Brave Browser Sees Rapid Growth as Google Shreds Privacy Policy

Brave, the web browser created by Mozilla founder Brendan Eich and funded through an initial coin offering (ICO), is rapidly carving out a significant market share as entrenched giants like Google Chrome shred their privacy policies.

New Chrome Update Forces Browser Login

Quietly included in the browser’s most recent update, Chrome’s latest affront to user privacy is a new policy that forces users to sign the browser into their account the next time the login to a Google service such as Gmail. This authorizes Chrome to ship your local browsing data to Google, enabling you to “sync” it across all your devices, which previously had required the user’s opt-in consent.

This policy change was identified by cryptographer Matthew Green, also a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a scientist with the Zcash project, who wrote in a blog post that the change was sufficiently anathematic to user security and privacy that he will no longer be using the Chrome…