Bitcoin Forum

Brave Browser slogan is: You are not a product. It is a browser with an built-in adblock that was supposed to pay you for watching ads.

Their idea is amazing. Pay for users to watch ads. This has a great potential, and certainly can impact the whole Google/facebook business model (based on their ads).

The problem is: they are demanding KYC. You are the product, after all.

First they said that only publishers would be affected by KYC, and users who just navigate wouldn't be force to do any KYC.
This is highly questionable, however we can understand: publishers are company making money, so they could do KYC to comply with their law obligations and this could even, somehow, protect customers. I didn't like, but I can understand.

Then, few days ago Brave decided to start paying for users to browse the web using their browser. I used it for 5 days and received 0.1 BAT (0,03 USD). The amount of money is ridiculous, but well, it is free.. So i tried to withdrawal it. Look at the image I faced:

So now brave is requiring KYC for everyone. If you don't do KYC, no coins for you.

Even the money I sent to my wallet is now locked until complying with KYC? this is crazy.

Weren't they supposed to protect our privacy? Wasn't I going to receive coins for watching ads, while protecting my privacy??
How can sending documents will my privacy be protect? So the documents are the product, not me?

I was disappointed with BAT/Brave, because it  was a project with so much potential.

I hope someone else, maybe firefox, could just implement their business model paying users with BTC without kyc.

I use Brave from the start of the project and even become a publisher. I have a verified Uphold wallet connected to my account. I didn't get paid as long as it was unverified. They suspect about scamming and manipulating BAT rewards and forces to get a verified Uphold account. I didn't want to do the KYC but had to because the amount of money was fairly good. Uphold handles all the KYC things. I don't know if I've become a product or not, I don't know how they're interpreting the product thingy, I think there's not much to look here. It is a browser after all. It blocks ads so that I am not used as a product. But you have the right to not join the rewards program. It's in the users hands now.  :)

Well  I'm a publisher, so I don't care about KYC. I think the issue is about the withdrawal, and that is subject to various government regs, You can send BAT to me, and I don't think you need KYC to do that. Part of the Brave concept is to allow users to reward content producers, and the Fit to Talk project has picked up some BAT from this. It also gets a small contribution whenever someone uses the link on Fit to Talk to download the browser. As you can see, this allows users of a service to help the provider to maintain the service at no cost to the user.

I'm against KYC too. I think that they are using the KYC to verify the legitimacy of the account. I used the brave competitor project and they do the same. There referral program can be abused if they don't apply that. I'm not supporting them anyway because I have bat token that still stock on my brave wallet because of this KYC. I hope that they come up some solution for this KYC requirements.

I don't think we need that at all. I don't mind being not paid for browsing the internet. If I want to make money there are better ways to do it. Paying for browsing brings unnecessary conflicts of interest, abuse etc.

All I want is software that let's me see nicely rendered HTML and doesn't spy on me.

Brave still value users privacy when browsing the internet but it's a different story when they want to profit from it. It's either they comply or they get shutdown. If Firefox were to implement a similar reward program, they will be forced to follow the regulations as well.

You want your privacy? Do not get paid.

This is not fair. They should not let anyone deposit in the first place if users can't withdraw without completing KYC.

If the only reason for brave browser to implement KYC is to avoid the breach of their referral program, then they should stop the referrals rewards and people can only earn tokens for browsing. This KYC implementation is hurting the Brave popularity and many people have stopped using brave just because of this KYC.

I can send BAT to you if I buy that BAT.

The bat I "receive" from browsing is locked until I do KYC. I cannot withdrawal it, cannot trade it for btc or whatever.

I cannot donate that BAT to you, but to your website.

This is slightly different.

I think BAT project and the whole concept is amazing and disruptive, but poorly executed.

You can confirm that on the pop up that opens in your browser (and the image up there in the OP)

The ads are privacy respecting, but not the browser or the token... the browser will have my ID!

I agree this is one of the reason I haven't done KYC in Bat,  I stopped doing KYC to any project even to the point of losing my shares of the coins and I'm not afraid to lose my coins here also, their promotion is protecting our data, but they cannot protect us from themselves
they should do something on this or they will lose a share of the market, which they gained when they are starting out.

This is very funny. At first, they marketed themselves as a browser that would never spy on you or gather your details and monetize them like Google Chrome but now they are doing exactly the same crap.

It would have been nice if they stuck to one plan from the very being but now seeing this kind of hypocrisy makes me avoid them and totally  stick to my Firefox.

