Brave Shields script options gone again

After the last update Brave Shields has removed the script selection again. Brave shields Ver 1 option is not available now.
The best part about brave shields was the ability to select which scripts to allow. Now you have to allow everything. It was a click and forget option and would reset the temp changes when you closed the browser.
Will this be returned to us?

Hello @maddad, we are sorry to hear you are having this issue. Is the option that says block scripts under the shields settings working? Could you please share the following information:

1 - What kind of device and OS do you have?
2 - What Brave version do you have? If this a desktop computer (found at brave://version) to download the most recent one (https://brave.com/download/).

3 - A screenshot of the issue (if possible). Regards.

Brave removed v1 and has no plans to reinstate v1 functionality.

Closed Brave GigHub issue report with explanation of why removed.

Remove v1 shields UI (a.k.a. shields extension panel) #23285

**pes10k commented Aug 8, 2022

Also, just to give some context to why the per-script controls were removed from Brave in the first place, we decided to remove the feature for three reasons:

  1. Brave shipped a number of other on-by-default privacy features that reduced the privacy-benefit of the per-script-controls. For example, Brave ships ephemeral, partitioned storage and randomized fingerprint protections by default (among many other features) dramatically reducing how much privacy harm most scripts can cause. Thats not to say that per-script controls aren’t still useful, just that they’re useful in less cases than they were previously.
  2. Chromium internals changed in a way that made maintaining the feature more difficult and costly (at least given the way were were implementing it previously)
  3. We evaluated uMatrix and NoScript and decided they were likely sufficient alternatives for the small number of Brave users who used the per-script controls

However, that being said, we will revisit the feature if we can find an easier way to re-implement given Chromium internals, or if we believe a significant portion of Brave users would use the feature if made available again

An open issue report relating to bringing back v1 type functionality and redesign of v2:
Shields Panel #22625

Hi Choco, how is it going there? I haven’t made much headway so I have been allowing scripts with brave shields and using noscript and ublock if needed. I also setup ungoogled chromium the same way and its almost the same as Brave although I still use Brave as my go to browser.
I read the post from pes10k before and I understand that its a hassle to continue maintaining the script blocking the way they were going.
I’m still at the beginners level of this technology and I’ll just keep following through the community posts.
How did you make out with your script blocking project?

Hi Jarc, I am using Linux Mint 21. I have used brave for a few years now and up until August this year everything was running great. Now the ability to block selected scripts has been removed from Brave. I am using noscript to fill the gap until I can understand more about these features.

I installed Brave as per here https://brave.com/linux/ it updates when ever an update is available.

Honestly the Shields scripts menu was not even good, so it seemed like more of a waste of time to maintain something that wasn’t working properly, of course this is my opinion, and people didn’t probably mind the technical issues it had, but for example, if I blocked scripts from Twitch and allowed them all once back, Twitch wouldn’t, and probably many websites.

And that was probably because Chromium “block script” feature would block inline scripts, not just normal external scripts. So my guess (because we can’t really test anymore to be sure) was that the inline scripts weren’t really whitelisted even if you allowed them all again.

As far as I remember the scripts listed were allowed per domain, which made it really bad, since you couldn’t choose individually which scripts from each domain you really wanted to allow, it was all or nothing and all or nothing is just terrible for anything.

But the truth is you can do the same blocking with custom filters. Brave’s adblocker is great, native, and fast and better than Extension API. That’s why uBlock does almost nothing when Brave shields are running.

Of course, uBlock and other extensions can have settings and panels that make things easier and more straight forward, and for more of a ‘lazy’ set up, like the uBlock Rules panel/tab and the buttons to block popups and scripts and all that, but in the end, all uBlock is doing in the background is pretty much what you can do with custom rules.
For example, inline-scripts in uBlock panel, all it does is quickly give you what you would get with $csp=script-src 'unsafe-eval' * blob: data: of course some people would say about the time, but the point is that it can be done and set up in Brave.

Of course I would agree for mobile having a panel is better since Mobile is more limited with no way to eve know which scripts are being allowed or blocked by shields, and there is no Devtools or a real log to find anything out.
But for desktop, it is pretty easy to set things up with custom filters.
Of course there are some features still missing like $popup or Procedural cosmetics that could completely substitute even more extensions (I still use uBlock because of the procedurals), but someday it will happen, I believe Brave should prioritize those features more but slowly we are getting them.

But yeah, Brave as a serious company, should never be allowed to have bad implementations like the scripts stuff Shields v1, maybe it worked half of the time for more users but it wasn’t good and if it was difficult to maintain then it was a waste of time.
It would be better if they worked in bringing a real Log (like ublock) so it will be easier for anyone to allow or block scripts, or have like a uBlock panel and write custom rules for us.
It would achieve the same result, but it would all be controlled by custom filters which anyone can see and edit and improve or delete, something like what you get with Element picker for cosmetics (not the best implementation but works).
But obviously it is better if they just focus on bringing the missing adblocking features others have and focus on things like that later.
Would be nice to have a dream where they can hire someone that will work on the adblocker 24/7 and bring stuff quicker for sure!

Thanks for your help emi, I have never taken the time to learn about these things and am slowly getting a better understanding of whats happening here. It looks like to me that creating individual scripts would take some time.
Reading other posts though am I understanding this right? that with the other protections that Brave has included, then allowing scripts to run is not really a danger to the basic privacy I want?
I also have a vpn service using wireguard.

Hi there, going good and hope it is the same for you! :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m not. From input in other topic (ty @anon57438784), I started investigating (trying to anyway) if Brave was actually blocking scripts that I was blocking manually before. Looked like all was ok from looking at devtools but I just couldn’t bring myself to install uBlock extension to continue, even temporarily. Was still debating with myself about that one when I got busy in real life. It is still pretty crazy around here which is why I haven’t been posting as much.

Then I ran across a post explaining IPFS, containers, cookies, and other privacy related stuff and it made sense. I’m thinking I really don’t need to use script blocking if that is how Brave is addressing privacy issues and intrusive cookies and such. I tried to find the post but couldn’t. I’m pretty sure @anon57438784 posted that one too. I’ll link the reply here if I run across it. I think you would find it informative too! :slightly_smiling_face:

TL;DR Doing good and block scripting project abandoned for now. lol

Ya if you find the link that would be great. @anon57438784 reply above here helped a lot and eased some paranoia lol.
Glad things are ok there too.

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