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Web Compatibility Exceptions in Brave
This is a list of URL patterns that we have had to intentionally exclude from tracking protection due to site features breaking and user complaints. Note that these sites are not allowed access to third party cookies/storage.
We're in the process of adding options to control these exceptions as outlined in the "Summary of the plan" section of this issue.
Notes: We may be able to fix some of these issues by loading FB's SDK from a local file or polyfill instead of calling out to their domains. The SDK is often used for "Login with Facebook" buttons.
! Fully block Facebook everywhere but unbreak logins like from sites like quora.com and twitch.tv
! Note that options will be added to exclude these filters soon.
||facebook.com$third-party
||facebook.net$third-party
||staticxx.facebook.com$third-party
@@||connect.facebook.com/*/sdk.js$script
@@||connect.facebook.net/*/sdk.js$script
@@||facebook.com/connect/
@@||www.facebook.com/connect
@@||staticxx.facebook.com/connect/
@@||graph.facebook.com/
! Block fbcdn.net everywhere but allow Facebook embeds
||fbcdn.net$third-party,domain=~facebook.com
@@||staticxx.facebook.com/
@@||xx.fbcdn.net/
@@||www.facebook.com/*/plugin
@@||www.facebook.com/plugins/
@@||www.facebook.com/rsrc.php
@@||www.facebook.com/ajax/bz
Web compatibility observations without these exceptions:
- Embedded FB poss will not appear
- Share and like buttons will not appear
Related issues: https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/2014, https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/1208
! Block all twitter.com third-party but allow embedded tweets
! Note that options will be added to exclude these filters soon.
||twitter.com$third-party
@@||platform.twitter.com/
@@||syndication.twitter.com;
||twimg.com$third-party,domain=~twitter.com
@@||pbs.twimg.com/
@@||cdn.syndication.twimg.com/
Web compatibility observations without these exclusions:
- Embedded tweets show up without images/video. Example page: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jesseszewczyk/martha-stewart-scrambled-eggs-hack
- On some sites, embedded tweets and follow buttons don't show up at all.
Additional exceptions for cross-site-tracking rules are generally recorded in brave/adblock-lists/brave-unbreak.txt.
Brave ships a large number of filter rules to protect user privacy. These come from many projects, including EasyList, EasyPrivacy and uBlock Origin, among others.
Sometimes these rules not only block tracking related resources, but also resources related to desirable / benign website functionality, causing websites to "break". In those cases, Brave may add exception rules to allow some limited advertising and tracking resources, to "unbreak" a site.
This section details Brave's general policy on when to create such exceptions, how to tailor them, and for how long to maintain them.
- If a tracking or advertising resource is only needed to "unbreak" a small number of sites, Brave will generally prefer improving webcompat, over both some risk of privacy loss on that site, and dedicating significant developer time to custom-build a narrower solution.
- If a tracking or advertising resource is needed to "unbreak" a large number sites (web-scale), Brave will prefer dedicating developer or research resources to develop a privacy preserving solution.
- All privacy-risking resources excepted / allowed by Brave for web compatibility reasons will be tagged in Github so future solutions can improve the situation.
- revist: rules that were added that don't have a clear alternative, but which Brave hopes to develop general protections against in the future (at which point these exceptions may no longer be needed).
- revist after uBO parity: rules that were added to "unbreak" a website, but which may not be needed once Brave gains the ability to apply uBlock Origin's rules for replacing / rewriting resource requests.
Ping pes@brave.com / @pes10k with questions.
Brave makes a small number of exceptions, where we enable third party cookies to unbreak sites. These exceptions are all narrow, meaning we enabling sending cookies to a specific third party, when on a specific first party. These exceptions can be found in Brave's source code. We are working on a new issue that we expect will reduce or completely remove the need for these exceptions. The details and status of that work can be found in issue #8514.