Brave Browser Discussion & Update Thread

Brave Browser v1.18.78 Released (January 8, 2021)
Download / Download (Github)

 

Thanks, and my bad. I forgot that I had disabled uBlock on google.com, but I still got see them, but seems like Fanboy's Annoyance did the trick. I will continue to monitor this.

 

My biggest problem is this.
How to get around or get rid of Brave's "secure" DNS?

It's off, but anyway, Brave is leaking through its "secure" DNS.

 

What do you mean by "leaking"? "Off" means you're using whatever your system DNS is.

 

I'm using a VPN app, but, just because of BRAVE, my internet traffic goes through the VPN servers and the Brave servers.
Those OTHER servers are not of my ISP provider. It's coming from BRAVE.
And I don't like it.

Here is the DNS status with Mair, (or Vivaldi, or Chrome, etc...) and VPN.



Here is the DNS status with Brave and the same VPN.

 

Is that from the site of your VPN?

 

I'm using several web-sites to check on my browser anonymity, starting with doileak, browserleaks, ipleak.org, etc...
Here is more.
I've checked for Brave's "leaks of privacy" on my two other Win10 computers.
It's even much much worse.
Something in the innards of Brave is TOTALLY WRONG!!!!
I have never ever seen that kind of uncontrollable and disastrous privacy breach with any other browsers!

It's only my personal (but a very strong) opinion about Brave.

I'm going to completely uninstall Brave and review its situation later.
I don't give a ... about any Bitcoining possibilities of Brave.
Once again, at this moment, Brave, installed on my three (different makes) Win10 computers is leaking my privacy info like ...

 

Hello, Zmechys! I'm an engineer on the Brave team, and would like to better understand the issue you're facing.

By default, Brave doesn't route any requests though an alternative DNS—it will use whatever your system is configured to use.

One thing you can try is to momentarily set aside your primary Brave profile for testing purposes:

1. Close all instances of Brave
   
2. Open the Run dialog (Windows Key + R), type %localappdata%, and press Enter
3. Open the BraveSoftware folder
4. Rename the Brave-Browser folder to Brave-Browser-Backup
5. Relaunch Brave, and immediately navigate away from the Welcome screen to your test domain

If you still see multiple DNS providers in your results, please make sure nothing in running in parallel to Brave that might impact these results.

To restore your original profile of Brave:

1. Close all instances of Brave
2. Delete the Brave-Browser folder in the BraveSoftware directory
3. Rename Brave-Browser-Backup to Brave-Browser

I am happy to assist further, however I am able.

Sampson

 

I just tested Windscribe with doileak. There was no DNS leak regardless if the brave secure dns was enable or not.

What VPN are you using? Maybe that’s the issue?

Edit: Tried browserleaks. And that one did showed dns leaks if secure dns is enabled

@Sampson
You might want to test this site with a vpn and secure dns (on and off)
https://browserleaks.com/ip

 

I need to re-install Brave, and, then, I'll re-test it again.

My issues with uninstalled BRAVE.

First, let's start with BRAVE using a (paid) VPN proxy - It could be IVACY, FastestVPN, VeePN, VPN Unlimited, etc...
I have those VPN proxies installed on Edge, Maiar, Vivaldi, Chrome, Dissenter, Firefox, and, of course, BRAVE.
I have tested ALL above mentioned browsers for any DNS leaks with just PROXY VPN, and NO BROWSER had any DNS leaks but BRAVE.
And the results looked like,
9 DNS servers from my OFFICIAL ISP, and on the very bottom, that VPN proxy DNS.
N.B. DNS Leak test site could not find any leaks; therefore, I've stopped using it.
https://www.dnsleaktest.com/results.html

I've tried to remove any kind of extensions from BRAVE - but it did nothing to the DNS leaks.
I've tried various possibilities/variants of "USE Secure DNS". No luck.

I've re-installed BRAVE.
And here is what I see when I use the same VPN proxy.

VIVALDI's results from doileak





Vivaldi's results from perfect-privacy.com



Now, here we have BRAVE's tests from doileak.


Brave's results from Perfect Privacy.


Brave's results from ipleak.org
What's funny, it does not even show my VPN Proxy DNS.


The following snapshot shows the BRAVE "SECURE DNS" settings.

 

I have Windscribe VPN and Windscribe VPN Proxy.
I've re-installed, once again, Brave, added that Windscribe VPN Proxy and
NOTHING has changed. Brave is profusely leaking my DNS servers that I would prefer to hide.
Only BRAVE leaks.

Some short story.
A few months ago, I've noticed that Firefox started leaking my ISP DNS servers with a/any VPN desktop app; therefore, for my privacy sake, I've started adding a VPN Proxy with Firefox, and started looking for better choices of browsers.
I've tried Vivaldi and liked it. Started checking BRAVE.
My VPN "architecture" was/is - a "A" VPN desktop app and a "B" VPN browser add-on/extension.

Pretty soon, after some Brave's update, I've started noticing issues with "leaking" Brave.
I have not had any "leaking DNS" with Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, Maiar.

I've stopped using BRAVE but was always updating, thanks to Sumo.


It's not only BRAVE leaks while in use on three, different make Win10 computers.
Those computers are located in two separate locations, different networks.

P.S. Just an interesting observation.
I've uninstalled Brave with Reg Organizer the first time.
When I re-installed Brave, I had the same extensions, the same setup for BRAVE.
Second time, I've used Soft Organizer to COMPLETELY remove Brave.
Guess what.
With my re-installation, I've got my "old" Brave again - extensions, settings, bookmarks, etc...

Third time, I've decided to uninstall it with Smarty Uninstaller. I've removed everything, but...
When I reinstalled Brave again, I got the same settings, extensions, bookmarks, etc...
It's impossible to TOTALLY remove Brave.

 

It's not impossible to remove Brave; those applications aren't deleting the profile data. I never use these types of apps, for this very reason.

Note: If you want to really be thorough, download Process Monitor and run it whenever you're installing a new program. It can give you a summary of all directories created/modified, and registry entries created/updated by the installation process

Once you've uninstalled Brave, delete %localappdata%/BraveSoftware, and that will wipe your old profile data off the device as well.

I'm looking more into the DNS concern; am I correct to assume that you had Brave configured to use Cloudflare 1.1.1.1, and had no other software working in parallel which could interrupt this configuration?

 

Thank you for working with me.
Yes, my uploaded snapshots were produced with Brave using Cloudfare 1.1.1.1, but...
This time, my Secure DNS is off, but my Brave - with Windsribe VPN Proxy - is leaking on ipleak.org, doileak, perfect-privacy, etc...



Edit.

I've just tried Brave with the current ISP.
The same result - it's leaking DNS.

 

Update: I've submitted additional details to https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/12575#issuecomment-759850182, an issue submitted which first identified this behavior in our Android builds. This issue appears to impact Android, Windows, and macOS builds of Brave; we will absolutely make sure it receives immediate attention. Thank you again, zmechys, for bringing it to our attention!​

zmechys, there is definitely something wrong here with Brave. I'm doing some more testing, and have already pinged some of our folks from the privacy/security team.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention!

Sampson

 

Thank you for helping me to start using Brave again.