I just noticed that in the nightly build I get an extra parameter query parameter when I am performing a search. Values I’ve seen so far are:
source=chrome.ob
source=web
source=newtab
My problem is that this new parameter pollutes my kagi search queries with the chrome.ob value… Any idea/suggestion how can I turn this off? It really irks me that a browser championing privacy is so blatantly puts tracking info into the URL for searches…
Note: the same thing is there in classic brave, when I search via search.brave.com but it’s not there otherwise. I am really hoping this is just a bug that can be fixed fast
@Hegi those are telling the engine where the search came from. It’s a “context flag”. There’s no identifying data associated with it and it can’t be used to “track” you in any way.
Telling a random search engine that might or might not interpret the same query string differently as search.brave.com? My problem isn’t that you send this when I am using brave search (mostly because I don’t use brave search). My problem is that I am using a 3rd party that don’t expect this parameter; so if I belong to small-small minority that has this buggy behavior then it’s 100% can be used to keep a tab on my activity…
So it looks like one of these params – chrome.ob – is in fact some Chromium garbage we picked up. We already have a fix for this rolling out on Desktop:
The other two should only appear when using Brave Search and these are used by the Brave Search team to monitor where a user enters a query/uses search in the browser. This information is anonymized like everything else – more information on Brave Search usage metrics and how that information is kept private here:
