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Brave’s use of direct mailers

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Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#111

Post by longrod »

cozzyd wrote: post #69
longrod wrote: post #13

This little stunt by Brave was clearly not the right move. Marketing is a necessity but if you sacrifice one of the core principals of your product i.e. privacy & security, what's the point? The scenario is something like this: Random person: recieves a physical mail right after installing Brave. Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your data. Random person: how did you get my address then right aft…

> sacrifice one of the core principals One of the more amusing principle/principal mixups I've seen. (Their principals must indeed be brave if this is a potential outcome).

Haha. Auto correct working its magic. Unfortunately, can't edit it out since its too late.

Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#112

Post by longrod »

gtvwill wrote: post #66
longrod wrote: post #13

This little stunt by Brave was clearly not the right move. Marketing is a necessity but if you sacrifice one of the core principals of your product i.e. privacy & security, what's the point? The scenario is something like this: Random person: recieves a physical mail right after installing Brave. Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your data. Random person: how did you get my address then right aft…

Lol the problem here is assuming privacy is one of braves main strengths or even goals. When it's not lol. Brave makes money off tracking you and exposing your data, not in keeping it private.

Do they actually? I would be interested in reading some literature about this. How have they used/exposed/sold user's data?

Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#113

Post by notahacker »

gruez wrote: post #105
longrod wrote: post #13

This little stunt by Brave was clearly not the right move. Marketing is a necessity but if you sacrifice one of the core principals of your product i.e. privacy & security, what's the point? The scenario is something like this: Random person: recieves a physical mail right after installing Brave. Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your data. Random person: how did you get my address then right aft…

>Random person: recieves a physical mail right after installing Brave. >Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your data. >Random person: how did you get my address then right after I literally installed Brave? Can't you make the argument for any sort of ad? eg. >Random person: sees a static banner ad[1] right after installing Brave. >Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your data. >…

Brave is basically arguing that third party marketing-distribution networks which use personally identifiable information to target ads are bad.

I think it's pretty reasonable to suggest that exposing that they do so via a third party marketing distribution network which uses personally identifiable information to target ads may have been a misstep without arguing that means they can't advertise at all

Particularly when the "but we don't see the personally identifiable information that the third party we paid used to advertise to you" applies to everyone paying Facebook or Google to show ads too...

Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#114

Post by Amezarak »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #87

Wait what? I'm really confused about what was going on here, what was the nature of the alleged mistake, and why it was a mistake or bad.

Brave used an official USPS mass market program to distribute mailers.

The USPS allows these mailers to be mailed to every address (by route) in a zip code. The USPS also allows you to filter by such things as "age, household size, and income" (again the route is the granular level), but there's no indication Brave used this filtering.

To use the program, you have to print your own mailers. Naturally, the mailers have to be addressed, or they cannot be mailed. The vendor Brave used to print the mailers included the resident's name, which is typical but not mandatory.

Some people saw this and got freaked out, thinking that Brave was tracking them or had bought their data, the implicit thought being it was from some company dedicated to that. Instead, the USPS just used the USPS EDDM program that anyone can use. Brave apologized, destroyed the unsent mailers, and reprinted new ones without names.

Basically, it looked bad to some people, but it's not clear to me that Brave did anything bad except from a publicity perspective. Most people regularly get such mailers through the same program. (Someone else says in this thread that they don't get them, but they also mention having a PO Box, which is a filter in the EDDM tool most people are going to use.)

The EDDM program website is here, and it walks you through the process: https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm

You choose a vendor to print your mailers: https://printerdirectory.usps.com/listing/#/

Likely Brave did not communicate to their printer vendor the necessity of not printing names. But the vendor has them anyway. It's possible through the EDDM program to see your physical mail pieces (if you're doing the drop off), so hypothetically I suppose Brave could have collected this information.

Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#115

Post by [deleted] »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #53

Why does this process involve printing addresses at all? In Germany "you" (probably needs to be a company of some size) go to "the post office" (actual delivery probably directly to a distribution center), give them a stack of flyers, and say "one of these into each mailbox in this ZIP code, please". The mailman then takes a stack of said flyers and starts stuffing mailboxes as he goes along his route (excluding thos…

[deleted]

Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#116

Post by Amezarak »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #58
st3fan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with the right wording here: this USPS service is not selling any data. It is just delivering snail mail. The only data flow here is from Brave to USPS: please send our mailing to this definition of the target group. USPS does not send Brave a list of addresses or even names. Brave does not give USPS a list of addresses or names.

"our EDDM vendor" seems to imply a third party getting the addresses to print (because there's no need to keep the vendor name secret if it's the USPS), but maybe they just thought it sounds better than saying "the USPS".

Someone has to print the mailers. The USPS lists the EDDM vendors on its website and they work through the USPS.

https://printerdirectory.usps.com/listing/#/results

Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#117

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #96
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live there is a community mailbox for the 60 units in the complex. At the mailbox is a recycling bin where we can put the junk mail. My neighbour takes care of the recycling bin and empties it every week. Based on the volume I get and the volume in the bin, I estimate that about half of the units dump the junk mail straight into the bin. I'm sure the rest eventually makes its way into recycling bags at each u…

I thought everyone knew by now that paper recycling is a scam? It doesn’t happen. Not cost effective.

There's a local company that, at least back when this article[0] was written, made insulation out of recycled paper. So some people are at least trying to do something recycle paper. Of course, in this case the collection system is so flawed that it's worthless as an input material.

This is a four year old article and Edmonton hasn't changed the recycling system at all. It's still blue bags that get tossed into a truck, compacted, and presumably nothing useful happens.

On the garbage side, we now have bins that can be emptied by an arm on a truck and we separate garbage from organics. The organic material apparently gets composted, but I'm not sure what happens after that.

[0] https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/its-not-worth-it...

Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#118

Post by gruez »

notahacker wrote: post #113
gruez wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Random person: recieves a physical mail right after installing Brave. >Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your data. >Random person: how did you get my address then right after I literally installed Brave? Can't you make the argument for any sort of ad? eg. >Random person: sees a static banner ad[1] right after installing Brave. >Brave: we are so so private and don't ever sell or use your data. >…

Brave is basically arguing that third party marketing-distribution networks which use personally identifiable information to target ads are bad. I think it's pretty reasonable to suggest that exposing that they do so via a third party marketing distribution network which uses personally identifiable information to target ads may have been a misstep without arguing that means they can't advertise at all Particularly w…

> Brave is basically arguing that third party marketing-distribution networks which use personally identifiable information to target ads are bad.

>I think it's pretty reasonable to suggest that exposing that they do so via a third party marketing distribution network which uses personally identifiable information to target ads may have been a misstep without arguing that means they can't advertise at all

But in this case there's no targeting involved? They just told the "third party marketing-distribution network" to send ads to every household within a given zip code.

Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#119

Post by VanTheBrand »

Animats wrote: post #89
VanTheBrand wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it didn’t. Read the article. They sent this to entire zip codes. It’s not targeted at users. If you are a user and you also got it, that’s a coincidence. All your neighbors in the same zip code also got it whether they are users or not,

Then why does their mailing piece say "New Brave User"? Their spin control says they sent it to entire zip codes. Is there independent confirmation of that?

So you think their plan was to send this to people who already signed up for…retention? Seems very unlikely. I’d imagine awareness is a much bigger problem vs retention for them at this stage. Also the rest of the copy doesn’t make much sense if this was the case. You clearly want it to be true that something nefarious is happening but all evidence points away from that.

Re: Brave’s use of direct mailers

#120

Post by Amezarak »

notahacker wrote: post #109
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The tracking beacons the mailshot was sent to tell people they should be worried about don't even need throwing in the trash... Brave is using a USPS commercial mailshot service which openly encourages the use of personally identifiable information to target unsolicited marketing (name, age, income(!) and other demographic info) to promote the idea it respects privacy and opposes collecting data to run ad campaigns f…

The EDDM demographic filtering works on the postal route level. You aren't filtering by households with $X income, you're filtering by routes where the households have an average income of $X income. For what it's worth. [ED - also worth mentioning this is just using census data.]

Similarly, you can't use the tool to send mail to 40 year olds, you can just see that the route you selected is 40% over age 40, or whatever.

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