I don’t believe there is actual tracking going on, but when Brave is configured to be ‘aggressive’ about blocking trackers, it will report 1 blocked tracker on the Forum. Unfortunately I don’t know how to dig deeper here, but don’t like the optics of it.
Interestingly enough, when switching it down a step and then back up to aggressive it stops complaining. Let’s keep an eye on it.
Interesting. Just gave it a test. Even if I set it to “aggressive” here, it just shows 0 blocked. Although it’s not on Linux but Brave on Windows without logging in on the forum.
Yeah, I don’t know what that was. I can’t reproduce it either. Might have been a Brave bug maybe.
It doesn’t tell you which tracker it supposedly blocked? I would think that’s a pretty basic feature of any kind of content blocker.
maybe related.
https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/groups-privacy-policy-moderators-do-not-load/18275
On which page that happens ? main page ? other ?
Which filter are enabled (if any) ? (settings > shields > content filtering)
Except the page mentioned on my feedback topic, I didn’t see any blocked trackers elsewhere.
(I suspect a false positive due to the file name (for my feedback))
If that happen again, open the advanced controls of the shield and click on the number to see the blocked tracker.
I just got the blocked tracker. Definitly a Brave bug.
To reproduce.
Visit github.com. (2 trackers are blocked: one of them is https://api.github.com/_private/browser/stats.
While on github, in the address bar, replace the github address with forum.qubes-os.org.
(to reproduce the bug, you must replace the github website address (or click on a bookmark while you are on github) (no bug if you open a new tab)).
Now, on the forum you got the blocked tracker. the same one (api github …).
In fact, it’s not related to the forum, if you replace the github address with any website, you will have that bug.
Clicking on categories or topic doesn’t make it disappear (because discourse doesn’t refresh the page).
But a simple refresh make it go away. (when you change from agressive to block, it automatically refresh the page).
I am not using Brave, but Firefox with uBlock Origin shows only one external domain/ip being requested on the forum: discoursehosting.net. Not a great idea to provide Qubes OS user’s data (IP, browser useragent and fingerprint in general and etc.) to this discoursehosting.net if it is not under Qubes OS control.
Except this I do not see any cross-domain requests, nor additional trackers.
P.S. note that any site can provide different output and act differently for each user if it wants to do so.
While I’d love to live in a world where you don’t give user data to anyone in practice that is difficult. DiscourseHosting (aka. communiteq) are the ones who host our forum. It’s a lot of work to maintain infrastructure. And the Qubes team does not have the bandwidth.
So what we do instead is make it easy for people to use it in pseudonymous / anonymous ways. The forum works perfectly under the Tor Browser and we don’t have any restrictions on creating temporary accounts.
pretty much