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Brave, the false sensation of privacy

ebin.city

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Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#361

Post by ehutch79 »

jonathansampson wrote: post #338
ehutch79 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's fetching ads, it has to 100% be sending some data to someone, who is likely able to correlate it and track you. It doesn't take much.

A regional catalog is downloaded routinely. The only "data" going out is your region (e.g. the United States). This returns a protobuf catalog of ads for your region. Your device privately studies this catalog for relevant entries. When an ad is shown, it's presented as a native notification on the OS. This means the user sees a title (text), and a body (text). Screenshots of these notifications are on https://brave.…

How does it report the ad was viewed?

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#362

Post by ehutch79 »

pmurt7 wrote: post #334
ehutch79 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's fetching ads, it has to 100% be sending some data to someone, who is likely able to correlate it and track you. It doesn't take much.

The entire ad catalog is sent on your machine and some ad engine running inside the browser decides which ads to show you. It's funny seeing all these folks nitpicking at Brave but who are fine using Google or Microsoft every day

I don't really care about brave either way, it's just dubious that the ads are somehow untrackable when you apparently get credit for seeing them some how?

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#363

Post by Barrin92 »

jonathansampson wrote: post #352
Barrin92 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aren't the alternatives in this case held to a lower standard? Like the kind of shady behavior you see from these alternatives, often in some way tied into crypto stuff, you don't even see from Google or Microsoft, let alone from someone like Mozilla Brave runs on the exact same ad model as Chrome, they just inserted themselves as the middle man. There's no actual value provided here and it's basically just "big corp…

"Brave runs on the exact same ad model as Chrome…" You couldn't be more mistaken here. I covered the history of digital advertising and the introduction of Brave's model here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsrrT502luI . In short, Brave's model is largely the inversion of Google's model. With Brave, users must opt-in. Google doesn't ask you to opt-in. With Brave, user data remains on device. Google requires the remo…

I did test out Brave a while ago and the reward system was on by default. I had to go to the settings to turn it off, and in fact this option did not sync. So whenever I installed it on a new device I had to turn it off again, and I suspect that's deliberate. I also don't think that Google shares my information with third parties, pretty sure they say explicitly they don't do that.

And as to Brave's model of pooling users and preserving anonimity, isn't this exactly what Google's FLoC is? As far as I'm aware the dreaded third party cookies seem to be on their way out. I'll give Brave props for being a frontrunner on this, but that's not an inversion of Google's model, this appears to be exactly where everyone is going.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#364

Post by dharmaturtle »

rch wrote: post #294
_fnhr wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more lies in that article. This one for example is so often repeated but untrue: > Rewards is their shitty program that will replace ads displayed on websites with their own. Brave doesn't replace ads with their own. Brave ads are displayed as desktop pop-ups. They can also be easily disabled (which, surprise, the author doesn't mention because of his bias). And the idea behind Brave ads is to give you toke…

I'd prefer it if I could contribute cash monthly, and let the browser distribute the funds based on my browsing. The notion of getting paid to view a separate stream of ads seems bizarre. It's the 'Ad Buddy' model, but with crypto.

Possibly what you're looking for, though less browser-dependent: https://coil.com/

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#366

Post by llacb47 »

jonathansampson wrote: post #302
llacb47 wrote: post #81

This made some decent points but relied too much on FUD.

What decent points were made? The author is clearly not technical (or not to the degree needed to conduct such a review). Contrast it with an actual competent review of Brave and other browsers, such as https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf .

You're right. Most of the points I called decent are old stuff that has been addressed multiple times.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#367

Post by ipaddr »

mumblemumble wrote: post #146
toolz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Brave's fault if they only give you access to your BAT coins after signing up with Uphold. There should be no reason they hide access to your coins until you use a third party service to dox yourself. Brave may not be implementing the dox'ing, but they appear to be requiring you to use someone else's implementation which is absolutely their fault.

I am guessing that the parent comment has it right. This is admittedly outside my area of expertise, but I would assume that the system they have for managing BATs is subject to the US's Know Your Customer laws, which require financial institutions (including crypto exchanges) to, well, know their customer. Personally. They have to figure all that out before they give you access to your account. Which means, yeah, th…

kyc laws only applies to exchanges that allow cashing out. I don't understand why kyc would be required here. The browser user should be the miner getting a reward as a private key. They should be able to move it to any exchange (this is where kyc is required) or trade privately.

Why they chose to implement the design in this way is not what I would expect.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#368

Post by kube-system »

yoz-y wrote: post #70
pwdisswordfish8 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like VPNs don’t have the exact same problem, though…

They do, but at least in theory, their business model is built on not selling the information.

This is exactly the business model for some VPNs, particularly the free or very-cheap variety.

Re: Brave, the false sensation of privacy

#370

Post by drusepth »

rideontime wrote: post #211
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.

Lots of people are pointing out that this isn't the case anymore , but the fact is that it used to work this way, and they only changed it after backlash. That was enough to turn me off of Brave forever.

Yeah; from what I can tell, Brave's history is basically a long list of:

1. Do something shady and/or incompetent to make money

2. Ignore an internet backlash calling them out for it

3. "Fix" said shady thing

4. From then on out, aggressively deny doing that thing everywhere it's mentioned, without acknowledging that it used to be the case

Brave seems like an adequate browser for some niche use cases and probably has some cool tech. I do not trust the company or people behind it to have my best intentions in mind.

It definitely feels like they like to constantly push boundaries, and not in a good way.

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