Data Privacy Compliance and the Future of Internet Browsers

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If you are a regular explorer of the internet, regardless of whether you do so through a laptop or a mobile phone, chances are quite high that you must have run into unsolicited adverts. Not only that, it is also very possible that you must have come across an avalanche of pop ups from only-God-knows where. Well, those instances can very well be interpreted as the consequences of the connivance between your browser and the ad companies powering the websites you were visiting.

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The browser, which has already collected and stored your data such as location, age, sex, browsing history, etc, clandestinely goes on to sell it various ad companies to generate revenue. The company that owns the browser alongside the ad companies and the websites smile to the bank from selling your data. Yet, you do not even get a dime from any of the conspiring parties.

It is very difficult to say exactly how much Google Chrome, one of the most widely used browsers on the planet, each year makes from ad revenues. This is because the information is not available on the internet. But we can confidently say that the figures would run into billions of dollars, considering that Microsoft’s Mozilla, which has only about 8% of the market share, made an estimated profit of $451m in 2018.

For Chrome, which has well over 50% of the market share, the revenue will be staggering. Small wonder, Google tucks it away from the public glare.

Other prominent browsers such as Opera and Internet Explorer are not left out as they continue to engage in surreptitious data mining and infringements, all in the bid to make profit by any and whatever means possible── that is even if the users will be reduced to commodities.

The beautiful thing is that the consciousness of the consumers is on the rise. More netizens are getting aware about data privacy and security and are doing everything within their capacities to keep themselves safe, safe from data predators. For instance, the number of people using Brave, a browser which does not only protect the privacy of its users but leverages BAT, its native crypto token, to reward them.

Recently, the progress of Brave took a more glorious course when the team behind the project announced that the crypto-backed browser has surpassed Chrome on the number of reviews it has gotten from users on Google’s home ground ── the Playstore.

So far, Brave has garnered over 238,000 reviews on the Google Playstore and now has over 19 million users monthly. Also with a rating of 4.8, it ranks higher than Chrome which has a rating of 4.1. Although Brave is far from being a threat to Chrome at the moment if we look at the billions of users the latter has on monthly basis, it is clear that the future is drifting towards browsers that can protect the privacy of users and even reward them for their time.



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3 comments
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If you visit a website that is funded by advertising; then you are soliciting the advertising on the site.

The problem does not lie with the fact that websites use advertising so that they can provide free content.

If there is no advertising, then there can be no free content. BTW: This site HIVE is all one huge advertisement for the HIVE blockchain.

Most web sites have an agenda beyond just providing information. The web sites for the Democratic and Republican Parties offer free access in their efforts to gain political clout.

The problem we face seem to lie with big tech. Browser Helper Objects often contain malware which spies on your web site usage and injects their ads into a user's experience.

The problems lie with the Big Tech firms that created profiles of web users and that sell the data to other big tech firms.

The advertisers and websites that seek to fund their content with ads are benign.

This article is just one of a million pages which push the false claim that the problem lies with advertisement.

The thousands of articles that tell people to hate advertisements are doing the world a great disservice. The privacy violations come from big tech and not from the websites that want to fund their content with ads.

Most content providers hate that big tech mines the ads as it reduces the value of their ads.

This article that you just wrote is an advertisement. You are clearly hoping to get paid for the article. Brave is not the band of altruistic heroes that we pretend. They are people who hope to make money by adding a crypto currency to a browser ... which isn't a bad idea.

I do dislike that they push the narrative that people fund pages with ads are the cause of the problems in the world.

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This article is just one of a million pages which push the false claim that the problem lies with advertisement.

You write very good English but I am afraid that you might have to take some comprehension lessons because there is no where in this article where I wrote that ads are the problem or that websites should be ad free. You have much to learn on the art of disagreeing politely with a conflicting opinion. You sounded like a school teacher grading the report card of a college student.

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The opening line of the article reads: "If you are a regular explorer of the internet, regardless of whether you do so through a laptop or a mobile phone, chances are quite high that you must have run into unsolicited adverts."

The line has extra words and you are clearly using an non-standard definition of the term "unsolicited."

Web browsers use pull technology. Since you are pulling, all of the ads that you receive from a web site are solicited when you pull the web page.

Even the really annoying pop up ads are solicited. I block popups.

The act of pulling the page solicits the ad. The only to get unsolicited ads is if your browser or ISP is infected with adware.

I've been browsing the web since the 1990s and have never encountered an "unsolicited ad." I once installed a Browser Helper Object that injected ads.

The BHO spammed me with ads, but, since I installed the BHO, I solicited.

Your article is an advertisement for the Brave Web Browser. Brave is derived from Chrome. Brave has a "feature"that will remove ads from web sites. It then replaces the ad with their ad. They say that they will split the ad revenue with the browser via Basic Attention Token. They say they will give BAT to approved web sites.

The ad copy that you just wrote for Brave appears to be using intentionally ambiguous words to mask what Brave is actually doing. They are taking the adspace from web sites and replacing the ads with their ads.

The word "unsolicited" needs to be understood in context of Brave. Brave is labeling the ads that a website serves as "unsolicited." The replace the ads that the website served with their ads which they call "solicited" because you installed the Brave browser. They give you a BAT in return ... the website the provided content hoping to sell adspace is cut out of the equation (unless the censors at Brave approve the site).

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