Blog category

Privacy updates

Debouncing

Oct 14, 2021

Brave is releasing additional protections against certain forms of bounce tracking. We call these new protections "debouncing". As of desktop version 1.32, Brave will protect users against bounce tracking by recognizing when the user is about to visit a known tracking domain, skipping visiting the tracking site all together, and instead directly navigating the user to the intended destination.

Custom filter list subscriptions

Sep 21, 2021

Starting in version 1.31, Brave will support custom filter list subscriptions, allowing users to further control how unwanted network requests and in-page elements are blocked in Brave. This work is part of Brave’s goal of providing best-of-breed content filtering tools, and keeping people in control of their Web browsing.

Improving privacy by improving Web compatibility

Sep 1, 2021

Brave is disabling filter list blocking for first-party subresources to improve privacy for typical Brave users. Advanced users still have the ability to deploy more aggressive privacy protections, even those that might break sites.

Ephemeral third-party site storage

Feb 1, 2021

This post presents “ephemeral site storage”, a new strategy for managing third-party storage in Brave, designed to improve Web compatibility, while maintaining the same level of privacy protection.

Fighting CNAME trickery

Jul 20, 2020

Trackers are constantly working on new techniques for evading privacy tools, and keep deploying new ways to evade privacy-protecting tools like the Brave browser. This post discusses a recent technique trackers use, CNAME cloaking, and a new feature in Brave that keeps Brave users protected.

Grab bag: query stripping, referrer policy, and reporting API

Jul 20, 2020

In order to stay one step ahead of online trackers, Brave regularly releases new privacy features and improvements. This post discusses three recent changes in Brave that each help make the web a more privacy, and person, respecting platform.

Fingerprinting defenses 2.0

May 18, 2020

Brave's goal is to both be the best browser for protecting your privacy, and the best browser for day-to-day, full-featured Web use. This post describes new privacy features being developed in Brave to better protect user privacy, without breaking privacy-respecting, user-serving websites.

Fingerprint randomization

Mar 5, 2020

Brave now protects users from being fingerprinted by making them appear subtly different to each website. Browser fingerprinting protection is available today in our Nightly version. These new protections both provide the strongest fingerprinting protections of any popular browser, and work without introducing bothersome permission prompts or breaking websites.

Third-party cosmetic filtering

Feb 20, 2020

Brave is releasing a new system for hiding unwanted, privacy harming page elements. These include empty page space caused by blocking trackers, and third-party ads that cannot be blocked at the network layer.

Web resource replacements

Jan 23, 2020

Problem: Blocking Trackers Sometimes Breaks Sites. One of many ways Brave protects your privacy on the Web is by blocking requests to trackers. By blocking these requests, Brave prevents you from being followed around the Web, and from ad companies, data brokers, and other privacy-harming parties from recording your online activity.