Using Tor in Brave
Brave always works to protect your privacy by blocking most of the ways you can be tracked on the Web. Private Tabs take that a step further. Brave never saves your browsing history (or cookies or other traces) in Private Tabs — much like private browsing modes in other browsers. Unlike other browsers, Brave also works to protect you from your ISP or the sites you're visiting. With Tor, Private Tabs ensures that someone who's watching your Internet connection (like an employer, ISP, or coffee-shop owner) can't see which sites you're visiting. Sites don't learn your IP address or location — combined with Brave's existing defenses against tracking, this makes it very difficult for a site to guess who you might be, or even tell you apart from other people using Private Tabs Using Tor in Brave.
Tor is a system which enables anonymous communication online. Normally when you browse the web, your computer sends requests directly to the computer operating the website you're visiting, which replies straight back to you. With Tor, connections are instead sent through three intermediaries from among the thousands of relays in the Tor network. You connect to one relay, which connects to another, which connects to a third, which connects to the site you're visiting. Replies from the site are sent back along this chain.
Anyone monitoring your Internet connection no longer sees messages heading towards the sites you're visiting. Instead, they see encrypted connections to a few of the relays in the Tor network. Likewise, the sites you visit no longer see connections directly from your computer. Instead, they see a connection from one of the relays in the Tor network.
Because each relay sends and receives connections from lots of different people, even someone watching a relay wouldn't be able to tell which incoming connections and outgoing connections line up. By the time your connection has been through three Tor relays, it's hopelessly muddled, and it would be quite a feat to guess whose connections are which.
Because Tor connections have to go through several relays between you and the site, they're normally a little bit slower than a direct connection to the website.
Because Tor makes it really difficult to tell different people apart, some sites treat people connecting over Tor differently from people who make direct connections. These differences vary from site to site. A lot of sites will ask you to prove that you're human more often when you're using Tor. Wikipedia restricts anonymously editing articles over Tor. Some sites which are used to giving different content to people in different countries don't know what to do with Tor because there's no way to be sure where someone's coming from. Sometimes, the way that anonymous Tor users are treated can make a site very difficult to use indeed.
The short answer is no.
There are some things that Tor and Private Tabs can't hide. A site always knows that someone has connected; they just don't know exactly who — only that you're using Tor. But that doesn't stop you from telling a site more about yourself. If you search for a bunch of local landmarks, a site might be able to guess that you're nearby — or planning a trip. If you log in or tell a site your name then they'll know who you are, but Tor will still hide where your computer is and on what network.
In addition, Brave's implementation of Private Tabs using Tor is experimental and has some known leaks which we intend to fix in future versions. We recommend using Tor Browser if you need protection against websites or eavesdroppers using sneaky techniques to uncover your true IP address.
Of course, Private Tabs forget your browsing history, cookies, and other info whenever you close Brave. When you open Brave again, the site won't have any cookies to tell them that you're the same person who logged in over Tor earlier. However, they'll still know that there's a Tor user and they'll probably be able to guess that you're using Brave. So if you're the only person who uses Brave's Private Tabs Using Tor to log into a site, they'll probably be able to guess that you're the same person even if you only log in some of the time.
Brave's Private Tabs Using Tor are designed to give you the best possible browsing experience while working very hard to protect your privacy. We could make it even harder for sites to track you in Private Tabs Using Tor, but those changes would break most websites. If most websites were broken, you probably wouldn't use Tor in Private Tabs at all. We think it's better to have a tool which still lets you browse the Web pretty normally.
You can always turn Tor on or off in Private Tabs. Just click the switch on the new tab page of a Private Tab. If you're not using Tor, anyone watching your Internet connection can tell which sites you're visiting, and sites will learn your public IP address — just like normal Web browsing.
Google is one of those sites which treat anonymous users differently. If you're using Tor then Google will show a lot of challenges asking you to prove that you're a human, and that makes the site much less pleasant to use. DuckDuckGo is happy to welcome anonymous users without additional challenges, and we think that's a better experience. That's the default, but you can always change this setting yourself.
The "New Tor circuit for this site" button picks a new selection of Tor relays between your computer and the site you're trying to visit. You might want to push this button if your connection seems especially slow or otherwise wonky — perhaps one of the relays you're using isn't working right. If you do a clean reload of a page in a Private Tab Using Tor, Brave automatically selects a new Tor circuit for that site.
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