400 Bad Request on BBC websites

[RobinH]

Description of the issue:
When visiting BBC websites, sometimes (but not always) the page loads but is then replaced with a “400 Bd Request” error page.

Steps to Reproduce (add as many as necessary): 1. 2. 3.
Go to a BBC website such as Sport or News.

Actual Result (gifs and screenshots are welcome!):
The requested page shows but is then replaced with the error page showing the following details:

400 Bad Request

Request Header Or Cookie Too Large
nginx

Expected result:
Should show the page

Reproduces how often:
Not all the time but once the error occurs there’s no getting away from it.
Doesn’t happen with Chrome.
I’m a UK resident on holiday in France. It didn’t happen before I came to France.

Operating System and Brave Version(See the About Brave page in the main menu):
macOS Catalina, version 10.15.7
Brave is up to date

Version 1.18.75 Chromium: 87.0.4280.101 (Official Build) (x86_64)

Additional Information:

[carla_rogers]

I went to the bbc site, clicked through 50 pages, did not observe the problem

Does it matter whether you are logged in when producing this error?

[RobinH]

Thank you Carla for your reply.

I went to the BBC site and like you I had no problems for a large number of attempts. However, as the problem is intermittent, after a while, they error started and I couldn’t access anything without hitting the 500 error.

As far as I am aware, I wasn’t logged in to BBC so I logged in and tried it and the 500 error immediately stopped. However, I seldom log in to the BBC unless I’m using iPlayer so I’m not usually logged in and up until about 21st December had never experienced this problem before although BBC News and Sport are sites that I visit several times a day every day. However, up until 17th December (when I arrived in France) I’d never used Brave outside of the UK.

What is different this time is that after logging in to BBC the problem stopped. Previously (without signing in), once I got the error I was stuck with it until it cleared by itself, even if I closed the Brave session it would persist. However, once signed in I went to the BBC site and it worked. I even refreshed a page which had the 500 error and it resolved by showing the right page which didn’t happen when not signed in.

I would point out that I never had this problem with Chrome so I’m inclined to think that there is a problem with Brave and that signing in to the BBC is a work-around rather than a fix.

Nevertheless, thank you for your help which is certainly enough to all ow me to keep on using Brave

[fanboynz]

Hey, Could you test in Private window mode, also try via a VPN (to a UK location), does it still show these errors @RobinH

[RobinH]

I’ve tried >70 attempts to recreate the problem in a Private window but have been unable to do so.

I don’t have access to a VPN.