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Brave, the false sensation of privacy

ebin.city

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Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#121

Post by jaywalk »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #98
jaywalk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comcast isn't doing anything to your DNS. They're the largest ISP in the country, there'd be a huge uproar if they were doing something like that. There are plenty of experts who are subscribers who'd be able to figure out exactly what's going on.

There's already a huge uproar around Comcast. But Comcast isn't losing any customers, because they have monopolies.

Yeah, uproar around prices and speeds and stuff like that. Nothing like screwing with third-party DNS requests.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#122

Post by chrisco255 »

timvisee wrote: post #30

Another shady practice: you could donate to any website, but Brave itself received the amount if not claimed by the website creator. Users did not know. ( https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/01/13/brave-web-br... , https://redd.it/a8g1i9 ) Don't use Brave. Tell others not to use it.

That's not true. If the website or user does not claim the rewards within 3 months it goes back to the user.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#123

Post by roenxi »

bambax wrote: post #106
roenxi wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has to be good that there are more than exactly one engine... Well, that is kinda the point. No, it doesn't. It might be worse than having one great de-facto standard engine. Having 2+ splits web developers in what they choose to support. In this instance, we literally have a young company (Brave Software, Inc) that chose to go head-to-head with Google. Their CEO is deeply entwined with the history of first Nets…

> Nobody is saying Mozilla has to die, whatever that means. To die means having so few users that development is abandoned and the teams disbanded. It could happen; I wish it doesn't; you seem to wish it does... because it would make the life of web developers a little simpler? But I don't think that's true; I think it's the opposite: web development would be a little more difficult if/when everything is controlled b…

There is no risk of everything being controlled by one company. That is why it is acceptable for there to only be one browser engine.

Observe that Brave, inc is using the chromium engine in a way that opposes Google.

Mozilla has developed a bunch of great features in the last few years. If they were developing on Chromium, most of the internet would have access to them. Instead, only a minor subset do. This is a bad strategy.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#124

Post by jmiskovic »

rib3ye wrote: post #93

The only reason I use Brave is that I can type “you” + tab to directly enter YouTube search from the URL input field, and this works for gMaps and Amazon. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to configure this in Firefox.

In Firefox almost any search box can be right clicked and there is an option "Add a keyword for this search". If you use "y" shortcut for youtube, then your URL entry is "y gangnam".

Also if you use DDG as your main URL search engine, they have bunch of "bang" shortcuts that redirect your query to online searches. For yt you'd use "!you gangnam". Others can be found here: https://duckduckgo.com/bang

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#126

Post by gjsman-1000 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #79
toolz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, Brave appears to force you to use Uphold in order to "verify" your wallet. So this is absolutely Brave hiding your coins from you until you dox yourself with a third-party. It's entirely possible to trade bat for many other coins on exchanges without KYC, but Brave forces you to be unable to do that (regardless of your local laws it seems?) This is something Brave could easily fix by just exposing an…

This is true. When you "receive" BAT in your browser, your browser is not a wallet. You can't send it to any address of your choice, or move it to an exchange that doesn't require KYC like Uniswap. The only place you can send that BAT you "received" is "verified creators" in the Brave ecosystem. It's much more like an IOU BAT than real BAT. If you want to get real BAT that you could send to any address, send to Unisw…

An addendum to my statement above: This also means, implicitly, BAT is not a private token. All BAT ultimately comes from people who completed KYC. This means that ultimately, if the government wanted to hunt down where someone's BAT came from, it's really easy when you've KYC'd the entire ecosystem.

And, you might be OK with that for what it is, and might not want money laundering. Fine, but don't advertise it to me as an extension of a privacy browser. This is perhaps the least private cryptocurrency ever outside of USDC.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#127

Post by qeternity »

seibelj wrote: post #20
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #11

I find Brave Rewards very egregious. You get lots of BAT and the marketing copy hypes it up immensely without mentioning, anywhere, that you need to provide your SSN and Driver's License to a third-party (Uphold) if you actually, you know, want to cash out. This seems particularly irritating because, let's say you set your browser to show you the max amount of ads for a while. You saved up for a few months, decided y…

I think your anger is misplaced - you should be angry at government who requires Brave (and eBay, and Etsy, and any company that is paying out money to people) to require this. If this wasn’t legally required they (and every other company) wouldn’t do it.

Let's presume this were true - that the Government was also at fault (I don't agree) - why does that excuse Brave's behavior?

If I go look at any other service which requires that kind of information, it's always right up front. Want a Robinhood account? Great, you have to provide the info when you open an acocunt.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#128

Post by varnaud »

celsoazevedo wrote: post #97
varnaud wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the author is on point. Brave is all about marketing and surfing the privacy wave to make profit. Take a look at https://brave.com/brave-ads/ Brave goal is to acquire as much users as possible to sell them to advertisers. They are no different from Google. Might as well use Chrome with ublock origin and farm crypto on your own.

The privacy/tracking aspect of Braves Ads (which you don't have to use) seems to be way, way better than Google Adsense. It's like comparing the good ol' fixed "image banner + link" vs Adsense. They're both ads, but one is better than the other. And then you have Chrome sending data directly to Google, the auto logins, dark patterns, etc, which you don't get with Brave or Vivaldi.

>The privacy/tracking aspect of Braves Ads (which you don't have to use) seems to be way, way better than Google Adsense

Exactly, "seems". Once again, good marketing from the Brave team. Heck, they even sponsored chess grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura on his Twitch stream.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#129

Post by kerng »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #50
kerng wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you are downvoted. I guess users could also send the tokens elsewhere to try and find an exchange that doesnt care about money laundering laws - but governments get quite involved in crypto. Or is transfering tokens not possible?

Not with Brave, it is not. All of your tokens go into Uphold, and you must go through full KYC (providing your Driver's License and SSN), before you can move them to any other wallet. And no, the tokens your browser says you have, they aren't actually yours or transferrable until your KYC Verification is complete. The amount of tokens in your account before you complete Uphold verification is more of an IOU BAT until…

Thanks for clarifying - that indeed should have a big red warning sign for anyone signing up trying to collect BAT via Brave.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#130

Post by selectodude »

jaywalk wrote: post #94
elliekelly wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only know enough about networking to be dangerous but I am convinced Comcast is doing shady shit with my modem when I change the DNS settings to use non-Comcast servers. Every once in a while I’ll attempt to use Wireshark to try to make sense of what’s happening but I’m pretty clueless and don’t really know what I’m looking at/for. If anyone knows any good resources to learn about the ISP nuts and bolts that make i…

Comcast isn't doing anything to your DNS. They're the largest ISP in the country, there'd be a huge uproar if they were doing something like that. There are plenty of experts who are subscribers who'd be able to figure out exactly what's going on.

I find Comcast’s fuckery to be limited to their business practices. Their actual IP network seems to be very solid.
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