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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

#211

Post by mthoms »

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...

Part of the problem here is with terminology.

You don't "type a link" into an address bar. You "type an address" (a URL).

Hijacking links has a specific meaning and this isn't it (edit: this remains true no matter how much you downvote me without explaining)

I can see how Brave's practice can be considered bad/deceiving though, especially if it hadn't been disclosed.

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

#212

Post by Borish_Johnson »

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.

What a stupid comment, wow.

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

#213

Post by Borish_Johnson »

egypturnash wrote: post #144

From the same browser that brought you “Hey we’ll just start taking donations for everyone whose ads we block, and we won’t put any effort into contacting anyone to tell them about this - and if they do find out, the process to start getting those donations is a giant pain in the ass!” I’m tempted to add some browser sniffing to my site just so I can block this scammy thing. I don’t even have ads on my comics any mor…

An amazingly naive perspective. Dumb, even by HN standards.

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

#214

Post by recursive »

moooo99 wrote: post #105
dmantis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, old firefox (pre-quantum) really started to be slow and non-competitive. Second, Google actually were caught on making their resources work worse on firefox and other competitors with some hacks. E.g. https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has... Assuming that literally everyone use gmail, youtube, etc - it had looked that mozilla doesn't work reliably for end users.

I switched for that exact reason - Firefox was starting to become really slow. After a few years of exclusively using Chrome, Firefox (thanks to Quantum) became my default browser again. It still sometime feels slower than Chrome, especially on Google sites (YouTube and GMail are incredibly slow). But that could just be my current pc starting to show its age.

I've heard this a lot. I use youtube fairly regularly with firefox, and have never noticed any performance problem.

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

#215

Post by _bxg1 »

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.

Its goal was to create a sustainable alternative to ads, not just block them. I haven't been keeping up with it so I don't know how successful that's been, but it's a noble task that nobody else is really working on.

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

#216

Post by TurningCanadian »

dmantis wrote: post #46
tygrak wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand why everyone moved away from Firefox back in the day. Is it really just the fact that Google put up so many ads everywhere?

First, old firefox (pre-quantum) really started to be slow and non-competitive. Second, Google actually were caught on making their resources work worse on firefox and other competitors with some hacks. E.g. https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has... Assuming that literally everyone use gmail, youtube, etc - it had looked that mozilla doesn't work reliably for end users.

Chrome was also much more secure and didn't lock up as much thanks to process isolation.

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

#217

Post by bioipbiop »

hendersoon wrote: post #196
burtonator wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is STILL largely funded by Google right? I find it odd that one of Firefox's only features, over Chrome, is privacy, but they're funded by Google who is the anti-hero right now in the privacy space. If Firefox's mission is successful they would lose all their funding.

Mozilla is indirectly funded by Google, yes. They don't have ownership. It's the same way that the NY Times is indirectly funded by Mazda. They pay for ads.

So that’s why Paul Krugman’s latest article was making the point that Jerome Powell’s handling of monetary policy pales in comparison to the handling found in a Mazda CX-5!

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

#218

Post by secr3t0 »

egypturnash wrote: post #203
secr3t0 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah so it seems you don't know how suggestion boxes work - If I have more relevant links like some logged in binance page that I visited and type binance.us it will also not show binance.us at the top. If you have problems with how suggestion boxes work though, why don't you just disable them - it's pretty easy, it's a toggle in the settings and it's not hidden or anything. U can disable it and the list still works…

I just downloaded Brave onto a computer that has never had Brave on it and typed "binance.us" into its address bar. Hit return. Oh look, I seem to be at " https://www.binance.us/en?ref=35089877" .

Sure man, whatever. It's pretty clear from your previous posts you have some beef with Brave and/or Brendan. Tell you what, I am a developer and have been using brave for a long time now, both for development / work and personal browsing. It's a good browser, I will keep recommending it to friends, there is absolutely no issue with this situation, besides a ton of people who don't understand this is absolutely harmless in nature panicking over some suggestion box. The fact that u can check the code for this should tell you something - Every closed source browser just does whatever the f* they want - It be worth for you to spend all this energy complaining to those who heavily mine / monetize your data in ways you don't even imagine.

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

#219

Post by soraminazuki »

atombender wrote: post #193
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.

I use Brave because it's a "degoogled" Chrome. Having good blocking built in is a plus. Being able to use Chrome extensions is also a plus. I've tried Firefox many times over the years, and only recently has it gotten to a point where it's fast and nice enough on macOS. There are still corners of the app I dislike (it doesn't always feel like a native app, for example), but this may be a reason to finally switch.

I have Brave installed for the exact same reason. I usually use Firefox or Safari for most web browsing, but unfortunately some web services requires me to use Chromium-based browsers (e.g., Paperpile).

I used to have Chrome installed for theses situations, but so many factors made me want to use Chrome less and less to the point that I simply didn't want to use it at all, even for rare occasions. For the curious, here are my reasons:

1. Deprecation of APIs that are essential for uBo

2. Phone-home features

3. Non-standard APIs (remember FIDO U2F, anyone?)

4. Constant bashing and name-calling of other browsers that doesn't implement their favored APIs (names like "the new IE")

5. Websites constantly badgering me to use Chrome

Using Brave on rare occasions is a good compromise for me. It has some weird crypto stuff, but it allows me to use an degoogled version of Chromium. I also don't have to worry about it being a vastly insecure fork like some browser forks out in the wild.

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

#220

Post by javagram »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #45
skissane wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says "We are a Binance affiliate, we refer users via the opt-in trading widget on the new tab page, but autocomplete should not add any code." Charitable interpretation: It is possible that he told the development team to add the affiliate code on the new tab page, and someone in the development team decided to add it to the autocomplete code as well, without him realising. I've certainly seen it happen when devel…

It was the co-founder & CTO that authored the commits, not a rouge engineer: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/commits/master/component... https://github.com/bbondy

Following it further we can even see the pull request and the requirements. https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/9302

Interesting as I didn’t realize Brave did all their development out in the open like this.

“ Similar to top site suggestions, we'd like to add Crypto Widgets and Binance related suggestions based on what a user types in the URL bar. This is mostly an experiment to see if it's useful. It could be expanded in the future to involve BAT or even be used if the user has Brave ads turned on.”

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