In addition to rewarding users for viewing ads, the Brave browser offers a host of privacy and security features. One of those features is Brave Shields, which helps block ads and trackers to enhance your browsing experience with an extra layer of security. Discover What is Brave Shields? How to turn it on or off
Let’s fully explore what exactly Brave Shields does, how it works, and how to turn it on or off in Brave Browser.
What is Brave Shields?
What is Brave Shields?
Browser trackers are tags on web pages that collect information about your online habits and preferences to understand your online behavior. Shields is a feature in Brave Browser that protects your privacy by ensuring that your usage is harder to track from site to site.
Various websites include all kinds of trackers that can follow you across the web. Shields blocks this type of content masquerading as “trackers”, keeping you safe and speeding up your browsing experience.
Brave Shield protects the user through the following means:
- It blocks most of the ads and trackers that come with various websites.
- Discard cookies other than the ones from the sites you actually visit.
- It makes your browser more difficult to recognize and track without cookies.
- Updates you to secure connections when the website supports them.
- Blocks malicious code and malicious sites.
While the default Shields settings give you solid protection without making it difficult to navigate. Also, you can adjust the settings in the Shields panel.
It is important to understand what each setting does and how it affects your browser, as some settings can increase your privacy in multiple ways, but can also harm the website and the way it is presented to you. Let’s understand how to use these settings in the best possible way.
How to use Brave Shields?
When you browse a specific website, Brave Shields can be accessed in the toolbar at the top. once you do click on the Brave Shields icon you will land on the Shields menu.
When you access Brave Shields while on a website, you will be greeted with the plain view default , where you can activate or desactivate the Brave Shields feature and see how it protects you by blocking trackers.
You can explore these protection features by clicking More information . You can also see the advanced options by clicking Advanced view.
Understanding Brave Shields
Here’s an overview of how each feature works, and in later sections of this article, we’ll learn how to adjust these features to meet your specific needs.
1. Blocked ads and trackers
Brave Browser blocks all intrusive ads and trackers from every website you visit. By blocking ads and trackers, Brave significantly speeds up your experience while browsing the web. The lack of ads reduces the amount of data required for the page, resulting in a faster experience.
two. Updated connections to HTTPS
HTTP is a protocol used to obtain documents over the Internet and facilitates any data exchange on the Internet. It’s an unencrypted connection that’s fine for basic activities or visiting public websites that don’t require you to send them any login information.
On the other hand, HTTPS is an encrypted connection that encrypts the sensitive data you upload online, such as username and password. It prevents people from eavesdropping on it.
The ” Updated connections to HTTPS ” upgrades connections from HTTP to HTTPS. When shields are enabled, Brave will use an encrypted HTTPS connection on every site that supports the same.
3. Blocked scripts
Scripts are technologies that browsers use to display and render all the colorful content you see on websites. You may have come across the term “JavaScript” – it is a tool that many sites require to display all interactive content.
Brave allows JavaScript to run by default. If you have reasons to block the website from displaying only some forms of content, you can choose to block some scripts. We will explore more about script blocking in the following sections.
Four. Cross-site cookies blocked
In this feature, Brave only accepts and allows its own cookies and blocks others on the site. First party cookies are stored directly by the website you are currently viewing.
These cookies make it easier for website owners to collect analytics, remember language settings, and other features to provide a good user experience.
5. Fingerprints locked
Websites can identify how your browser and device differ from other users on the Internet through a combination of traits/data that are unique and exclusive to you. This activity can sometimes also take place without the use of cookies, and this process is called fingerprinting .
When Brave Shields blocks fingerprints, it becomes more difficult for websites to collect and capture data that recognizes how your device/browser is unique from the rest.
How to change Brave Shield settings
For most users, the default settings of Brave Shields are enough to improve security and privacy. But if you are well acquainted with the protection features of Brave Shield explained above, you can change the shield defaults.
Step 1: Click on the Brave Shields logo on the website of your interest.
Step 2: Then click Change global shield defaults .
Alternatively, you can also land on the settings page by typing brave://settings/shields in the address bar of Brave Browser.
Let’s go over the different ways that Brave allows us to change the default settings in Brave Shield.
1. look and feel
The way the Brave Shields menu is presented to you can be changed using two options in the settings menu:
Show the number of locked items
By default, Brave Shield displays the number of locked items in the menu. Turn off the toggle if you don’t want to see the same.
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Change the default view
In the previous section of the article, we reviewed the simple and advanced views of the Brave Shields menu. You can select the default view based on your choice.
two. Trackers and ad blocking
By default, ad and tracker blocking is set to standard default . There is also another mode called mode Aggressive . You can switch between the modes as shown below.
- Standard : In this mode, Brave does not block its own ads that are part of the sites you visit. Only those belonging to other sources on websites are blocked.
- Aggressive : enabling this mode will block all Site ads and trackers, including first party ads. One drawback to this option is that some sites may detect features that disable self-ads and won’t let you access the content unless you disable the feature.
- disabled : this mode will disable the function ad and tracker blocking and will allow ads and trackers from all sources.
3. Update the connection to HTTPS
In the previous section of this article, we discussed the difference between the HTTP and HTTPS protocols used to serve websites.
Since HTTPS offers encryption, Brave Shield will, by default, try to upgrade your connection to it. In case you want to disable this feature for any reason, you can disable the option.
4. Block scripts
In the previous section we understood why scripts are used in a web browser. If you have reason to block the website from displaying only some forms of content, you can block the scripts using Brave Shields.
First of all, you need to activate the switch, as shown in the image above. And then you can load a website of your choice and access the Brave Shields menu to check the number of blocked scripts.
It is recommended that most of the normal users disable the Block Scripts feature as your website will not be able to display media content like images and videos without Block Scripts.
Brave Shields offers you two ways in which you can block cookies: you can block only the cross-site cookies or block all cookies .
- between sites only Accept and allow only first party cookies (cookies that originate from the sites you are actually present on) and block all other cookies.
- All – Blocks all cookies from the site you are visiting, including first-party cookies.
- disabled : Accept own and third-party cookies on the site.
6. fingerprint lock
Brave Shields offers you three modes in which you can control fingerprints: strict mode The mode standard (default) Y disabled.
- Standard: it only allows first-party fingerprinting, which means that only the site you are currently visiting can take your fingerprints, and it does not incorporate fingerprints from third-party sites.
- Strict: this mode blocks all fingerprint attempts, including your own fingerprints. Although this option increases privacy, it can also cause additional compatibility issues with websites.
- Allow all fingerprints: allows the taking of fingerprints both own and third parties.
This is how you can control the protection features offered by Brave Shields. As mentioned above, most users would not need to change the default Brave Shield settings, but if you want to experiment and know what these settings do, you can go ahead with the same.
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How to turn Brave Shields on or off
Brave Browser, by default, enables Brave Shield on every website you visit. However, sometimes the protection features of Brave Shield tend to break the way a site is displayed to you. So in case you don’t want to enable Brave Shields, here is the process to disable Brave Shields.
Enable or disable Brave Shields for a particular website
Step 1 : Visit the website you want to disable Brave Shield on and click the shield icon .
Step 2 : turn off the toggle » Shields UP for this site «.
Doing so will disable the Brave Shields feature for that particular site. Turn on the toggle in case you want to re-enable it.
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Enable or disable Brave Shields for all websites
While the above two steps help to disable the functions of a single…
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