Copying from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24710306 because so many people are repeating the same misleading “hijacking links” FUD:

What does that have to do with privacy? I don’t use Brave (I won’t use anything Chromium-based while it has such dangerously high market share), but I think that controversy was exaggerated. All they where doing was adding redundant metadata (already present in the useragent string), IUUC not tied to any identity other than their own (not just an “anonymized” identity, no unique user identifier at all) to get some non-privacy-violating profit. And the phrase “hijacking links” is quite misleading — they didn’t change any actual links on pages, only added affiliate codes to the suggested omnibar completions you could choose to accept.

(Edit:) DDG I would be careful about. I still use it but try not to recommend it without mentioning https://github.com/asciimoo/searx — which I think is worthy of trust, being Free/Libre — because of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23708166.

Brave is known to be hostile. Please do not put them in the same bucket. DDG still have the benefit of doubt

Brave indeed should not be trusted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027.

What does that have to do with privacy? I don’t use Brave (I won’t use anything Chromium-based while it has such dangerously high market share), but I think that controversy was exaggerated. All they where doing was adding redundant metadata (already present in the useragent string), IUUC not tied to any identity other than their own (not just an “anonymized” identity, no unique user identifier at all) to get some non-privacy-violating profit. And the title of that post is quite misleading — they didn’t change any actual links on pages, only added affiliate codes to the suggested omnibar completions you could choose to accept.

As long as we go and just criticize, or say X should not be trasted, I think we are not helping move things forward on the privacy front. It's a good thing that people make tools. Some are OK, some are not doing the job. Eventually, overall, there'll be some progress. At least, there is a discussion and awareness.

> Google and Microsoft Edge are more private even though neither has any privacy.

This line in their post gives away how overblown that stance is. There's simply no way for DDG to be as bad as Google, much less worse than Google.

Still, I know Brave got caught hijacking links but DDG is, among all well-known search engines, the most privacy-friendly without a doubt. Especially coupled with a good browsers and some add-ons. I'm talking specifically about Firefox but I'm sure people here have some more unusual solutions they prefer.

Brave is good. HN just loves Firefox too much.

I use FF as default. Brave as secondary.

Brave also still hijacks links and Braves tor implementation actually makes it easier to track you. Also generally the team has ignored fingerprinting issues since years that allow unique identification despite Eich saying they are so easy to fix (see my history on HN Eich even replied yet all those bugs are still open since multiple years)

> still hijacks links

No. They removed the sketchy affiliate thing.