[tor-talk] Brave Review Mentions Tor

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 01:50:18PM -0700, Mirimir wrote:
> On 11/15/2019 11:57 AM, Drew at FoundingDocuments.org wrote:
> > A few-days-old review.
> > 
> > Since Brave is the browser for OnionBrowser on iOS, I figured I???d read the article. 

I'm going to flag that one as "citation needed". That is, I don't think
Brave is the browser for OnionBrowser on iOS.

> > https://www.pcworld.com/article/3453376/brave-10-review-this-excellent-privacy-focused-browser-can-make-you-money-too.html
> >> Not only can you open a private window, but you can open an even deeper level of privacy and use the Tor onion-routing network as well.
> 
> Why the bloody hell does OnionBrowser on iOS not just use Firefox?

Because iOS is missing real Firefox. And that alas is why there's no
Tor Browser on iOS either.

For more details, check out
https://blog.torproject.org/tor-heart-onion-browser-and-more-ios-tor
especially the first and second comment from the comments section.

> I wonder how Brave and Tor browser compare re anonymity, privacy and
> security. It seems unlikely that Brave would do a better job.

For those reading this, check out the Tor Browser design doc for
its application-level privacy goals and fixes:
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/

And yes, I believe Brave wants to do all of those things too, and it
isn't there yet. I hope it does get there, because the world needs
more safe browsers.

> Also, the idea of running clearnet and Tor-mediated tabs in the same
> browser is pretty iffy. I mean, I don't even risk doing that in the same
> VM. And indeed, using Whonix, there is no clearnet connectivity.

Agreed. Even trying to keep state isolated across time (i.e. sometimes
your whole browser is torified, sometimes it isn't) is hard. That's why
we got rid of the "toggle model" in Torbutton:
https://blog.torproject.org/toggle-or-not-toggle-end-torbutton
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/how-the-nsa-might-use-hotmail-or-yahoo-cookies-to-identify-tor-users/

--Roger