Additionally, Firefox have far better privacy configuration by default since Firefox 70, so i don't see any more reason to recommend Brave Browser for technology illiterate or lazy users.
Nowadays i only use Brave Browser if i need to visit website which doesn't work properly on Firefox. 


If firefox (or any browser developer/publisher) actually care about praivacy, they wouldn't make business model which reward their user.
There's no way to avoid some kind of data collection if they're gonna to reward their user.

I think you have gone overboard when it comes to KYC requirements for Brave, of course they will require KYC as it involves payment of their own cryptocurrency. I even doubt that Brave Software, Inc. is the one pushing for a KYC requirements for their payouts to be enabled and even if they do I totally understand its to prevent abuses when it comes to paying from automated bots that can browse and view ads for you and having multiple computers to maximize your earnings somehow a KYC requirement can minimize these things.

The bottom line is Brave is an ad company. It has a business partnership with advertisers and it makes money from selling ads. Their bottom line is always going to be more important than the privacy of their users, and therefore they will always make decisions which are not in their users' best interests.

Brave strips websites of their ads and injects their own instead. Why are people comfortable giving a 3rd party so much control over what they see or what is injected in to their browser? Brave whitelists trackers from the worst tracking sites out there, including Facebook. They are now demanding KYC from publishers and users alike.

If you want to use Brave because you like it or you want to earn BAT, that's completely your decision, but don't be fooled in to thinking it is some amazing privacy browser like they market themselves to be. They are better than Chrome, sure, but that's not saying much.

I have an unhardened version of Firefox which I use on the occasion that a website is broken by my Firefox hardening/tweaks/extensions/etc. You can install Firefox twice on the same machine, or you can download the beta/nightly/developer version as a second "clean" install instead.

I guess you misunderstood. Brave itself does not require a KYC. It is only required when you want to withdraw your BAT to Uphold, a third-party exchange, where you can exchange your BAT for fiat..

They explicitly deal with the topic.
https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032158891-What-is-KYC-




As they write, they are working on further options beyond Uphold. These might not be able to require KYC, e.g. when integrating Shapeshift or Changelly.

I've never used multiple profiles, but I was under the impression that changes to about:config were carried over between profiles? I make a lot of changes/tweaks there that would kind of defeat the purpose of a "clean" version if they were carried over.

Fair enough. I'd maybe use Ungoogled Chromium in that case - https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium.

This is really bad for Brave project. I would use it probably, because im blocking ads anyway, while earning some pocket money. Fun concept, but with KYC?
Privacy is value in this world, which people have tendency to throw away without any real reason. They let others to earn money on their privacy, which is big thing to change in future in people minds.
I hope in time it will get better, people will realize that privacy once given away or lost, will never return in their lifetime.

KYC as terms of Uphold, it wouldn't send KYC to Brave. If user wants to withdraw BAT, user can complete KYC to Uphold. If don't think need his rewards, forget it and no need to KYC to continue surfing use Brave.

Btw, Brave currently have own crypto wallet on browser, do you think it will not save? Maybe this wallet will integrated to BAT rewards in the future, but i don't have any information about this at the momment.

Firefox currently offer to sync browser to multiple device, of course they also ask personal data, at least asking our email and name, but sync still optional service. So what different with Brave, KYC just an option to withdraw rewards and hosted by their partner (Uphold), if you think not save to complete KYC, you can skip it.

CMIIW

Perhaps they do it for a purpose, which is to sell our information in exchange for the small reward that they give which is certainly unfair for its user. Sooner lawmakers will keep an eye to them and will bust them if our negative assumption against them is truth. On the other hand, I agree that it's still a good browser to be used in blocking ads which Google Chrome doesn't can't do.

According to the law they cannot hold the coins you've sent to them and demand KYC. You have the right to resign from the procedure and demand you coins to be returned.
If they give you trouble ask them to delete your account and tell them you are no longer using their service and demand your funds to e sent back.
It will most likely mean that your profits but whatever was sent will be returned.

I wouldn't go through KYC for 1 USD a month. The money is a joke even without KYC but with it it's just not worth it. There are services that give you $20 if you do full KYC with them. You'd have to use brave for over a year to earn that.

Not saying that your data is worth $20 because it's much more valuable but selling it for much less is stupid.

But if you stop rewarding users, their business model (which is genial) is gone.
We are paying to watch ads. We pay with our bandwidth, our privacy data, our time. And there are so many ads out there, which are even running internet experience, but most people doesn't even notice them anymore. Dozens of them in each website.

There is aproblem here. Additionally, there is a huge oligopoly by Google and facebook.

