can’t be modified or changed.

You won’t find Edge listed in most rundowns of private browsers, for good reason: Edge isn’t a private browser. It does allow privacy apps and extensions to be installed, but when it comes to the browser itself, Edge fails to protect user data adequately.

9. Google Chrome

Chrome is the most popular browser by a considerable margin, at least in the U.S. Unfortunately, it is one of the least private browsers. Because Google is at heart an advertising company, Chrome was built to track as many of your actions on the Internet as possible.

With Chrome, the threat to user privacy isn’t external, but internal. Recent studies examined how browsers acted when they were first installed on a new computer, analyzing who the browsers talked to and what information they requested and sent. One study found that Chrome sent browsing information and certain hardware identifiers to backend servers - i.e., back to Google. While some of that information could be reset, there was a clear risk to user privacy.

Google also tracks search history on your browser, and through any of Google’s affiliated sites. YouTube, Google Maps, and of course Google’s search engine all keep records of what you’ve searched for. If you’re signed in to your Google account, Google sees what you search for. While this information can be deleted, it requires extra steps and you’ll want to explore how much other information Google is tracking.

Further considerations on private browsing

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Can I use extensions while private browsing?

If you are using a private browser like Brave, your extensions can be used normally. Be aware, however, that every extension brings its own set of security and privacy risks. Many extensions, such as ad blockers, can see everything that your browser sees - so if you block ads and trackers but let a bad extension through, your browsing won’t be private.

Does private browsing affect ad revenue?

A privacy-first approach to Internet browsing that blocks ads and advertising trackers will cut into advertising revenue that relies on the current, surveillance-based Internet economy, which is built around tracking and analyzing your browsing habits.

That seems like bad news for sites that rely on ad revenue at the cost of user data, but Brave provides a better way forward. With Brave, users are rewarded for the ads they choose to view. Those rewards can quickly and easily be passed on to content creators, whether they are bloggers, websites, or creators on YouTube or Twitch. Brave uses the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a crypto token using the Ethereum blockchain. BAT can be tipped directly from one person to another, or from one person to a content creator.

This method allows Brave to maintain a privacy-first approach that blocks third-party ads, while also creating a new Internet economy.

Private browsing and YouTube

YouTube and Twitch are two of the clearest examples of how content creators rely on ad revenue to make a profit. A private browser like Brave that blocks third-party advertising interferes with the ads streamers rely on. Blocking Twitch and YouTube ads can negatively impact the bottom line for small creators.

Fortunately, there are other ways for these creators to make money that don’t rely on ads. Twitch allows viewers to subscribe directly to a creator, while YouTube supports merchandise pages. And with Brave, you can donate directly to the creators who have partnered with Brave, giving them an entirely new revenue stream.

Brave: a user-friendly private browser

You can improve the privacy of most browsers, but it requires adding a host of extensions, changing default settings, finding new search engines, and generally taking extra steps to keep yourself safe.

Brave does that work for you and empowers the user at every turn. From choosing your own search engine to blocking trackers, Brave is a next-generation browser that puts privacy first and opens the door to an Internet economy based on user privacy, not advertiser surveillance.