All Linux Things

I noticed today that brave browser was not entering my login information when visiting sites, I checked a few other machines that I had updated recently and there were no passwords saved on any of them! I found one machine that had not been updated and exported the csv file from there and tried to import them back into brave but to no avail, it displayed the success message and appeared to have worked but when re-opening the browser no passwords were available!!

I checked the version of the update which was 1.68.128 so i downgraded to 1.67.134 which thankfully fixed the issue for me. Just wanted to put this out there in case anyone else finds this to be a problem.

As a side note it appears losing passwords seems to be a common occurrence with brave so although it is a security risk, I would advise to keep a copy of the exported passwords (somewhere safe!) if you use this feature with Brave.

Just to add that after checking a machine that i did not try to re-import passwords to, when downgrading Brave-browser you should get your passwords back without issue, so no need to import them again. It appears they are still in the data store but the upgrade hides them.

I like to stick with the "system browser" where passwords are stored as part of the login keychain. Konqueror, Gnome Web (Epiphany), Safari and Edge all store their passwords in the login keychain. So even if you choose not to use those browsers for certain tasks, you can still find the password in your keychain, to enter into your browser of choice. I also do maintain a password notebook. I would probably not do that if I worked in a public space, but being a retired home users I am not too concerned about any would be thief rooting around the house looking for it.

Brave is one of the very few browsers I have never even tried. I looked at one point, but Brave was talking about tokens and crypto and micro payments, and it just scared me off. Is it a convenient easy to work with daily browser?

It is the only browser I use, I enjoy being able to block adverts and tracking data, also the ability to block individual elements on web pages I find absolutely invaluable! a few clicks can remove advertising banners and they will never be seen again which can speed up the loading of pages significantly.

My reason for using passwords in the browser is to limit the availability of them, I do not generally use banking or financial institution websites but either phone (land-line) or mobile services apps instead and so my passwords in the browser are more towards just about every other website that you visit where you have to log-in to to receive relevant data or download stuff from (like this one for example).

I also recently installed a pi-hole to my network to control dns requests, which could almost negate some of the effects of Brave Browser, but I find using them both gives me much more control of what I see on my screen.

I know many people who say that it still spies on you, but I can only presume they regard any sort of telemetry as evil and as such these type of unsubstantiated comments I tend to disregard.

All this said it is a personal choice and I would always recommend to try it out and see for yourself, after all the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I also keep a "hard copy" notebook for passwords and I would have lost only a few of the most recent ones that I hadn't put to paper yet, and do not really have concerns about somebody burgling me to get to it as it contains very specific deliberate errors just in case that situation should arise.

And I was also originally concerned about the tokens and crypto stuff but most can be either disabled or hidden if it helps.

Heres a video that expresses my feelings on browsers, in brief it says there arent any really good options for browsers and none of them are really secure by any stretch of the imagination, this point was made by Titus in the first 30 seconds of the video with a lot of reinforcement afterwards.

I see Brave and Firefox the least problematic with ways around the issues, but in general they all smell equally bad as Titus put it in the video. He gets into some specifics that frankly I didnt want to spend a lot of time explaining in this response. The video is done by Chris Titus and its short and to the point..

The video is also good for others to watch to educate themselves on the issues with browsers these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjPKXBYxTWM