Check if your Brave connect to 'Top Sites' on Android

Privacy
1

While setting up Brave on GrapheneOS, I found it connects to a few well-known websites by itself.

What I did:

  1. Install Brave via Aurora Store. Network for Brave was not allowed.

  2. Change settings including turning all off what’s on ‘Setting - Display - New Tab Page’, then allow network permission.

  3. On NextDNS log I can see it connects to popular websites in the country based on my IP address. This occurs even if your new tab is a black page.

  4. Enable ‘Show Top Sites’ on Setting - Display - New Tab Page

  5. Remove them by holding an icon and remove.

  6. Disable ‘Show Top Sites’

These ‘Top Sites’ doesn’t appear until Brave phones home.
This may be just to get an website icon.

1 Like
2

Happens to me as well. I’ve deleted the top sites but Brave still makes the connection to those sites upon start up. I believe it’s a known issue though I doubt it’s high on Braves priority list to fix (if at all), I just block them with NextDNS in the meantime.