Some recommendations for Brave Shields

[LordRishav]

Thank you for making Brave Browser, finally I can use a Chromium-based browser without worrying (too much) about privacy. However, even though Brave has Shields, I still have to use uBlock Origin (whose powerful capabilities will soon be removed because Manifest v3) for certain tasks not possible with Shields. I have some feature requests for Brave Shields which will make it a lot better in my opinion.

• Add option to configure per-site Shields settings in the settings as well. Sometimes I want to change Shields setting for a particular site/sites without having to go through the hassle of opening each site individually and changing settings there. It would be easier to have it in the settings. (Add Brave's Shields setting to brave://settings/content #12782)
• Add option to add custom, auto-updating filterlists. There are some lists that are not yet in Brave Shelds but are still useful, and I have to use uBlock for them. I can add the contents of the list to user filters, but it won't auto-update them. (Support for custom filter lists in Shields #8107)
• Add uMatrix/uBlock Origin Advanced-like Dynamic Filtering. This is a very important feature and one of the main reasons I am still using uBlock on Brave. There are some domains (for example google.com) that I don't want to be pinged on some sites. However these domains are not malware/adware domains that will be included in any filter lists, and then I would want to manually block certain domains on certain sites. It would be even better to have uMatrix-like filtering, which takes it a step further and only allows certain types of content from such sites.
• Ability to block 3rd party scripts and frames. This feature may come with dynamic filtering, but if you people decide not to add dynamic filtering, it would be better to have atleast an option to block 3rd party scripts and frames, which are mostly useless except on some sites.

[bsclifton]

cc: @rebron @ShivanKaul @anthonypkeane

[ryanbr]

1. Maybe a better option, Having Brave Sync remember your per-site settings
2. Support for custom filter lists in Shields #8107
3. Most could be handled in brave://adblock here
4. You could block via brave://adblock (example, *$script,third-party,domain=nzherald.co.nz) The downside it would break many sites (Like CDN services which would be considered third-party), with people forgetting they enabled such a feature.

[LordRishav]

@ryanbr 3,4: Yes, it can be handled in brave://adblock, but it really needs a more easier UI directly through the Shields menu

[Tonev]

@ryanbr

I think @LordRishav has something like below in mind:

brave://shields/siteSettings

->

somewebsite.com:

Trackers & ads blocked: Aggressive / Standard / Allowed
Connections upgraded to HTTPS: Enabled / Disabled
Scripts blocked: Enabled / Disabled
Cookies: Cross-site blocked / All blocked / All allowed
Fingerprinting: Aggressive / Standard / Allowed

If I understand the suggestion correctly, Community user requested something similar some time ago:
https://community.brave.com/t/brave-adblock-shields/263494

Having a dedicated page where Brave Shields site-specific settings are configurable would be great. Right now we have to manually go through every website we might have made any change if we want to change settings.

[Toriigate]

@ryanbr One of uBO's big advantages is that it has a graphic UI which allows easy creation of dynamic filters. Brave's implementation is probably equally effective, but it is also text-based and rather clumsy hence user-unfriendly... Hopefully something visual can be added as well...?

[PhysicsIsAwesome]

Since Javascript and 3rd party injection is a major concern in terms of browser fingerprinting, tracking and malware, but simply disabling it causes a lot of websites to break, dynamic filtering as available in uBO's medium mode should be a high priority feature of every web browser, that cares about privacy.

Especially the availability of local and global columns/rules is a really valuable feature in uBO. As an example, it allows to use Google resources, where it is absolutely needed, like on YouTube, but allows to block it on most other sites, where it is mainly used to do tracking.

See https://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Nataliia.Bielova/papers/Lape-etal-20-TWEB.pdf and other papers on browser fingerprinting on the importance of Javascript.

Brave is an awesome browser, but the available Brave Shield user interface is too inconvenient to block scripts by default and dynamically allowing the needed ones and lacks important features of uBO.

[LordRishav]

@PhysicsIsAwesome They should also look into integrating a system like uMatrix instead, which is uBO Advanced Mode but much more fine-grained and by the same developer. Like you said, YouTube requires Google's resources, but allowing all of Google altogether would be privacy risk as well, as it would bring in the scripts. All that Youtube needs, is XHR from googlevideo.com, and nothing else from other google-* domains to play videos (if you're not signed in). Allowing googlevideo.com would mean allowing everything from googlevideo.com on uBlock, and not just the XHR.

This will seem complicated for the end user, but the end user doesn't even tinker with the adblocker anyway, and blocking 3rd party scripts by default would mean breakage.

[Tonev]

I was digging Github for something else but saw a wonderful ticket by @pes10k which is still not given a priority, unfortunately.

#10829

IMO, a wonderful Brave Shields addition.

[jcosentino]

Would it be possible to separate Adblocking and Trackers blocking? With uBlock Origin, I always use adblocking but not trackers blocking (for eg., EasyPrivacy) because a lot of sites break in my experience. I still use an adblocker instead of Brave Shields for this very reason.