Web Standards

"Web Environment Integrity": Locking Down the Web

Aug 1, 2023

Brave strongly opposes Google's "Web Environment Integrity" proposal, the latest in Google's efforts to prevent users from being in control of how they use the Web.

First-Party Sets: Tearing Down Privacy Defenses Just as They're Being Built

May 19, 2022

Google is proposing a feature called "First-Party Sets," which would have browsers reduce privacy barriers between sites. This is both alarming and harmful.

Privacy And Competition Concerns with Google’s Privacy Sandbox

Jan 26, 2022

The UK CMA (along with other regulators and web activists) are largely evaluating Google’s Privacy Sandbox as an isolated, independent set of features. Evaluations that fail to consider how Privacy Sandbox will interact with other upcoming Google proposals will miss how radical and harmful Privacy Sandbox will be to the Web in practice. This piece presents how Privacy Sandbox, when considered with other upcoming Chrome features, will harm user choice, privacy, and competition on the Web.

Google's Topics API: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

Jan 25, 2022

The Topics API does not address the core harmfulness of FLoC: that it’s arrogant and dangerous for Google to be the arbiter of what users consider “sensitive” data.

Encrypting DNS Zone Transfers

Sep 14, 2021

Brave, along with a team of DNS experts from the industry and open source communities, recently helped publish an IETF standard (RFC 9103) to fix a long-standing privacy and security hole in the DNS.

Global Privacy Control, a new Privacy Standard Proposal

Oct 7, 2020

As part of our privacy-in-Web-Standards work, we’re proud to have been involved in the design for the Global Privacy Control proposal. GPC allows Web users to signal that they do not want to be tracked online, and where relevant, assert legal privacy rights, as described in legislation like the EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA.

WebBundles Harmful to Content Blocking, Security Tools, and the Open Web

Aug 25, 2020

Google is proposing a new standard called WebBundles. This standard allows websites to “bundle” resources together, and will make it impossible for browsers to reason about sub-resources by URL. While we appreciate the problems the WebBundles and related proposals aim to solve, we believe there are other, better ways of achieving the same ends without compromising the open, transparent, user-first nature of the Web.

Brave, Fingerprinting, and Privacy Budgets

Nov 6, 2019

This post first summarizes what browser fingerprinting is, and common defenses. Second, the post presents problems with “dynamic privacy approaches”, and why Brave is skeptical they are effective for protecting against fingerprinting. Third, the post presents Brave’s fingerprinting protections, current, upcoming and longer-term.

Brave's Concerns with the Client-Hints Proposal

May 9, 2019

One of Brave’s main goals is to improve privacy on the Web, so that everyone can enjoy and interact with the Web while protecting their personal information. This post discusses a new proposed Web standard, Client Hints, and why Brave is concerned that it harms Web privacy.

WebStandards@Brave