'Headline, April 10 2021/ '' '' YOUR BRAVE-PRIVACY YELP '' '''

''' '' YOUR BRAVE-

PRIVACY YELP '' '''

WHAT IS A PRIVATE BROWSER? : AND you will do well to remember that private browsers do not prevent your internet provider from seeing what websites you visit.

So if you are on a vacation and using a hotel's Wi-Fi connection, a private browser will not keep your browsing information private from the hotel's Internet provider.

For that type of protection, you still need to connect to a virtual private network, a technology that creates a virtual tunnel that shields from your browsing information.

MEET THE PRIVATE BROWSERS

Firefox Focus, DuckDuckGo and Brave are all similar, but with some important differences. Firefox Focus available only for mobile devices like iPhones and Android smartphones, is bare-bones. You punch in a web-address and, when done browsing, hit the trash icon to erase the session.

Quitting the app automatically purges the history When you load a website the browser relies on a database of trackers to determine which to block.

DuckDuckGo also available only for mobile devices, is more like a traditional browser. That means you can bookmark your favorite sites and open multiple browser tabs.

When you use search bar, the browser returns results from the DuckDuckGo search engine, which the company says is more focused on privacy because its ads do not track people's online behaviour.

DuckDuckGo also prevents ad trackers from loading. When done browsing, you can hit the flame icon at the bottom to erase the session.

Brave is also more like a traditional web browser, with anti-tracking technology and features like bookmarks and tabs. It includes a private mode that must be turned on if you don't want people scrutinizing your web history.

Brave is also so aggressive about blocking trackers that in the process, it almost always blocks ads entirely.

The other private browsers blocked ads less frequently. For more people, not seeing ads is a benefit. But for those who want to give back to a publisher whose ads are blocked, Brave hosts its own ad network that you can opt into.

In exchange for viewing ads that do not track your behaviour, you earn a cut of revenue in the form of a token. You can then choose to give tokens to websites that you like. [Only web publishers that have a partnership with Brave can receive tokens.]

BATTLE OF THE BROWSERS

I tested all three browsers on my iPhone, setting each as my default browser for a few days.

Each has a button to see how many trackers they blocked when loading a website. To test that, I visited mypost.com, the website of The New York Post, which loaded 83 trackers without any tracking prevention. With DuckDuckGo, 15 of the nypost.com trackers were blocked. With Brave, it was 22. And Firefox Focus blocked 47.

But numbers don't tell the whole story. Firefox Focus sometimes broke elements of websites. On some sites, videos failed to lead and ad windows could not be closed.

Selena Deckelmann - an executive at Mozilla, which makes Firefox, said that the strict privacy protection in Firefox Focus could sometimes cause websites to break and that the company worked with web publishers so their sites could load properly

I didn't experience major issues when using Brave or DuckDuckGo though there was an occasion when using DuckDuckGo to scroll through Wirecutter, NYTimes sister publication that tests and recommends products, the names of some products did not fully load. While the site was still functional, it looked odd.

In the end, though, you probably would be happy using any of the private browsers. Even if you don't make one your default browser, it is useful for certain situations, like a sensitive web search on a health condition.

For me, Brave won by hair. My favorite websites loaded flawlessly, and I enjoyed the clean look of the ad-free sites, along with the flexibility of opting to see ads whenever I felt like it.

Brendan Eich, the chief executive of Brave, said the company's browser blocked tracking cookies ''without mercy.''

''If everybody used Brave, it would wipe out the tracking-based ad economy,'' he said.

COUNT ME IN

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

''' Browsers - Brewings '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless