What do you all think about this?
7 Likes
Fewer than 0.5% of Brave users are using Strict fingerprinting protection mode, based on our privacy-preserving telemetry data.
The telemetry is opt out so most people using strict mode are likely not being counted there.
13 Likes
I use it and I can count with one hand the websites that gave me trouble over the span of several years
5 Likes
Hereās the pull request for more context
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/31229
2 Likes
This was my thought as well, obviously people who go out of their way to use enhanced privacy settings will also be less likely to leave telemetry enabled.
BUT even if that wasnāt the case. Brave claims over 50 million users, meaning that 0.5% would still be half a quarter million users using strict mode which is still a decent sized crowd to blend in with (quite possibly more than the entire active userbase of Mullvad Browser)
I donāt recall strict mode breaking websites in my experience.
In my opinion this is the reason Brave is discontinuing it, (the other stated reasons seem like just attempts to justify the decision):
Maintaining Strict mode and debugging why some websites are broken on Brave takes our engineersā time away from focusing on default privacy protections that can benefit all of our users.
2 Likes
I see youāve been keeping up with that github issue for a few months now, Iām curious what your perspective is on this change?
1 Like
They already warn that it can break websites, perhaps they could simply stop dedicating resources to debug such issues
2 Likes
Iāve used Brave as my main browser with aggressive fingerprinting enabled for around 3 years and have only had issues on google docs and maybe two or three other sites. Iām of the opinion that many features of aggressive fingerprinting mode can be moved into normal fingerprinting mode, or made into their own toggles in shields, due to how few sites Iāve seen break from this feature.
Dark mode detection (makes sites think youāre using light mode) - should be made an option in shield settings since many users are confused by this feature or donāt like that it canāt be toggled on its own.
For navigator.useragent farbling, there may be multiple reasons why Brave doesnāt want to hide the userās browser by default, but in my use case, I havenāt seen many reasons why this would be the case, so Iām of the opinion that this feature could be slowly implemented into default fingerprinting protection.
For WebGl fingerprinting, I would love to see this implemented by default, but I understand that it may lead to site breakage. Especially for browser games and sites heavily reliant on WebGl, itās hard to not break sites while maintaining privacy.
Overall, Iām happy with how they handled this, Iām a big fan of Braveās goal of making users all have a similar fingerprint, so this inches us closer to that goal. Also I was happy with their blog post and their outlook on focusing resources towards a single option and having that as the default. The main result that I see coming from this is more privacy protections enabled by default, and more privacy options that can be toggled by users.
5 Likes
Brave is actually working on automating fixing filter lists that cause site breakage, so that should fix your issue 
This is still very early in development and they havenāt revealed anything yet.
Full thread for context:
https://nitter.1d4.us/BrendanEich/status/1747457098697556140#m
1 Like
read: most people who configure Brave using the PG recommendations 
2 Likes
Itās around 250 thousands, or 1/4 of a million.
3 Likes
50 million users, meaning that 0.5% would still be half a million users
Itās around 250 thousands, or 1/4 of a million.
Oops thatās embarassingā¦ 
Youāre right.
(Iād say āmath is hardā but in this case the math was dead simple and I still got it wrong 
)
5 Likes
Hence why they disable a feature first before such āreplacementā enter production builds, or is mature enough ?
1 Like
Are you referring to them removing aggressive fingerprinting or their Star++ software? The two are correlated, but not directly linked.
Dare to explain?
@wojciechxtx The whole purpose of their research into their project with the Star++ protocol is to fix site breakage with their filter lists, and a big reason they listed for removing strict fingerprinting was because of site breakage. So a lot of resources go into fixing site breakage, and this research could potentially lead to advancements in fingerprinting protection with easier ways to fix broken sites that result from this better protection.
2 Likes
Which site breakage? I have used strict fingerprinting protection for a long time and almost never had a site break because of it. I canāt believe that this is a big problem in practice, especially since most users using strict protection should be knowledgeable enough to try the other protection levels to fix the problem for a website.
3 Likes
Same here with strict mode. Seldom problems.
But Iām thinking more in direction Google Manifest V3
This seems to be the consensus among everyone who actually uses strict fingerprinting protection, at least here on Privacy Guides, and on the Techlore forum.
Maybe we just have a higher tolerance for what we consider ābreakagesā, or maybe we are less likely to visit the sort of website that would be broken by strict fingerprinting protection. OR Brave is just exxagerating the point since they made the decision to discontinue it and need to justify that decision to users. My guess is that there is a little bit of truth to each of these reasons.
3 Likes
IMO, I agree with the reason to better maintain and improve the standard fingerprint blocking mode in Brave, which is already stricter than other browsers, and itās on by default, so an average Joe who downloads and uses the browser as-is would be protected.
For example, on https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/,
- I tested with Brave 1.61.120 (standard fingerprinting block), my result: you have strong protection against Web tracking. I have a randomized fingerprint.
- But with Firefox 121.0 (standard fingerprinting block), my result: you have some protection against Web tracking, but it has some gaps. I have a unique fingerprint.
Whether anyone who uses strict fingerprinting protection mode in any of the browsers ever experienced any site breakage on their end, itās hard to tell whether thatās the case for other users, as our usage differs from one another. And by combining everyoneās problems together, that could lead to a ton of issues.
I have never experienced an issue with fingerprinting blocking yet, but I always use the standard mode (default), so I canāt tell.
Nevertheless, itās the fact that strict fingerprint blocking in browsers could break some sites, according to both Brave and Firefox, as shown in their settings.