Brave Launches a New Request Off the Record Feature

Brave today launched a new feature for its flagship browser, Request Off the Record (OTR), that helps hide browser behavior from others who may have access to the same PC or device.

“Today, a victim of intimate partner violence who needs to find support services without their partner knowing is very limited in the actions they can safely take to receive help,” a Brave representative told me. “To address this, Brave just launched a new feature called ‘Request Off the Record (OTR)’ to protect users browsing behavior from others who may have access to their personal computer or phone.”

Brave documented Request OTR back in May, but it’s fully available to all users now in version 1.53+ of the browser. This feature allows websites to optionally describe their own content as sensitive, which in turn causes Brave to ask if the user would like to visit the site in OTR mode. If they agree, the site is visited in a clean, temporary storage area, the activity is not saved to their browsing history, and the browser will not persist any cookies, permissions, or other site data. The behavior triggered by other sites is unchanged, and so anyone else viewing the browser’s data later will not see anything unusual.

According to Brave, this feature was necessitated by the fact that private browser windows (Incognito in Chrome or InPrivate in Microsoft Edge) do not fully protect users.

“It’s easy to forget to open a private window before visiting a site, especially under stress, thus causing the site visit to be permanently recorded,” the company explains. “And it’s equally easy to forget to close the private window, and thus continue browsing in the private window beyond just the target sensitive site. This can reveal to the abuser that private browsing modes have been used, which on its own may elicit suspicion or put the victim at further risk.”

If there’s a limitation to this feature, it’s that websites need to support it, and Brave’s small usage share guarantees that few will. Brave says that it is interested in working with other browser makers, organizations, and Web companies to make Request-OTR a standard. But in the meantime, perhaps this could be an explicit choice alongside the choice for opening a link in a new private window, or there could be a version of a private window that includes this feature.