However, BAT business model proposes the opposite: They pay us to watch ads. They are offering us a reason to not watch those ads. So, theoretically, we would be, by using brave: - breaking an oligopoly, maximazing our internet experience, protecting our privacy, reducing bandwidth costs and making free money. That's genial, and it is one of the few projects out there which is really something, imo.

But they are going the wrong way, imo. They are not properly executing the idea.

This idea paying users to watch ads in amazing. But no kyc ffs  lol

They aren't forcing anyone to perform KYC and users still has the option to opt-out of their reward program don't they?
They won't gather anything from you unless you let them by allowing yourself get paid from ads or is that not true anymore?

Once you do kyc, your browser activity and browser fingerprint are going to be linked to your Id forever .
There is no opt-out, give my docs backs. You sent them online, you can't make them "forget " you sent them

Are you saying that Brave has access and logs your browser activity and browser fingerprints to link it to your KYC-verified account? Do you have a source on that?

The opt-out is not participating in the BAT reward system. I'm using Brave just fine without having to worry about BAT, KYC or Uphold. No one has to do KYC to use the browser.

Sorry, don't have source of that... I am probably wrong. I will search more about it. But something about our account they must have, because they need to track how many ads and where we see them to pay. Right?

Well, tracking how many ads you have seen is very different from logging your activity. That would be a major issue and I'm sure no one would use it if that was the case. Numbering ads shown is as easy as using a numberOfAds += 1 in their back-end code when an ad is sent to you.

Also, the point of the browser is that ads aren't shown based on your activity or profile, so tracking you would be literally the contrary of their business model.

They should have let people know that they need KYC to withdraw instead of letting them know that KYC is required right after you withdraw the rewards you get and in that case users won't deposit because of KYC. It is really not fair to most but what can we do but complain.

It's sad to see crypto/blockchain service providers and startups bending the knees to regulatory bodies. Brave paraded itself as giving power/privacy back to the people and now they're going against their own principles. I wouldn't put much blame on Brave. Even exchanges are subjected to regulatory rules and laws. That said, this moves goes to sjow that brave isn't entirely decentralized as they originally claimed.

Wise words sir.
Remember people, your privacy is valuable asset. Dont throw it away for nothing.
Future will punish people for their mistakes or mistakes of their parents in terms of privacy (social media mostly).

People tend to abuse things, just take a look at the Keybase airdrop where over 95,000 fake registrations were disqualified and you would know what I am talking about, for this to be sustainable, it has to be a fair distribution to everyone and that includes real users only so I have to admit that I wasn't really surprised when j saw this because if the KYC wasn't implemented, people would always find a way to exploit the system, you have to see it from this point of view as well.

KYC pisses me off. I am pirate and pirates don't do KYC argh!! Anyway I never got around to using brave beyond installing ait and looking at it for a few minutes. They do not support ads here. Now I never will use it sine KYC is the work of witch craft and from satan himself. xP Some mysterious weirdo online wants to know where I live? Why? Will they promise to visit? My ID number? Wow, that's just rude. don't you know it's rude to ask a woman her age? Ok, I am not a woman but they didn't know that. They also have my IP as well. A picture of me too? Wow, we are good friends. I mean... Who here would tell someone they have just met on IG where they live?? Noone.... Why should this be any different? This is worse infact. I am not even that paranoid since I have given my exact GPS location of where I live to friends I trust online. But that is to someone I really care about and are actual friends I trust. Not some mysterious wierdo who wants to pay me for my personal info. It makes me think of some shady dude in the street walking up to you and offering you some weird black market deal.
I don't know about anyone else but I do not sleep well a night knowing people have my personal info. I mean... Will they tell us who they are or where they live? Not a damn chance. This is why the exchange I use for fiat I know the actual owner. He in in artiles and has an actual full and real name and is an actualy real person you can get hold of if you really want to. So foe this I make an exepction. They also very helpful and treat me well. The dchange is called valr.com It is South African. Here we have good laws. We don't go ape crazy like the USA does with taxes and restrictions and shit but if you are planning on scamming people you will face harsh penalty.
Bascially here you have your freedom but if you screw it up and abuse it you are going to pay dearly. So few people are aware of the laws in my country and oftten think we live in a sham. It is not true. We embrace crypto with open arms here and we encourage freedom and discourage KYC like prceedures. The goverment here warns traders of KYC and that they cannot protect you if something bad happens so they tell you it is up to you. As I say freedom is important and we have some of the best laws in the world here. So when your goverment warns you not to do KYC you should really listen. Valr.com KYC is offially done through proper prosudures and my data is legally protected by south african law.



