Network requests in Brave

Brave, like all widely-used browsers, needs to make network requests in order to fetch security and browser updates. The Brave browser must also fetch the latest tracker and ad blocking lists and resources that are required for Brave Shields, make usage pings unless the user opts out via settings, etc.

We have network tests to ensure that the browser is not making unnecessary and privacy-harmful network requests and connections on start-up. We proactively investigate and stub out network requests, especially to Google.

The following requests are expected by default without the user opting into any Brave optional features:

Endpoint	Description
star-randsrv.bsg.brave.com	used for STAR, our privacy-preserving telemetry system
go-updater.brave.com	hosts manifests for Brave components including tracker & adblocker lists; the components are then downloaded from brave-core-ext.s3.brave.com. See the repo for additional details
brave-core-ext.s3.brave.com	hosts Brave's components
variations.brave.com	used for Griffin
usage-ping.brave.com	used for usage pings
componentupdater.brave.com	Chrome components which are needed in Brave too such as the list of revoked TLS certificates, proxies update.googleapis.com so that we hide users' IP addresses from Google while fetching components
redirector.brave.com	proxies requests to Google, see commit
updates.bravesoftware.com	browser updates, done via Omaha/Sparkle
extensionupdater.brave.com	a holdover we no longer need, not used; see Issue 32296
safebrowsing.brave.com	see our documentation on how we protect users via Safe Browsing