This sounds like good advice so upvoted. I’m a big fan of Raymond Hill¹’s products so I am curious about how much benefit Adguard provides if uBlock Origin is already blocking online trackers, ads and other annoyances.
¹ In this case, the developer – not the musician. I really liked the user interface of uMatrix.
It’s really nice to have ad and tracker domains blocked systemwide though I think you need to be more careful and set your device up as supervised to have more robust blocking (real always-on VPN functionality vs. best effort?).
And even then when I read about defects in Apple software that means a firewall like Little Snitch isn’t perfect (macOS) I think an external device (mobile VPN router?) is going to be essential for some threat models.
I can see how system-wide blocking would be useful. I’m personally very conservative and wary about apps that I install on my iPhone (I don’t use any ad-supported apps) so the browser is the “attack surface” that I’m most concerned about.
I already use uBlock Origin and iCloud Private Relay (as advised in your original post). I also use Private Browser tabs and regularly remove all “Website Data” from Safari (minor inconvenience in that I have to re-login to sites that I have an account on).
I’ve just installed AdGuard on my iPhone to try it out but see that the DNS protection requires a Premium subscription (it now occurs to me that I could possibly install Wireguard to connect to my VPS where I’m already running my own DNS server). I’ve also `never looked into supervised mode; I always assumed it wasn’t relevant for personal devices.
I’m a Firefox user myself but there are some very valid arguments against it on Android as well. Firefox on Android is significantly more vulnerable to exploits, lacks internal sandboxing and doesn’t properly isolate tabs from each other.
That's not totally true. Orion supports Chrome/FF WebExtensions, for example. The engine does (practically, even in the EU) have to be WebKit, but that's not the same thing as a "Safari skin."
There is Reynard if you're motivated too (Gecko-based, but it's not ready for prime time yet, and to get good performance you'll have to resort to some workaround to get JIT enabled, as it does not rely on Apple's BrowserEngineKit; one of the goals of the project is giving to not up-to-date iOS devices access to a modern browser).
The top comment response from brave was incredibly rational. Seems like they aren't perfect but are consistent. Am I missing something?
Chrome and Firefox have also both had serious issues. I'm not sure who is the best right now but it's kind of hard to vouch for any of the major browsers
Well consider that Brave and Chrome are made by for-profit companies that will stop at nothing to extract every bit of money they can from you, while Firefox is made by a non-profit that just wants to make a browser.
Genuine question, does brave have ff's container extension? currently that's one of the thing that keeps holding me on ff. another big one is i test website on firefox so to not get carried away with features only available in chromium
I care a good deal that I trust the people who developed my browser. It's about the most critical piece of software in my life. From banking to professionally to personal life.
The people who developed brave used brave to impersonate people and defraud their users out of money by asking for donations using other peoples names [1]. I don't trust them at all. Thus I don't use their browser.
And, unsurprisingly, this is part of a pattern of bad behavior, not a one off criminal act by otherwise trustworthy people, for some examples [2].
Why would you use Brave when for many years it wouid surreptitiously install a VPN service on your Windows machine. The Brave devs took more than a year to even address it, let alone remove it.
More ideologically, Google and Chromium are awful for the internet as monopolistic tech.
Are you wanting me to explain to you why secretly and without notifying the user that your browser is installing a new program + network service he didn’t ask for is a bad thing, or why having an extra Windows service one doesn’t use running 24/7 on top of the network stack and built into the browser is a bad thing?
Their whole thing looks sketchy, frankly. I'm not saying they're evil or have some deep secret ulterior motive. But their "vision" appears to be bunch of absolutely half-baked ideas for privacy, for which Firefox has a much more boring, and consequently better, track record.
why use brave, really, when you have firefox? I get it if you're on iOS
Best iOS strategy that comes to mind is Safari:
(Using fresh private tabs for small privacy gain?) Better than third-party skinned browsers right? Always happy to be informed otherwise.(AdGuard does have an option to supplant uBlock in this stack btw, does “advanced” blocking https://adguard.com/kb/adguard-for-ios/web-extension/ which is nice but trust $mm-refusing uBlock dev gorhill forever)
This sounds like good advice so upvoted. I’m a big fan of Raymond Hill¹’s products so I am curious about how much benefit Adguard provides if uBlock Origin is already blocking online trackers, ads and other annoyances.
¹ In this case, the developer – not the musician. I really liked the user interface of uMatrix.
It’s really nice to have ad and tracker domains blocked systemwide though I think you need to be more careful and set your device up as supervised to have more robust blocking (real always-on VPN functionality vs. best effort?).
