Brave Browser

The Brave web browser was announced in January 2016 by Brendan Eich, creator of the JavaScript programming language and co-founder of the Mozilla project. Brave offers all the features and functions you would expect from a web browser, such as: tabbed browsing, built-in password manager and download manager, bookmarks, private browsing, and so on.

But the interesting part is that it offers some features that you don’t usually find in a web browser. Brave can natively block ads, online tracking, 3rd party tracking, tracking pixels and tracking cookies. This is great from a privacy & security point of view; it’s also great because it makes the browser faster. Moving on, the EFF’s HTTPS Everywhere is built into Brave, meaning the browser can force websites to use a secure and encrypted HTTPS connection.

Most browsers are available for multiple platforms. So is Brave. It is available for Microsoft’s Windows, for Apple’s Mac OS X and iOS, for Google’s Android. Installing the browser on a Windows PC doesn’t take long and doesn’t require a lot of effort. Once the installation process completes and you get Brave up and running, you’ll be greeted with a simple, minimalist, Chrome-looking interface. That’s because Brave is based on Chromium, not on Firefox.

The main deterrent, the main thing that might keep you from trying Brave is that the browser is still in early development. At the time of writing this, it has yet to reach version 1.0. It is still in Beta testing.

Brave has the makings of a great browser. As someone who takes security and privacy seriously, I deeply appreciate the fact that Brave blocks ads & trackers and forces websites to use an encrypted connection.