I wanted to try out the desktop version of the Brave browser. Its setup according to the privacy guide directions and I have sendoff usage data disabled, but if I open the browser sitting on the home page, windows is reporting 100KB ofdataa going out every 5 or so seconds.
Running the same test with Edge, no network usage is reported.
The only extention on Brave is bitwarden, which is also installed on edge.
Any thoughts? This is the IP it is sending to: 104.18.12.33
Edit: on reboot of process, I see the hostname: ec2-35-163-26-5.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com
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I read an article a while ago that put pretty convincing arguments forward to not use Brave. You should be able to find it if you search on Lemmy
This one I think:
I dont think I can take that article seriously when they recommend Chromium with uBlock as an alternative 💀
I mean, agreed, but Chromium and Chrome are different. Just in case you thought they are the same, wasn’t exactly clear to me. But I also might remember wrong, in my memory Chromium is the base for Chrome and has a lot less Google stuff baked in.
I’m aware that they’re different. Chromium is a much better option that Chrome, but not a good option overall for privacy. If you like Chromium, try UnGoogled Chromium!
What is wrong with Chromium with uBlock origin? I was a Brave user then after all their controversies I moved on to Chromium. I use FF primarily though, only Chromium for websites that have issues
Chromium bundles a lot of google telemetry into it, even though it is the open source base of Chrome. Ungoogled Chromium is a recommendation that’s actually private. I also only use Chromium for websites that have issues.
I have tried Ungoogled Chromium before. While it’s undeniably better in security and privacy, there were also many things that are not so convenient such as installing extensions, streaming with widevine DRM etc. For a program that serves the sole purpose of filling the compatibility gap, the fact that it doesn’t “just works” makes it less optimal than vanilla Chromium for me
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I’m not ruling out user error yet. 🫠
Use wireshark?
Its encrypted traffic, just getting a bunch of bytes. I don’t see the server in the brave git repo.
Idk, something in there is sending data over what looks like a web socket.
Install mitmproxy and set the proxy settings to mitm. Maybe it will work.
I’d uninstall Brave if you care about privacy. Also check out the creator…
Could it be a connectivity check for captive portals?
What does that mean? Still, Edge doesn’t seem to do this.
It seem that’s a cloudflare load balancer IP so it doesn’t really give any clues as to where the data is going.
Yeah, not sure. I see a post on reddit about Firefox hitting a similar host, but not sure it’s related.
Does anyone else see this?
Using a privte tab doesn’t send anything out when idle.
It could be a notification for a webpage? I think it has to do websockets for that, but I’m not 100% sure
I’ll try clearing data, maybe your on the right track.
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Do you know where this setting is? I’m not seeing it
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Yes, this is disabled.
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Brave Homepage? Sync disabled? Update check?
This is sitting on the new tab page. No news or any widgets. Sync is never enabled. I though about update check, but that’s really offten to keep checking.
I didn’t get to try out other suggestions here yet, will on Monday when I’m back at the computer.
Oh i forgot, when in the private window, there is no traffic when sitting at the new tab page.
Try removing bitwarden and do the same test. Ibet bitwarden is checking for updates that it needs to sync.
OP says it is trying to contact some aws server. Bitwarden afaik does not use aws. Brave probably is.
Apologies…I misread that
I did this, no change.
You can likely inspect the traffic if you use Wireshark.
I did, but it looked like https traffic as it was labeled as this and the data was just bytes
