Don’t laugh, but in the course of looking up hangover cures, other apps outside of Brave somehow caught wind of what I was doing and started targeting me ads based on this activity. I checked and all Brave shields were up while using both the search engine and the one and only website I visited. How does this happen?
@deviceracoon Not sure if you’re showing anything that suggests tracking and fingerprinting. If you’re logged into something like Instagram(which is owned by Facebook) or Facebook, then they will be noticing when you visit their sites. Often times, search engines like Google will also share things like your searches with other sites, which they use through your login but also via IP address.
Fingerprinting is the collection of data that makes it easier to recognize your device. Some examples would be which operating system you use, your screen resolution, languages used on the system, all extensions you’re using, and which fonts are installed on your device.
Brave is indeed blocking fingerprinting. Your issue most likely is that you’re keeping yourself logged into sites and you’re not using a VPN or proxy. Another thing to consider is that any websites you access through Login with Google, Login with Facebook, or anything similar also tends to give them more access to you.
Anyway, there are a lot of ways that ads target people. It used to be just about cookies, but now it’s them trying to keep track of your social media logins and IP address. Which, btw, your own internet provider will oust you a lot of times by providing your exact IP address to each site you visit. These websites that have ads on them will gather the IP from that visit and, if they are across multiple sites, will “track” you strictly based on that.
Again, this isn’t something Shields can stop. You have to do a VPN or proxy (like Tor on Brave’s desktop version) if you want to restrict that. Beyond that it’s also just making sure you use as few extensions and social media tools as you can. Don’t let yourself be tempted to let Facebook plugins on sites load or go to share, like, or whatever from websites to social media. That just permits them to gather more info from you.
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Are you saying if I’ve logged into FB/IG within that same Brave browser session, then FB/IG can see all my Brave traffic?
I wasn’t using Google, I was using Kagi, which afaik doesn’t share traffic data with trackers. And I didn’t log into the above site at all.
If my ISP is disclosing my IP address to every website I go to, is there any way for Brave to block that from happening? Do the VPN/proxy you mentioned work on Brave for iOS?
How do I prevent FB plugins from loading on sites that I visit in Brave for iOS?
Yes and no. Brave does prevent cookies from sharing. However, they do have other ways of tracking via IP address through partner websites and advertisers. Every website you visit gets your IP address, there’s no way around that except to use a VPN, which will then use a different IP or a proxy which will block the IP address.
But it’s not just IP address. A lot of websites and resources you use are set to “betray” you. For example, here’s an excerpt from Faceook speaking about their policy:
Notice how it says that businesses and organizations can provide them with details about you? When you hit next, they say it again but more explicitly:
As you can imagine, the more accounts you have and more details you provide to websites, the more often they can collect and relay/sell this data elsewhere. Internet privacy and security is very difficult. If you truly want to remain anonymous you have to use VPN/Proxy, need to use different emails and keep your “real” personal email separate and private (Not creating a bunch of accounts or plastering different places), likely should stay far away from any type of social media accounts, and ideally would engage with as little content (especially social media widgets and all) as possible.
The examples I gave for Facebook also exist on Google and many other websites. Google’s says it a bit below:
While they mention the web browser sends information, a lot of people miss the other half of it. The websites using AdSense, Google Analytics, or other Google tools will provide your information that they collect through their own website over to Google. So even with third party cookies and tracking disabled, this can still occur.
That said, I want you to realize Brave does a lot on helping to prevent fingerprinting and they reduce the capabilities of places tracking you. The fingerprint protection that Brave uses essentially is like getting you in makeup and a costume. Originally they tried to always randomize your info and make you unique each time. But that strategy has changed and instead they try to mix up some info, but overall they make everyone look as similar to each other as possible. So much so that when these advertisers or others are trying to monitor you, they can’t easily identify you in the middle of the crowd.
Sorry I’m saying so much, this gets a bit convoluted. I was trying to also explain it in a way that others who see this topic might be able to understand a bit. Let me stop the reply here and I’ll do one more reply on some of your other questions.
Yes, but not for free. Brave has Brave VPN built into the browser. It would be $9.99/mo if you wish to activate it and you would be able to use it on multiple devices. There are also other VPN available for devices if you want to shop around. Just be aware that how good they are will vary, often depicted in pricing. Like there are some free VPN but they might share some of your data or might have “leaks” where they don’t do as good of a job of hiding your IP as they claim.
On Desktop versions of Brave, you do have Tor built in. Tor is a proxy and would help to mask your IP address. It won’t necessarily be as flawless/helpful as a VPN, but it is free and would definitely help to mask you a bit on that side of things.
If you go to Brave’s settings → Brave Shields & Privacy → Content Filtering you can activate Fanboy's Social which removes Social Media content on web pages such as the Facebook like button and other widgets. While you’re there, if you haven’t already enabled them, you may want to turn on Fanboy's Annoyances and uBlock Annoyances as they will help a lot on blocking ads and everything.
well I have a similiar issue when I visit ifconfig.me
it tells me all my installed locals although I have st the sheild to the most aggressive settings