By Rick Findlay March 13, 2022
Brave Browser is set to launch a feature that prevents “bounce tracking,” a technique used by sneaky websites to circumvent privacy features, such as third-party cookie blocking, to continue tracking users’ web activity.
“Bounce tracking is a way for trackers to track you even if browser-level privacy protections are in place,” Brave’s announcement post explains.
“Privacy respecting browsers try to prevent sites from learning about your behaviors and activities on other sites. Bounce tracking attempts to circumvent these protections by gaming how your browser behaves when you browse from one site to another.”
To prevent bounce tracking, Brave developed a defense mechanism called “Unlinkable Bouncing,” which curtails the bounce tracking websites’ ability to track users by creating a link between previous and current web activity. In other words, Unlinkable Bouncing makes websites forget a user’s web activity.
Synder described Unlinkable Bouncing as an application of “first-party ephemeral storage,” which is a defense mechanism the tech industry is working on to ensure websites are more forgetful of users’ web activity.
“This is a set of techniques that allow sites to remember (or identify) you only for as long as you’re visiting the site,” it’s explained. “It’s similar to – though more powerful and user-friendly than – clearing your browser storage every time you leave a site.”
Unlinkable Bouncing is already available in the browser’s experimental build Brave Nightly. It is expected to be available in the upcoming release, version 1.37.