The privacy-focused web browser Brave has introduced a new anti-tracking feature called “Forgetful Browsing”. This prevents websites from re-identifying you when you revisit the website. This feature clears cookies, cache, and data in local storage for the website as soon as you close the tab.
I am sure you can guess that learning cookies, cache, and data in local storage will also log you out of the website. So, you will have to log in again when you revisit it.
“Forgetful Browsing clears both explicitly stored values (e.g. cookies, localStorage, or indexedDB) and indirectly stored values (e.g. HTTP cache or DNS cache),” says Brave in the announcement post.
The feature is being added to Brave browser desktop version 1.53, and Android version 1.54. The feature aims to protect user privacy on the Internet.
Brave says that most modern web browsers already have similar features or tools available, but these options are either too generic or too specific, or entirely hidden from the users. This is the reason most users don’t actually use them. This is the reason Brave decided to make Forgetful Browsing an integrated tool in the browser.
The Forgetful Browsing feature can be enabled for all the websites using global default settings or you can enable it only for a specified list of sites. For enabling Forgetful Browsing for a single website, open the website and click the shields icon in the URL bar. Click Advanced Controls and enable Forget me when I close this site.
To set Forgetful Browsing as a global default, visit brave://settings/shields in Brave browser and enable Forget me when I close a site.
Brave confirmed that Forgetful Browsing is set per site, not set per domain. So, you can configure site1.domain.com to use aggressive fingerprinting protections and site2.domain.com to use standard fingerprinting protections.
The company also claims that Forgetful Browsing is the first of several upcoming features that will help users manage and improve privacy on the web.
