Introducing NymVPN ad blocker powered by Brave’s adblock engine

Brave Browser: A trusted leader in digital privacy

The Brave browser has long been a leader in building privacy-first tools and making its code open source in order to benefit the developer community. One thing that made it unique at launch was shipping the browser with an ad blocker enabled by default. It’s now a baseline expectation for people expecting privacy from their browser.

Brave’s block list is one of the most comprehensive, well researched, and consistently maintained in the industry. It’s updated continuously as new ad networks, tracker domains, and malware hosts emerge. So it’s a huge honor for Nym and an opportunity for NymVPN users to have it supercharge their privacy. Huge thanks to the Brave team for helping us make it happen!

NymVPN: Blocking ads at the network level

NymVPN’s adblocker uses DNS filtering to intercept ad and tracker requests before any content ever loads. This allows it to cover every app on your device, not just your browser.

Every time an app on your device contacts a server, it first sends a DNS request: a query that translates a domain name into an IP address. NymVPN intercepts these requests and checks each domain against Brave’s block list. If a domain is flagged as a likely ad network, tracker, or malware host, the request is dropped before any content is fetched and any connection even made.

DNS queries with NymVPN’s ad blocker are further protected by DoH & DoT encryption protocols so all this can be done privately. The ad blocker’s DNS queries are wrapped in either TLS (DoT) or HTTPS (DoH) encryption between the NymVPN app and the Brave list.

Ad blocking: A secret privacy tool

Most people think of ad blockers as a way to clean up cluttered pages or bypass video interruptions. However, when it comes to your privacy, the story is a lot darker.

Online ads are essentially parasites. Every ad that loads on your device executes tracking scripts that can report your IP address, device fingerprint, browsing behavior, and your location back to ad networks. These signals are aggregated across thousands of sites and apps, building behavioral profiles that are then sold to data brokers, insurers, employers, and even government agencies. A single page load on a major news site can trigger dozens of tracker calls from advertisers you have never interacted with.

DNS-level blocking cuts all that off. If the domain never resolves, no tracking script runs, no data is transmitted, no profile gets updated.

But it gets worse: let’s talk about malvertising, or the delivery of malware through legitimate-looking ad slots. It is one of the most persistent and underreported attack vectors on the modern web. Major publishers have unknowingly served malicious payloads through compromised ad networks, infecting users who did nothing more than visit a trusted site.

DNS blocking stops malicious domains from resolving at all: no payload is delivered because no connection is ever made. This is especially important for NymVPN to block! However, users need to be careful, as many free VPNs and even some paid VPNs – are actually used to deliver malware to unsuspecting users and via their computers.

Nym & Brave

Nym and Brave share a conviction: that accessing the internet can be made private by default. This requires a stack of tools: private browsers like Brave, decentralized VPN protections for all the traffic on your devices, and private payments. Nym is proud to have such talented partners in this fight and sharing tools across the stack.