Privacy Guides @lemmy.one CCMan1701A @startrek.website 1y ago

Brave using network when idle

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

33 comments

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:
  
  https://www.kevinmuldoon.com/do-not-use-brave-browser/
  
  I dont think I can take that article seriously when they recommend Chromium with uBlock as an alternative 💀
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...
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?
Could it be a connectivity check for captive portals?
- What does that mean? Still, Edge doesn't seem to do this.
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.
maybe you have opt-out logs enabled? try to disable them 😃
- Do you know where this setting is? I'm not seeing it
  
  it is in privacy and security section in settings. allow analytics, PING and send everyday data.
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.
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

33 comments