How The Brave Browser is Revolutionising the Web

The Problem

Many users seem to accept that by using services such as Google and Facebook, they sacrifice their privacy in exchange for a service. However, most users don’t know what this means, and how this affects their data.

Many modern websites include ad tracking software that tries to identify you, and then tracks your presence across the web. You then have very little control over your data, which is often simply sold to the highest bidder.

Even when you think you are taking steps to protect your privacy on common browsers, such as using ‘Incognito Mode’, this only hides your browser history for users of the same device. Your browsing activity may still be visible to the websites you visit, or your internet service provider this is even set out when you try to open a private window in Google Chrome.

Typical browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari, are also slowed down when they fetch ad scripts. This can hurt the user experience of web pages, as well as the ads also being invasive.

What is Brave

Brave puts the user back in control of their privacy. It’s quick, secure, and rewards the user for simply using the browser. Brave also comes with its own cryptocurrency called BAT (Basic Attention Token), which rewards all users on the browser as well as content creators.

We’ve taken a look at some of the key features and functionality of what could be a revolutionary browser.

Key Features

Privacy

Privacy is a fundamental part of Brave. The browser operates without trackers and cookies that follow you around while you’re browsing the web.

This stops trackers from building up a portfolio about you and all the sites you visit, links you click, and things you buy online.

Want extra privacy? Brave also provides a real ‘private browsing’ experience with Tor. Tor not only hides your web history like other browsers, but it completely masks your location by routing your browsing through several servers before you reach your destination.

This gives you privacy on your entire network, not just on a specific computer such as with the Incognito Mode in Google Chrome.

More time and less money

As Brave doesn’t load trackers and ads every time you open a new web page, it saves you battery power. This gives you more time to do the things you love on the web without adverts and trackers draining your power.

With Brave estimating that you could gain an extra hour of battery life by making the switch from a traditional browser.

Using Brave means that you are no longer having to download unwanted adverts, which may come in forms such as video and images, these ads consume your data and cost you money.

Brave claims that by using their browser your data plan can go twice as far, allowing you to save your data for the content you want to see online.

Ad Blocking

Perhaps the most popular feature on Brave is the ad-blocking. Many users may have had experience with ad-blocking plugins, but Brave deals with ad-blocking out of the box.

Not only does this declutter web pages, but it speeds them up. As Brave blocks web pages running additional ad scripts and trackers, there is less for the web page to pull in from the server.

This increases the page speed, with Brave estimating that pages could load up to six times faster than Google Chrome.

Brave does however offer you the choice to have privacy-respecting ads. This may seem like an obvious answer, that’s until you hear about the Brave Rewards program.

Brave Rewards

Can you imagine getting paid to browse the web?

In exchange for showing you privacy-respecting ads, Brave rewards you with BAT (Basic Attention Tokens).

BAT is a cryptocurrency that measures and rewards the user for their attention. Through Brave, you’ll receive 70% of the revenue that Brave receive from advertising.

You’ll also get full control over the number of ads that you choose to see.

The idea of BAT is that it is designed to reward publishers and producers of content. Regularly visit a site? Then you can choose to reward that site and producer with BAT.

BAT allows you to give back to your favourite sites. The browser even provides the option to set up an automatic monthly BAT donation to your favourite sites, giving you control over how much you donate, how often and to who.

Chromian

Brave is a built-in Chromian, an open-source project that is behind many popular browsers including Google Chrome and Opera.

This means it’s a very familiar environment for users in terms of having a clear and coherent User Interface (UI).

It also means that users can easily transfer their favourite bookmarks from their previous browser into Brave automatically.

Finally, as Brave is built on the same open-source code as Google Chrome, its users also have full access to the Google Chrome Web Store. This means that Brave users have full access to their favourite extensions and plugins.

Brave is just one example of a Blockchain solution that is changing the way we use and browse the internet.

What do you think, want to give it a try? Click here to download Brave. Let us know what you think on Twitter @AvarkAgency