Couldn’t find anywhere to post this specific question but this seemed to be the best place I could find:
Yesterday I was looking at MMA gyms in my area on the Brave Browser. Today I got an Instagram story ad for an MMA gym…
Is our browser history being sold to Facebook or other companies? There’s no way they could’ve known i was looking at that if the browser is private. The only other thing I can thing of that might’ve had that effect is when i typed the gym names into the Apple maps application on my phone…but I didn’t look them up anywhere else other than Brave and in Maps.
Depends on what is loaded on the site, such as facebook/instagram being loaded (which owed by the same company). Blocking all social media brave://settings/socialBlocking but the downside it may break logins.
@Grim_Turbine,
Thank you for reaching out.
Brave aggressively, more so than any other browser, blocks how sites are able to track your behavior across sites, and limits what information you share with sites. However, when you intentionally identify yourself to a site (say, by providing your email address), Brave is limited in what protections it can provide. Brave provides best-in-class protections against tracking from information you don’t intended to share, but can only do so much for information you intentionally share.
So while we do our best to block as many of these attempts as possible, not all of it in our hands. For example, the email address you use to login to your instagram account is likely connected to other accounts as well and subsequently being tracked. Additionally, if that email is a gmail account (specifically) that is very likely the exact reason you’re seeing this.
Yes, after seeing browsing history over many months being transferred to Facebook despite never having logged in/used it on that device and setting Brave Shield to strict, I don’t think they actually protect against tracking.