Revert "navigator.deviceMemory"

[bandi88]

Description

I recently changed my browser from Chrome to Brave. After that change, the Google's reCAPTCHA is annying every time I encounter it: after clicking on "I am not robot" there come a captcha to solve. The reCAPTCHA is never ending, and refusing to validate me. Especially the "click verify once there are none left" is the most annoying: the new pictures (after finding and clicking one) load within 15-30 seconds (so extreme low); which I absolutely don't understand. Previously, on Chrome, the new pictures loaded in 1 sec for the captchas like "click verify once there are none left".

What can I do? I don't want to revert to Chrome. I want to stick with Brave. But for me also the browsing expreience is important.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open a website which uses Google's reCAPTCHA.
2. Click the checkbox "I am not robot".
3. Try to solve the captcha.

Actual result:

Most of times I need to solve 10-20 captchas to proceed (previous captchas' solutions are also correct, but even so the Google keeps sending me the new and new captcha). So, solving one single captcha, like before with Chrome, is not anymore enough to proceed. And the "click verify once there are none left" captchas has an extrem high loading/unfading time for the new pictures.
This problem seems to be related to Brave, because that problem does not come with Chrome or Firefox browsers. (I tested them both)
Turning off the Brave shield does not help. It seems, Google tries to punish us, Brave users!

Expected result:

The reCAPTCHA should let me proceed after the checkbox "not robot" is checked. But even if not directly after, then at the latest when I solved the frist captcha.

Reproduces how often:

It comes every time, a reCAPTCHA is present on the website.

Brave version (brave://version info)

Used the 1.15.72 version on Debian Linux 10 (64-bit).

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current release? Yes.
• Can you reproduce this issue with the beta channel? Don't know.
• Can you reproduce this issue with the nightly channel? Don't know.

Other Additional Information:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? No.
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? No.
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? No. The reCAPTCHA with the Chrome works fine.

Miscellaneous Information:

[diracdeltas]

we've gotten multiple reports of this and are investigating it. it's strange that this happens even with shields off.

[ryanbr]

@bandi88 Had a report that private window mode works, can you confirm?

[bandi88]

@bandi88 Had a report that private window mode works, can you confirm?

I tried it recently. Neither private window nor the private Tor window worked. reCAPTCHA was every time very problematic (like I wrote).

[ZachariahRosenberg]

Same problem. I've found that switching to the audio version of the recaptcha often works.

To make sure it was specifically with Brave, I open up the following demo on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Vivaldi - no issues: https://patrickhlauke.github.io/recaptcha/ (just a demo recaptcha site). All browsers passed immediately, whereas brave standard, brave private and brave tor all failed. Shields down, failed.

Audio recaptcha was fine.

[bandi88]

Same problem. I've found that switching to the audio version of the recaptcha often works.

To make sure it was specifically with Brave, I open up the following demo on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Vivaldi - no issues: https://patrickhlauke.github.io/recaptcha/ (just a demo recaptcha site). All browsers passed immediately, whereas brave standard, brave private and brave tor all failed. Shields down, failed.

Audio recaptcha was fine.

I have also problems with the audio reCAPTCHA with Brave: many times I have to solve 3-4 audio captchas, one is not enough for the Google's thing!

I hope, soon we will get a solution for that. Because reCAPTCHA is too much popular, almost all websites are using it (many of them invisibile, like Paypal for example).

[snowbound]

MS edge on the left and Brave Beta on the right

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjeWNAchT2Ixm493Ez9OHt1bozMtNQ?e=iQ47fz

[ohmnominal]

Not sure if it contributes anything but I wasn't having this issue until I cleared my cache/cookies for a non-Brave issue I was troubleshooting. Once I cleared those, I began having the captcha issue, along with most sites not remembering I'm logged in.

[bandi88]

Not sure if it contributes anything but I wasn't having this issue until I cleared my cache/cookies for a non-Brave issue I was troubleshooting. Once I cleared those, I began having the captcha issue, along with most sites not remembering I'm logged in.

