The developers of Brave Browser have introduced the Forgetful Browsing feature, which prevents sites from re-identifying users on repeat visits. This feature clears cookies, local storage, and cache data when the resource is closed, and prevents re-identification when people return to sites in the future. Users can enable Forgetful Browsing in the settings menu, either for all sites or only for certain resources. Brave’s storage for a particular site is cleared a few seconds after all tabs for that site are closed. This feature also clears explicitly stored values such as cookies, localStorage, or indexedDB, as well as indirectly stored values such as HTTP cache or DNS cache.
Surveillance by first parties is becoming less of a concern as users consciously choose which sites to visit and have better control over where their data goes. Although most modern browsers have tools for protection against tracking, Brave’s Forgetful Browsing is designed as an integrated tool that can be easily enabled and disabled without any user attention or special intervention. This feature applies to sites, not domains, and will be available in Brave desktop version 1.53 and Android version 1.54.
