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Brave appears to install VPN Services without user consent
(www.ghacks.net)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Technology
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True open source projects like LibreWolf, Ungoogled Chromium > Sketchy world of Brave
I applaud LibreWolf’s efforts, but the hard-coded timezone makes it unusable for me. Other than that, it’s a great browser. I used it several months until the timezone confusion got the best of me.
What's the deal with the timezone?
If I recall correctly, it was meant as a measure against fingerprinting. It’s basically one less thing to uniquely define a user based on the info that the browser gives to a website. I’m not sure if it’s still like that, cause it’s been easily a year since I used LibreWolf.
Yes, what is the deal? I can't say that I've noticed any issues. Am in UK if that makes a difference. And I usually run it through Proton VPN.
While I’ve never used LibreWolf before (I use Waterfox), that probably does make a difference as the UK is UTC+0.
The UK is only UTC+0 for half the year, currently at UTC+1.
I switched to LibreWolf after I learned that Waterfox was/is ran by an advertisement company.
Today they should be independant again, however my trust in them is forever lost.
https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/waterfox-regains-independence-abandoning-the-advertising-company-system1/4594
I do not subscribe to guilt by association or being that concerned about privacy.
Two issues.
First of all a lot of websites show times in your current timezone. Beehaw for example says you wrote your post "2 days ago". Depending what timezone my browser is in, that could display 3 days or 1 day. When I hover over it, it shows the exact date/time in my timezone. Which is handy.
Second it doesn't actually achieve the intended goal. Even if you use a VPN chances are you've set it to give you a public IP address close to you to have good performance. And if your IP address is in Proton's London datacentre but your timezone is UTC+0 when everyone else is UTC+1... well you stand out like a single black sheep in a flock of white ones and ad networks are absolutely fingerprinting you with that.