A new version of the Brave browser ( version 0.23) was released just a few days ago and with it comes a new feature for private tabs that makes them truly anonymous. Brave is created by Brendan Eich and his team, co-founder of Mozilla and creator of the JavaScript programming language. It's a browser specifically made for privacy and has built in protection against ads, trackers and cryptocurrency miners. It's built on top of Chromium, the Open Source version of Google Chrome.
Private tabs have been very confusing for most users, which is why Google Chrome for example displays this big warning, explaining that in incognito mode, your browser doesn't track locally what you do online, but your ISP still does, websites you visit still do, etc.:
It's going to get more confusing, because Brave now offers actually private tabs. It does so by adding Tor into the browser and setting the default search to DuckDuckGo, a private alternative to Google. Tor is right now the best software we have to browse the web anonymously, to hide your IP address, it's an alternative to VPNs whose security is questionable at best and require blind trust in the VPN provider, but have their use cases since Tor can be a bit slow and shouldn't be used for file sharing for example since it wastes too much bandwidth.
Note: VPNs encrypt your traffic on all websites you visit, so only the VPN provider can see what traffic is going through your internet connection. Tor sends your data through three computers, and the third, the so called outproxy can see your traffic, in that case Tor only hides your IP address, so you should only enter sensitive information like passwords on https:// websites, which are SSL encrypted websites. http:// websites are dying out anyway, there is no reason anymore today to not use the encrypted https://, and the Brave browser automatically changes URLs to the safer https:// version if available which should be true in most cases. Here is a visualization from the EFF which explains it. Onion sites don't suffer from this problem, so they are the most secure to use with Tor.
The Tor project has made a nice video explaining Tor:
Right now, Tor is a beta feature in the Brave browser, there are still security leaks, so it makes you safer but not safe, for that Brave recommends to use the TorBrowser until Brave has fixed the remaining issues. But it's really great to see Brave adopt Tor, as it makes it even easier and more comfortable to use than before, so it can become mainstream.
Here is how it works, you can open a private tab as before or open a private tab with Tor:
This is what the new tab shows:
The tab itself has "Tor" written on the right, so you can easily distinguish between normal tabs and private tabs with Tor enabled:
Tor doesn't just allow you to visit websites anonymously, it also allows you to view so called onion sites, hidden websites, basically the "dangerous" darknet the mainstream media is so fond of denouncing. What can I say, they think differently than us mere mortals. They are very special.
Anywho, as an example, here I am visiting ProtonMail's "evil" onion site:
ProtonMail if you didn't know is a free encrypted email service hosted in Switzerland in a bunker under 1000 meters of solid rock. No joke, your emails are safer there than you even in case of a nuclear attack. Created by scientists at CERN (of large hadron collider fame) and visiting scientists from universities like Harvard and MIT. I've written about it here.
If you want to know more, you can read the announcement on the Brave blog.