You may already know about the Tor Browser, but are you aware that it can be integrated with Brave Browser as well?
If you’ve never heard of Brave Browser, you can download it here: Brave Browser. It’s based on Chromium and has a number of different privacy oriented features, even without Tor.
For instance, it has an option called “Shields,” which it uses to block elements on web pages that are potentially malicious (or might be used to track you):
As you can see, it blocks ads and can also block scripts, and things like third-party device recognition, which is used to uniquely identify your computer, smartphone, etc.
Now, as for accessing Tor with it, this is quite simple. In the upper right-hand corner (as on Chrome or Chromium), there is an options menu. On this menu is a feature called “New Private Window with Tor.” It may appear similar to the “incognito” function on Chrome, but you’re also using a Tor connection.
Keep in mind that at the present time, this feature is in “beta,” so it may not work as well as simply using the Tor Browser itself. In case you’re wondering, yes, you can access .onion sites with Brave Browser in this mode as well. Additionally, if you do a search in this mode, the default search engine will be DuckDuckGo (just as on the Tor Browser). As mentioned in DuckDuckGo is not a Dark Web Search Engine (Revisited), of course, it does not return search results for .onion sites.
To search for onion sites, you’ll need to use a Tor search engine, like not Evil, ahmia.fi, or Onion Search Engine (which is also available on Tor at 5u56fjmxu63xcmbk.onion).
Brave also mentions that they are “contributing back to the Tor network by running Tor relays. We are proud to be adding bandwidth to the Tor network, and intend to add more bandwidth in the coming months.” You can view Brave’s Tor relays at Tor Metrics: Brave. At the present time, Brave is running six relays, with names like “BraveMenkaure” and “BraveCalakmulll.”
Still, it doesn’t seem all that difficult to install the Tor Browser itself, so I’d recommend that over anything else; that’s a matter of personal preference, of course.
