PSA: Current FAQ

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How come I’m still seeing ads?

There’s a few possibilities. Overall Shields should stop ads and you’ll have little to no problems. However, it’s important to remember that advertisers are paying people to try to bypass ads, just as staff here is always improving filters to prevent ads from showing. This means every once in a while, something might work temporarily.

So what should you do if you see ads? There are two primary steps:

-Step 1: Troubleshooting:

  • The first thing to check is that you’re using the most recent version of Brave.

  • Second thing is to check your Shield settings. If it’s not on Aggressively block trackers * ads, set it to that. Does it help? (or if already had strictest, does easing it help?)

  • Next,(Desktop and Android only), Go to brave://components and make sure to Check for update on everything there.

  • When the above doesn’t work, the next step is to try opening the page in a Private Window (available on all devices). If ads don’t show here, then it suggests it’s likely an extension or a bad cookie. So disabling/removing extensions and/or clearing cookies would be a good place to start.

  • (Desktop only). Create a new profile and test the site just once more. This again is testing for extensions but it goes one step further to also see if it’s something in your settings. If you see no ads on your new profile but see it on the old, it suggests it’s a setting, cookie, or extension. So then it’s just messing with things until you discover the culprit

-Step 2: Reporting:

If ads on websites still persist after basic troubleshooting steps, then you’ll want to create a topic here under Ad-Blocking, which is Ad-Blocking

When you create your topic, make sure to provide the following info:

  • Which version of Brave you’re using.

  • Which OS and OS version (such as Windows 11, Android 12, etc)

  • The exact website you’re having issues with (provide URL)

  • Screenshot of the ad, if possible.

  • Which troubleshooting steps you’ve tried and the results.

From there, Fanboynz and the rest of the Brave team will typically investigate and make any changes possible to filters so that the ad will be blocked again in the future.

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