theverge[.]com/2023/10/20/23925192/brave-browser-vpn-windows-11
Brave has a VPN you have to pay for before you can use it, and that VPN is installed when you install Brave. When you uninstall Brave that VPN goes away, BUT, the Brave updater & its 2 services does Not. *To me* that's a bigger deal than installing the VPN, since the updater is the only part of the browser software that phones home. Why leave the updater intact when it has no reason to exist? FWIW it uses several Google update files -- we all know how privacy focused Google is, right? -- runs 2 update services, and has 2 tasks set up in Task Scheduler. TO get rid of it I performed the tedious task of searching the registry for brave, deleting whatever keys I came across, and there were many. Then I deleted the bravesoftware folder in Program Files (x86).