The privacy war has been one of the slowest revolutions in the 21st century: the Snowden revelations weren’t enough, Wikileaks didn’t do it, but the vast and ongoing data breaches have begun to effect a change – starting with Ashley Madison and ending with … well, it hasn’t ended yet, although almost every major platform has experienced one or another kind of data breach.

As a result, people are slowly starting to take privacy more seriously and one consequence of this is that there has been a slow erosion in the number of consumers using the major social and browsing platforms like Facebook and services from the likes of Google.

Unfortunately, we’ve only just found an alternative to our go-to browser of choice, Chrome. Brave offers fast browsing speeds – equal to or better than Chrome – with no weird functionality, just plain and simply surfing.

But under the hood, Brave gives you the opportunity to stay private. On one side of the URL bar, clicking one icon allows you to turn on ad blocking, avoid tracking cookies, encrypt your connection and run scripts – or not. It’s as simple as flicking a switch, and Brave also boasts a host of features from importing bookmarks (phew) to integration with Tor functionality for privacy pros.

So if you’re concerned, or just fancy a change, check it out.

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