Help us test full IPFS node in Brave browser!

Hi all, we’ve been working with Brave since summer on support for running a full go-ipfs node in their browser. We’re now in final testing phase and the feature is enabled by default on the nightly channel.

We need your help to find bugs, identify any problems - whether performance, resource utilization, integration with apps/libraries/etc - even if we can’t fix before final release in Brave, we can get it in the backlog for fixing in subsequent releases.

Brave’s announcement, instructions for enabling the node, and more info here:

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What a great news! I admire how Brave is bringing emerging technologies like Metamask and IPFS into the browser, thus significantly lowering the barrier to entry.

I find the privacy aspects of running a full IPFS node in the browser rather scary though. If the attacker can track my IP address over time, then they can infer my location (and how it changes) from those IP addresses, among other things.

Are there any plans to address this issue and make the full IPFS node in Brave browser more privacy-friendly?

(Sorry if my comment is off-topic here, I am happy to post it elsewhere if you prefer.)

Correct, in p2p your computer becomes the server so it has all these strings attached. The tl;dr is that it is difficult (https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/6430) because it would need to be very airtight and this is not going to land anytime soon on the IPFS side.

Thus you are left with little options for anonymity/more privacy, like in other p2p programs: VPN perhaps, if you trust the provider, but that would just hide your IP, and you’d need to worry about your peerID and things associated to it etc.