Since Chromium 51, the “chrome.privacy.network.networkPredictionEnabled” setting does no longer affect the behavior of link rel preconnect, prefetch or dns-prefetch - those will always execute and make DNS requests, open sockets and in case of prefetch make a HTTP request.
There is still an Open Issue in Chromium regarding the inability to stop the browser from using preload, prefetch, and preconnect, even when disabling the option for using a prediction service and using a plugin to control this, like uBlock Origin.
Has the the Brave developers done anything to resolve this in the Chromium based sources?
Steps to reproduce:
- Disable “prediction service to load pages more quickly” in the advanced settings
- Open a network monitor (in uBlock Origin, devtools or other means)
- Visit a service like jsfiddle.net and click “Run”
- Check the log to verify that DNS requests are made and/or sockets are opened regardless of the setting:
// Log Output
* preconnect https://jsfiddle.net/wsxng5bg/
* prefetch https://jsfiddle.net/wvu9f8td/
* dns-prefetch https://jsfiddle.net/407hsnxv/