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The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

davidgerard.co.uk

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Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#151

Post by leppr »

josephcsible wrote: post #95
this_user wrote: post #13

I'm surprised people are surprised by this. Brave have said from the beginning that this is how their business model works. What I'm even more surprised about is that Brave has gotten any traction at all, as there is really no reason to use it instead of a normal browser with regular ad blockers.

Does anyone use Brave on the desktop? I thought Brave was only relevant on mobile, since mobile Chrome doesn't support extensions, and for some reason unknown to me people don't want to just use Firefox there.

> for some reason unknown to me people don't want to just use Firefox there.

Initial loading of webpages on Android Firefox is very slow compared to Chromium browsers.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#152

Post by anderber »

Nextgrid wrote: post #36

Brave's whole business model is flawed, even ignoring shenanigans like this. They claim they want to fix everything wrong with today's web (annoying and privacy-invasive ads, etc) by replacing them their own ads backed by a shitty cryptocurrency. While this might work in the short term while the browser is niche, they will have no choice but to deploy the same techniques once it goes mainstream and ad fraud goes up,…

> by replacing them their own ads backed by a shitty cryptocurrency

This is not true at all, and it has been talked enough here but I figured I'd explain it again. The Brave ads are opt-in, for people who would like to earn "shitty" cryptocurrency by clicking on them.

They are fixing the ad issue by blocking the ads and letting you "pay" the sites with BAT tokens. This can be done by a one-time donation or automatically each month (based on your attention). Reason for the Basic Attention Token name.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#154

Post by secr3t0 »

egypturnash wrote: post #148
throw2308230492 wrote: post #129

This article is highly inflammatory. These are not random websites they are hijacking for affiliate money like the article purports. These are all advertisers / partners that appear on the new tab landing page when you sign up for Brave rewards...This is affiliate tracking for advertisements baked into the browser itself not some nefarious scheme to skim off someones else's traffic.

This is not on the new tab page, this is hijacking links typed directly into the address bar. “If you’re using Brave and try to go to the Binance crypto exchange, Brave hijacks the Binance link you typed in, and autofills with its own affiliate code.” There’s an animated screen capture of this happening here: https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/12692014801055784...

Hate it when people do this. Have you actually even tried it ? It just shows the referral link suggestion at the top, it doesn't hijack the link you typed in. You're still free to open the original link. Of course the twitter post cleverly hides this by hiding the list of suggestions. Now we have this long flaming thread for something that's totally normal and perfectly acceptable.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#155

Post by ashtonkem »

SahAssar wrote: post #114
toyg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The substance of their business model has always been "we fight advertisers because money should flow to websites through us ". They changed actual terms a few times when called up on their tactics being shady, but that's always been the end goal. In that framework, hijacking referral links is par for the course. I don't blame them - a man's gotta eat, and they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous - but I've al…

> they're not doing anything illegal or dangerous The words "dishonest" and "rent-seeking" come to mind. Also, it seems that using affiliate links without disclosure might actually be illegal.

That’s exactly how I feel about it. I’ve never doubted the legality, some pretty shocking things can be defended in TOS, but it just feels dishonest and scammy.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#157

Post by livre »

StillBored wrote: post #121
meerita wrote: post #15

Being a happy Firefox user and watching all the browser drama from the backyard. I still don't understand why people uses Chrome or Chrome variants claiming privacy things.

Try running firefox on a a53 based phone. Its miserable, you can't quite see how badly optimized it is on a high end phone because the page load time is 1/4 second instead of 1/10 of a second. On a low end phone that becomes 2-3 seconds rather than 1/2 a second.

Firefox Preview runs much better on low end phones than regular Firefox if you don't mind occasional crashes after certain updates.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#158

Post by [deleted] »

chance_state wrote: post #120
thezdroids wrote: post #58

I support businesses that don't support bigotry toward me- their lead dev @jonathansampson is a vocal supporter of Trump. Nah I’m good.

You're going to be in for a rude awakening when you discover that not every FAANG engineer hates Trump too. I guess you have the option of giving up all those products and services too.

[deleted]

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#159

Post by ashtonkem »

meerita wrote: post #15

Being a happy Firefox user and watching all the browser drama from the backyard. I still don't understand why people uses Chrome or Chrome variants claiming privacy things.

I only use them at work, where I have no expectation of privacy, and our SSO occasionally has issues with FF.

At home? FF all the way, plus the usual bevy of ad blockers and PiHole.

Re: The Brave web browser is hijacking links, and inserting affiliate codes

#160

Post by greenyoda »

llacb47 wrote: post #136
lexs wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic that you posted an AMP link https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2012/2/8/2783807/pintr...

That's still an AMP link

Non-AMP link: https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/8/2783807/pintrest-skimming-...
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