Brave Today CDN request sent on startup without Brave News enabled on a clean profile

[srirambv]

Description

Brave Today CDN request sent on startup without Brave News enabled on a clean profile

Steps to Reproduce

1. Clean profile
2. Check startup calls
3. Open a new tab
4. Shows request sent for brave-today-cdn.brave.com even though News is not enabled

Actual result:

Brave.Today.CDN.Startup.Call.mov

Expected result:

No start up calls unless required or opted into

Reproduces how often:

Easy

Brave version (brave://version info)

Brave	1.48.151 Chromium: 109.0.5414.119 (Official Build) beta (arm64)
Revision	772095164c7d5d4e73160f858efed3b5e87eca83-refs/branch-heads/5414@{#1458}
OS	macOS Version 13.0 (Build 22A380)

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current release? Not checked
• Can you reproduce this issue with the beta channel? Yes
• Can you reproduce this issue with the nightly channel? Not checked

Other Additional Information:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? NA
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? NA
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? NA

Miscellaneous Information:

cc: @mattmcalister @rebron @mkarolin @aurangzaib048 @petemill

[kjozwiak]

Verified the above as well. It's been happening for some time now, Whenever you load a NTP, you'll get a connection to the following end points:

• http://brave-today-cdn.brave.com:433
• http://brave-today-cdn.brave.com/sources.global.json

Reproducible on the latest version of Brave as well:

Brave | 1.47.186 Chromium: 109.0.5414.119 (Official Build) (64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | 772095164c7d5d4e73160f858efed3b5e87eca83-refs/branch-heads/5414@{#1458}
OS | Windows 11 Version 22H2 (Build 22621.1194)

Example	Example	Example

[stephendonner]

Verified PASSED using

Brave	1.50.94 Chromium: 111.0.5563.64 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
Revision	c710e93d5b63b7095afe8c2c17df34408078439d-refs/branch-heads/5563@{#995}
OS	Windows 10 Version 22H2 (Build 19045.2728)

Steps:

1. installed 1.50.94
2. launched Charles Proxy
3. launched Brave Beta
4. examined Charles Proxy for outbound network requests on startup/profile settling
5. opened a new-tab page (with Brave News' opt-in dialog "peeking" up)
6. again checked Charles Proxy for outbound network requests to brave-today-cdn.brave.com

Confirmed no more outbound requests to brave-today-cdn.brave.com on app startup + new window

1.50.94	1.49.120