If you’re using Brave Beta (or Dev), try loading a site that includes Google Analytics, like The Verge. This functionality is in Brave Beta today, you can test it now, and we expect it’ll be part of the next Brave stable release. Solution: Don’t Just Block, Replaceīecause trackers sometimes punish (intentionally or otherwise) people who want to protect their privacy online, it is not enough to just block known trackers sometimes tracking code needs to be replaced with new code that both preserves privacy and keeps sites from breaking or degrading. Not surprisingly, this has the effect of incentivising users to reduce their privacy, all so that Google can do a “better” job of tracking you. Specifically, Google suggests sites use a particular way of including Google Analytics that makes the page blank for four seconds if Google Analytics is blocked. Possibly as a result of this blocking, Google suggests that site owners make their sites less pleasant to use for people who block Google Analytics (ironically, Google refers to this as “optimizing” a site). Given how sensitive such information is, many, many privacy-protecting tools (including Brave) identify Google Analytics as a tracker and block it. This includes information about where you live, your gender, interests, and “lifestyle choices”, among other information. Google Analytics is an extremely popular library that allows sites to track and record information about you across the Web.
Example: Google Analytics and The 4-Second Blank ScreenĪ common, representative example of trackers punishing privacy-protecting users is Google Analytics. Neither of these options is acceptable to Brave’s mission of a privacy-preserving, pleasant-to-use, user-focused Web. In such cases, web sites don’t hard-break, but become less pleasant to use.īecause of this problem, privacy tools are forced into a lose-lose situation: either break the website (but protect users’ privacy), or allow the invasion of privacy (but keep the site working as expected). Some trackers “punish” people using privacy tools by introducing pauses, slowdowns, or blank screens. This can manifest itself in other, subtler ways too. These sites mix tracking-related code with the core user-serving code blocking the former breaks assumptions made by the latter, breaking the site. Whatever the site’s intent, the effect is the same users are forced to choose between either protecting their privacy, or accessing a website. This can be the result of an intentional choice on the part of the site’s developers, or an unintended side effect of other choices. In some cases though, sites break if tracking-related code is blocked. In these cases (the vast majority of cases) Brave can protect your privacy, transparently and without issue. Tracker code is usually unrelated to the main things a site does, and so blocking tracking-related JavaScript doesn’t affect the rest of the site’s behavior. In most cases, just blocking these requests is enough. By blocking these requests, Brave prevents you from being followed around the Web, and from ad companies, data brokers, and other privacy-harming parties from recording your online activity. One of many ways Brave protects your privacy on the Web is by blocking requests to trackers. Problem: Blocking Trackers Sometimes Breaks Sites
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