Brave-browser: Enable Do Not Track (DNT) by default?

[bsclifton]

Carried over from https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/7119
(original issue has a good discussion)

[tomlowenthal]

Current plan of record:

Brave is a privacy-focused browser designed to prevent online tracking. Turning it on by default is an accurate reflection of the user's intent when they installed Brave. But turning it on by default would only let us hide in the (smaller) fraction of Chrome users who have turned it on rather than the (larger) fraction who haven't. That's probably a worse privacy outcome.

So: we'll leave it as a user-configured switch in settings until we stop hiding among Chrome users by enabling the Brave UA on a platform-by-platform basis. The setting notes that DNT requests are rarely followed by sites and that there's some additional distinctiveness from having the setting on.

[scottgearyau]

Why is this still not an option in mobile version? Seems weird that it was moved from release.

Surely the benefits of having this enabled highly outweigh those that they do for not, regardless of whether or not a user (advertiser) can 'distinguish they are using Brave rather than Chrome'.

[tomlowenthal]

The benefits are very limited — most sites ignore the DNT signal completely. On the other hand, making Brave more distinctive causes direct harm as people are tracked across the web.

[Peacock365]

@tomlowenthal is right. Like, 99% of all websites ignore this setting anyway. But if you enable the "Do not track" header, it might raise entropy, making you (somewhat ironically) more easily trackable than before. This issue can be closed, if you ask me.

[bsclifton]

Since great points have been made and no movement has been made, I'll close this for now as a wontfix