Searching for “The answer is 42!” redirects to an unrelated website

Brave Search
1

I found that searching for “The answer is 42!” without quotes redirects to auth.42.fr domain and initiates an OAuth state.

As it seems there are similar cases for different search terms, and this is probably related to the exclamation mark (!), which is being used at the end of the search terms.

If it was a trivial redirection, I would pass on that. However, it initiates an OAuth login state, and to be honest it seemed a bit scary.

This happens no matter what browser you use as long as you search the phrase on Brave Search.

I am not sure if the same thing happens for everyone but I wanted to give a feedback about the issue.

1 Like
2

@crims0n it’s one of the many bangs. You can learn more about them at https://search.brave.com/bangs

image

But what I wish search team would do is actually keep it direct as it’s listed. Like it should be !42 but it seems to accept 42! as an equivalent. And to my knowledge there’s no toggle to enable/disable these bangs, instead just having to modify some specific inputs so they don’t get triggered.

cc: @Mattches, @steeven

1 Like