Tracker-blocking browser Brave comes out of beta

Brave is a web browser that promises to maintain the privacy of its users, protecting them from a variety of third-party ads, autoplaying videos, and trackers. Since launching the beta in January 2016, Brave was drawing in eight million monthly users before it officially let loose its first stable release. A good majority of web ads include some form of tracker that ties your identity to your browsing habits in order to better target you for advertising, and Brave blocks these.

While users may rejoice at the idea of not being fed any intrusive advertising, ad-blocking does negatively affect the websites that serve those ads. Brave is claiming to offer a solution to this imbalance via a rewards program in which users can earn tokens by “viewing privacyrespecting ads” and give them to the websites they visit most. The user is able to opt-out of giving tokens to certain websites of their choosing and can also send them directly to their favourite content creators – a YouTuber, for instance.