Recently noticed YouTube suggested videos on Brave linked to posts that I have made on Facebook using Chrome browser, some of these posts are specialist groups unlikely to appear at random on YouTube.
I assume from this that Facebook/Google share cookies at some point with Brave, no ?
@Mugtik if you’re asking whether Brave is collecting or sharing your data, the answer is no.
What you’re likely seeing is a result of activity from Chrome, not Brave. When you use Chrome, you’re often signed into your Google account by default, and Google tracks pretty much everything: your searches, the websites you visit, including specific Facebook groups. Even with an adblocker like uBlock Origin, this activity still gets tied to your account history.
So when you go to YouTube, Google uses that data to recommend content or show ads that seem relevant. It might feel like Brave is involved, but it is really just Google using everything it has collected from Chrome and your Google account activity.
Brave is not passing any of that information along. It is just displaying YouTube, which is owned by Google and already has your data from other sources.
Google also records and uses your IP address. Even when switching browsers and not logging into your account, if it sees the same IP address it may use it to show relevant ads based on what activity they know has happened on that IP address.
Using browsers like Brave where it blocks/restricts cross site tracking and doesn’t log all activity into a centralized database helps to restrict this. Going a step further to use something like a VPN or proxy can increase privacy as well.
Wow, thanks for the detailed reply, a lot to unpack.
Once digested further will reply in more depth.
@Mugtik btw, you can check out your Google account to find what it has. Like https://myactivity.google.com/activitycontrols/webandapp?hl=en I think should go to it.
You’ll also see where they have now added options to claim to let you disable it
But hard to trust that if it’s disabled that they don’t collect it. All we do at that point is not be able to see the lists ourselves.
There’s a whole big conversation on the craziness of types of tracking, how data gets used, etc. Anyway, I just wanted to share this one little bit in case you were unaware as it might help to better picture the type of activity Google is seeing, though it’s only a small glimpse.
And also important, if you’re on Brave and you do Google searches or watch YouTube videos while signed into your Google account, it’ll still show in your Google activity. This is because it’s your account on their servers, so they see all. But Brave will help on reducing what they see when you go to other websites compared to how Google would see EVERYTHING you do when you use their browser, even when not on their own websites.
Thank you for taking the time out to reply in such detail Saoiray, it took a while for the penny to drop but I get what you mean, its my Google account logged into YouTube that’s making the video recommendations rather than being browser specific.
I was thinking from the browser perspective of cookies forgetting all about my YouTube account.
Nice one, thanks again.
