Secure Settings for Brave

Secure Settings for Brave

Brave Release 1.62.153 (Jan 25, 2024)

On-Startup (Get Started > On-Startup)

Change “Continue where you left off” to “Open the New Tab page”

Appearance

Disable:

  • Show Brave News button
  • Show Brave Wallet button
  • Show Sidebar button
  • Show VPN button

**Disable: **

  • Show autocomplete suggestions in address bar Top Sites Browsing History Bookmarks

Privacy & Security

Private Windows with Tor Connectivity in Brave are just regular private windows that use Tor as a proxy. Brave does NOT implement most of the privacy protections from Tor Browser.

Disable:

  • Allow privacy-preserving product analytics (P3A)
  • Automatically send daily usage ping to Brave
  • Private window with Tor

Clear Browsing Data

On exit: All

Site and Shields Settings

Location > Don’t allow sites to see your location Camera > Don’t allow sites to use your camera Microphone > Don’t allow sites to use your microphone Notifications > Don’t allow sites to send notifications

Additional permissions: Automatic downloads > Don’t allow sites to automatically download multiple files USB devices > Don’t allow sites to connect to USB devices File editing > Don’t allow sites to edit files or folders on your device Clipboard > Don’t allow sites to see text or images on your clipboard

Cookies and Site Data: Block third-party cookies - enabled Enable: Clear cookies and site data when you close all windows

Sites that can always use cookies Add sites here that you always use (E.g. email, Twitter) - Don’t go crazy, it’s best to keep this to a minimum!

By default the following URLs are allowed: https://[*.]firebaseapp.com https://accounts.google.com

Note: You can’t delete them unless you disable the use of third-party cookies for legacy Google Sign-In and Facebook logins and embedded posts.

Go to: brave://settings/socialBlocking Disable:

  • Allow use of third-party cookies for legacy Google Sign-In
  • Allow Facebook logins and embedded posts
  • Allow Twitter embedded tweets

Shields

Allow use of third-party cookies for legacy Google Sign-In Allow Facebook logins and embedded posts Allow Twitter embedded tweets

Autofill and passwords

Disable:

  • Allow auto-fill in private windows

Payment methods Disable:

  • Save and fill payment methods
  • Allow sites to check if you have payment methods saved

System

Use WireGuard protocol in Brave VPN - enabled

Note: brave://about/ will show all possible settings

Recommended Add-Ons

I don’t like to add too many add-ons, since the more you add will increase the potential of one of them being vulnerable to attack or making your browser more unique (it’s fingerprint). Panopticlick is a useful tool to see how unique your browser fingerprint is.

Here are the 3 essential add-ons, that I would install without question:

  1. uBlock Origin