Brave has introduced a privacy feature on desktop that quietly removes a hidden identifier Meta places inside photos shared on Facebook and Instagram. The tool works automatically, with no setting for users to switch on.
The browser removes the marker whenever someone saves a tagged image or uploads one to a website. The goal is to keep a single photo from becoming a thread that ties together activity across different accounts, including ones a person may want to keep separate.
Who Built the Feature and Where to Find It
The feature was announced in a post by Shivan Kaul Sahib, Brave's vice president of privacy and security, who credited senior software engineer Rohit Agarwal with building it.
It ships starting with desktop version 1.98 of the browser, and Brave's changelog lists the change under version 1.98.60, according to a report by CyberInsider.
The FBMD Marker Inside Photo Metadata
The target is a value that begins with the letters FBMD, which Meta writes into a photo's Special Instructions field. That field belongs to the metadata standard maintained by the International Press Telecommunications Council, or IPTC.
News organizations and photographers commonly use IPTC fields to embed captions, photographer credits and copyright notices directly into image files. Because this data travels with the file, it can persist long after an image leaves the platform where it was first posted.
Years of Evidence That the Identifier Survives
The IPTC itself flagged the issue in 2019, finding that the FBMD value remained in place after one Facebook user saved a photo and a different user uploaded it to their own account.
Brave ran the same kind of test in July 2026 and found the identifier was still there. In other words, the marker appears to have survived several years of platform changes.
Why the Marker Raises Privacy Questions
Brave describes a scenario in which someone saves a picture from Facebook and then posts it to a pseudonymous Instagram account. The same marker could ride along into the new post, and Brave says that could let Meta associate the Instagram upload with the original Facebook one.
Meta has not publicly explained what the marker is for, according to Brave. The testing shows the value persists through a repost on Facebook, but it has not been confirmed that Meta actually uses it to connect accounts.
How Brave Removes It on Downloads and Uploads
When a user downloads an image, Brave strips the marker before the download completes. That means the saved file stays clean even if it is later shared through another browser or app.
For uploads made through Brave, the browser sends a cleaned copy to the website while leaving the original file on the user's disk untouched. Users who want to confirm the result can open a saved Facebook photo in a metadata viewer and look for an FBMD value in the IPTC Special Instructions field. The installed version can be checked on the browser's settings help page.
What Comes Next for Brave and Its Users
Brave plans to extend the feature to its Android and iOS apps. The company also wants to give users controls for removing other kinds of photo metadata, such as location, device details and timestamps.
For people who keep separate online identities, the change highlights how much information can hide inside an ordinary image file. For the wider industry, it is another example of browsers competing on privacy by targeting tracking methods that most users never see, and it puts fresh attention on an identifier Meta has yet to explain publicly.
Source: CyberInsider
