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by bcrypt 2412 days ago
i run security at Brave and here's the answer from Taylor, our lead Tor dev:

Using the Tor network is one part of internet anonymity, serving to conceal where you are. But using the Tor network does no good if the application helpfully adds X-My-Actual-IP-Address: 123.45.67.8 to every HTTP request, and browsers tend to do a lot of things like that which we have to play whack-a-mole with. What we implement in Brave is somewhere between (a) naively just setting a SOCKS proxy, like you can do in vanilla Firefox or Chromium, and (b) mimicking everything about the Tor Browser and following the Tor Browser Design Document to the letter (https://2019.www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/). So, while you are right that there's more to Tor and that we're not the Tor Browser (and that's why we are careful to say 'private windows with Tor' and not 'Tor windows', per agreement with the Tor Project about branding), there's also more to what Brave does than just setting a SOCKS proxy like in Firefox or Chromium and leaving it at that.

1 comments

It is great to hear that Brave is indeed doing more than just proxy.

It has a great UX already and with VPN0 announced a month or so back, Brave is really pushing the envelope and do seem to have the right mindset.

Also, thanks a lot for responding.