And even then when I read about defects in Apple software that means a firewall like Little Snitch isn’t perfect (macOS) I think an external device (mobile VPN router?) is going to be essential for some threat models.
(& uMatrix looks great!)
I can see how system-wide blocking would be useful. I’m personally very conservative and wary about apps that I install on my iPhone (I don’t use any ad-supported apps) so the browser is the “attack surface” that I’m most concerned about.
I already use uBlock Origin and iCloud Private Relay (as advised in your original post). I also use Private Browser tabs and regularly remove all “Website Data” from Safari (minor inconvenience in that I have to re-login to sites that I have an account on).
I’ve just installed AdGuard on my iPhone to try it out but see that the DNS protection requires a Premium subscription (it now occurs to me that I could possibly install Wireguard to connect to my VPS where I’m already running my own DNS server). I’ve also `never looked into supervised mode; I always assumed it wasn’t relevant for personal devices.
Thanks for the reply.
I’m a Firefox user myself but there are some very valid arguments against it on Android as well. Firefox on Android is significantly more vulnerable to exploits, lacks internal sandboxing and doesn’t properly isolate tabs from each other.
Firefox and Brave are both profoundly bad on iOS. Scrolling is a nightmare.
everything on iOS is just a safari skin
That's not totally true. Orion supports Chrome/FF WebExtensions, for example. The engine does (practically, even in the EU) have to be WebKit, but that's not the same thing as a "Safari skin."
There is Reynard if you're motivated too (Gecko-based, but it's not ready for prime time yet, and to get good performance you'll have to resort to some workaround to get JIT enabled, as it does not rely on Apple's BrowserEngineKit; one of the goals of the project is giving to not up-to-date iOS devices access to a modern browser).
Faster.
You might want to not use chromium?
Some people don't like how Brave is pushing cryptocurrency.
Brave is malware. https://www.reddit.com/user/lo________________ol/comments/1i...
The top comment response from brave was incredibly rational. Seems like they aren't perfect but are consistent. Am I missing something?
Chrome and Firefox have also both had serious issues. I'm not sure who is the best right now but it's kind of hard to vouch for any of the major browsers
Well consider that Brave and Chrome are made by for-profit companies that will stop at nothing to extract every bit of money they can from you, while Firefox is made by a non-profit that just wants to make a browser.
Genuine question, does brave have ff's container extension? currently that's one of the thing that keeps holding me on ff. another big one is i test website on firefox so to not get carried away with features only available in chromium
Containers are experimental as of very recently. So they will soon, but expect it to be in development right now.
I also test on FF and I don't care much for chromium. I was just curious why the author chose to do this.
I got turned off to brave with all the token stuff. Just my take.
Why support Chrome at all?
I care a good deal that I trust the people who developed my browser. It's about the most critical piece of software in my life. From banking to professionally to personal life.
The people who developed brave used brave to impersonate people and defraud their users out of money by asking for donations using other peoples names [1]. I don't trust them at all. Thus I don't use their browser.
And, unsurprisingly, this is part of a pattern of bad behavior, not a one off criminal act by otherwise trustworthy people, for some examples [2].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20181221180137/https://twitter.c... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999
[2] https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters-ansible/issues/45#issue... and https://lobste.rs/s/iopw1d/what_s_up_with_lobste_rs_blocking...
Wtaf? Never heard about this. I don't use any of the token stuff but that's scary stuff
Then you haven't been listening, because it's been widely discussed and well publicised.
My personal two favourite piece on Brave are these...
2023:
« Stop using Brave Browser
Seriously.
Corbin Davenport
07 Aug 2023 »
https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
And from a couple of years later, with a very apt URL...
2025:
« Why I recommend against Brave
Luca Bramè
March 24, 2025 »
https://thelibre.news/no-really-dont-use-brave/
Why would you use Brave when for many years it wouid surreptitiously install a VPN service on your Windows machine. The Brave devs took more than a year to even address it, let alone remove it.
More ideologically, Google and Chromium are awful for the internet as monopolistic tech.
What’s wrong with a VPN service as long as it doesn’t route your traffic or anything.
Are you wanting me to explain to you why secretly and without notifying the user that your browser is installing a new program + network service he didn’t ask for is a bad thing, or why having an extra Windows service one doesn’t use running 24/7 on top of the network stack and built into the browser is a bad thing?
I do.
Brave runs Sluggish and causes random temperature spikes on both Windows and Linux on my laptop like no other browser does.
Their whole thing looks sketchy, frankly. I'm not saying they're evil or have some deep secret ulterior motive. But their "vision" appears to be bunch of absolutely half-baked ideas for privacy, for which Firefox has a much more boring, and consequently better, track record.