Very interesting that you would tell us to think of it from a different point when you doing the exact same thing. You can't really cheap them by creating multiple account because you get paid to watch ads not to have more registrations. It doesn't matter how many accounts you have you can only watch a certain amount of ads at the same time. If you create VM for each account it wont matter because you have to be actively at the screen and active. YOu can't just leave it for 24 hours and think it will work. New ads show and load with interaction.

I agree with you regarding Brave browser, BUT I guess they had to do this to avoid legal trouble as people use Brave worldwide.
I will NOT do KYC just so I can receive few bucks.
They can simply add option for users to move BAT tokens to built in Metamask wallet.

There are a few things that (maybe) caused the brave team to ask KYC (although i don't like it):
- Because brave team plans to hold an ICO? (Source : Web Browser Brave to Launch ICO for Ethereum Ad Token (https://www.coindesk.com/web-browser-brave-to-launch-ico-for-ethereum-ad-token)) | Executed : ICO period has been implemented (https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2017/06/101301-brave-browsers-ico-raises-36-million-30-seconds/)
- Brave team company location is in USA (Location : Brave San Francisco 512 Second St., Floor 2, San Francisco, CA 94107) (https://brave.com/)

a brief conclusion, based on the company's location, statement issued by the SEC (Statement on Cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings (https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement-clayton-2017-12-11)) and rules ( ??? ??? ??? ), brave team finally applied KYC procedure.

No lunch is free i guess.

So move your company's location. There are plenty of exchanges, services, etc. which allow users to buy, sell, trade, send, receive, deposit, withdrawal altcoins without KYC, as long as no fiat is involved. There is no reason Brave couldn't do the same. But they have prioritized keeping a close business relationships with third party advertisers over the privacy of their users.

If they want to go down the KYC route, that's entirely their prerogative, but they can't still claim to be this amazing privacy focused browser at the same time.

Even if someone offered to pay me $50 a month (which is 10x what they claim you can earn by using Brave full-time) with no strings attached to send my KYC documents to an unknown third party, I would say no. I'm definitely not going to do it to for a couple of bucks and fill my browser with ads at the same time. Your personal details are worth a lot more than, and it will cost you a lot more than that to recover from identity theft.

I opened the thread only to make sure that there is someone with same position as I have.
I understand why someone appreciates idea of making money with surfing net.
But at the end of the day my security and private data worth more than Brave can give me.

More specifically, do not accept investments from investors who have US citizenship.
Question is, is it possible?

For USA. One of my friends once said. "In USA you are taxed when you have crypto".
Am surprised. So, i did browsing and found this (some summary) ;
Source : The Tax Rules for Crypto in the U.S. Simplified (https://cryptocurrencyfacts.com/the-tax-rules-for-crypto-in-the-u-s-simplified/)

I still don't fully understand. Afaik, Why are most companies oriented in crypto, most of their location is in USA & UK? Is it because of easiness about company licensing? tax light? Bonafide? More legit? more legitimate?
well, nevermind. topic is about BAT KYC.

I personally don't like the brave browser. Because the browser has a problem itself as the browser blocks ads and website trackers.

Brave browser has good advantages like having low requirement of ram storage unlike google that almost eat all of your ram.

If you are a normal browser then brave is a thing we need. Maybe some are not in favor with brave due to ads which is a great feature for me.

btw, i'm using brave browser now and it's really amazing and convenient to user. ,,

Confirmed. The brave browser has 33 to 66% memory reduction than the google chrome, therefore, using Brave when multitasking is way more efficient than our default browsers now. The brave browser also have adblocks that lessen media such as gif or images that require memory and Brave Browser don't have many extensions and features where chrome has a lot of it.

My theory to this is brave browser was made to defeat google chrome, brave browser was good at this moment and continuously upgrading its performances.

I think it is very hard to defeat chrome, as it come pre installed in all androids devices, and it integrates nicely with google products. So, most users will automatically chose chrome.

Brave is chromium based, so it is somehow closer to chrome than to firefox.

However, it focus in firefox market: Both firefox and brave focus in a " free web" and "privacy" propaganda (although firefox is performing better in that, imo)

yes, chrome has a bigger company that can dominate all which is an advantage for them but if the people are notified and informed that this browser was 100% better then people will adapt to it.

There are built-in apps in android but still, some people download the apps that are more efficient to them. So if they found out that brave was really a thing regarding adblocks they will install it.