In the past few months I have found, for some reason, that most sites I attempt to use will not allow me to log in at all; there is no error message, no captcha, just no response at all when I press the button. This is true for all but one website, which notably uses a much older software base. It happens on Brave regardless of how lax I temporarily make my privacy settings, and regardless of whether or not my adblocker is on or the shields are up. The same is true in Firefox. A few other things are broken, too, like the complaints form on Transport for London’s website, and a donation page on a university website. I’m running Ubuntu 20.
The only way around the above problems is to use my Android phone instead, which runs the Firefox for Android browser with comparably strict privacy settings to those on my desktop computer. This is an example with Tripadvisor, but the same thing happens with every other website but one that I regularly use, including my energy company today:
@YouMrBemisareaReader I’m noticing an icon next to your extensions button. Usually what I see there are extensions. Do you have something that you’ve allowed to run there in Private window? Can you try disabling it and see if it makes a difference?
Same thing, if you create a new profile, can you see if the problem persists?
I suspect that you’re right, but how do I fix the problem in Ubuntu, my main OS? I do have Windows dual-booted on my computer, but have never once used it since I bought my laptop, a state of affairs which I want to continue wherever possible.
Also, this problem only began in the past month or two, whereas I’ve had my laptop for about six months.
I know nothing about Linux/Ubuntu. I was just trying to search though and I’ve seen a lot of people expressing issues with Ubuntu 20, especially Ubuntu 20.4.
I was hoping to come up with a solution, but gets even trickier when it seems to be a OS issue rather than specific browser. Does clicking work everywhere else except for those buttons?
What I would suggest though based on some things is:
Make sure Java is enabled in browsers. brave://settings/content/javascript in Brave
Maybe check dev tools (think it’s F12 for you as well) and share any errors you’re seeing in Console. (make sure to omit any private info)
@YouMrBemisareaReader do you have any other extensions installed, besides ExpressVPN?
Is any antivirus or other security software installed on the system? If so, does anything change if you temporarily disable it? What about ad blockers?
What settings do you have in brave://settings/shields/filters ? Make sure to list anything enabled if you ‘Show full list,’ as well as anything that’s been added to the custom filters.
I worked it out in the end: it was that I’d deliberately blocked certain things through my /etc/hosts file in Ubuntu, which was breaking the site. Thanks for your help.