I think, that Google introduced something recently, which leads Brave to fail. I started using Brave on 11st October 2020, but only had the issue first on 13rd October. I did not delete anything. But fresh installation of Brave is of course as cleared cache. :)

[mhidro]

Had the same problem, it was finally resolved after allowing third party cookies and clearing all cookies.

[bandi88]

Had the same problem, it was finally resolved after allowing third party cookies and clearing all cookies.

But is is not a final solution. In Firefox I can also use reCAPTCHA even in "strict mode" (where third-party cookies are not allowed). So, that issue seems related to the Brave browser.

[kjozwiak]

Unfortunately this didn't fix the reCAPTCHA issue but we'll still uplift brave/brave-core#6968 & brave/brave-core#6969 as per earlier discussions. @pilgrim-brave will implement farbling for navigator.deviceMemory via brave/brave-core#6964.

However, @bsclifton and others are still looking into fixing the above. Seems like Nightly was fixed once C87 landed last night so we're looking into what could have possibly fixed the problem so we can uplift into the appropriate channels and release a hotfix ASAP.

[bsclifton]

Marked as release-notes/exclude since this didn't fix the issue (although, we could change the title to reverted navigator.deviceMemory.) New issue created with #12359; fixed in master (1.18.x) with brave/brave-core#6554 and fixed in 1.16 with brave/brave-core#6993. 1.17.x will get the fix when Chromium 87 is uplifted

[kjozwiak]

@brave/legacy_qa because this didn't resolve the CAPTCHA issue, some of the cases mentioned via brave/brave-core#6965 (comment) are not valid for this particular issue. However, we'll need to check the following:

• navigator.deviceMemory should return a number via the browser console rather than undefined
• https://antoinevastel.com/bots/ and confirm that everything is green as per the screenshot Revert "Remove navigator.deviceMemory (part 1)"  brave-core#6965 (comment).

Also re-added release-notes/include as per conversations with @rebron & @bsclifton via Slack.

[kjozwiak]

Verification PASSED on macOS 10.15.7 x64 using the following build:

Brave | 1.16.71 Chromium: 86.0.4240.111 (Official Build) (x86_64)
-- | --
Revision | b8c36128a06ebad76af51591bfec980224db5522-refs/branch-heads/4240@{#1290}
OS | macOS Version 10.15.7 (Build 19H2)

• verified that navigator.deviceMemory returns a value rather than undefined due to the revert
• verified that Result of Fp-scanner under https://antoinevastel.com/bots/ appears green

navigator.deviceMemory	Fp-scanner results

---

Verification passed on

Brave | 1.16.72 Chromium: 86.0.4240.183 (Official Build) (64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | 0b568b034b8f7994697cb341eeca5979b84151cc-refs/branch-heads/4240@{#1374}
OS | Windows 10 OS Version 1903 (Build 18362.1139)

• verified that navigator.deviceMemory returns a value rather than undefined due to the revert
  

• verified that Result of Fp-scanner under https://antoinevastel.com/bots/ appears green
  

---

Verification passed on

Brave	1.16.72 Chromium: 86.0.4240.183 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Revision	0b568b034b8f7994697cb341eeca5979b84151cc-refs/branch-heads/4240@{#1374}
OS	Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

• verified that navigator.deviceMemory returns a value rather than undefined due to the revert
  

• verified that Result of Fp-scanner under https://antoinevastel.com/bots/ appears green
  

[vanrijmenam]

@brave-dev Has this problem been fixed as I am experiencing the same problem on any website. I use the latest version of the Brave browser on the latest version of Mac OS. The same problem also happens on iOS.

[coswise]

I tried the stable, beta and nightly versions of the browsers and unfortunately, it seems that all of them are affected by the reCaptcha problem. The browser version is V1.27.109 (July 27, 2021) and the issue is mainly with Google Search.