Bitcoin Forum

Yep, the wonderful privacy browser even myself started using it, have done it again.
When you want to go to binance.us, Brave redirects you to a REF LINK: binance[.]us/en?ref=35089877
And it's not the only site where it uses ref links:

https://talkimg.com/images/2023/05/14/bloba88adc772a751a77.png

See more (and cry) :
https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/1269286972805255169
https://twitter.com/cryptonator1337/status/1269201480105578496

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Just to make it clear, I didn't find this myself, I've seen the info in the linked tweets.

Damn you are right when I tried to type Binance.us a referral link shows up and I though it was cached when using the search engine for Binance I clean my computer regularly and haven't made a visit to Binance lately but sure is embedded in the browser.

Wow they are exposed, good job for exposing them, I wonder are they doing this since we installed the browser, such cheap trick.

Oh wow, an astonishing finding! Damn browsers! It is like the virus that works in the background of your computer  :-\ And now, the price to pay for privacy is being taken advantage  :-\ I don't use it, but I feel resentful when the people who develop them make them a damn virus. It really made me feel uncomfortable  >:( Jitney referral links!

Great find, even typing the .com domain redirects to their referral link as well.  

After asking its publishers for KYC to move their rewards and now this. So this is something what they called privacy browser  :-[

Although, while typing the url you can choose the binance.us on the recommendation instead of the one with ref link and it will redirect you to the url without their ref.link.

I suspected Brave would continue down this path (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5235485.msg54116101#msg54116101) after they accepted money from Binance to have their widget embedded in to every instance of Brave browser. Now they are getting paid by force re-directing their users to URLs they did not enter.

Brave gets worse and worse with every update. Every time there is a hint of some profit to be made, another piece of their users' privacy falls by the wayside. No ads (except from those companies who pay us). No tracking (except from Facebook, and Twitter, and anyone else who pays us). No privacy invasion (except full KYC). No third party code (except from Binance, and anyone else who pays us). If a three letter agency offered to pay to place a unique identifier in every browser instance, Brave would jump at the chance. But you can earn a few hundred sats a day (that you can't withdraw without KYC), so that makes it OK?

The response from Brave (https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201) seems to be "We are going to keep doing it, but we will do it in a way that you don't notice". Fully expect this kind of behavior to expand to other sites.

Such a shame that such a promising project sold out their users for profit, just like the centralized exchange they partnered with.

I've never liked Brave Browser, but this should be the final nail in the coffin for most users (crypto users at least). Fuck Brave Browser!

Well? You are going to stop using Brave after this, right?

Everyone, please, don't fall for the Brave browser astroturfers and shills, if you want a to use a web browser for privacy reasons, just use Firefox + some addons and optimal "about:config" configurations (this is important, the out-of-the-box FF isn't that secure without these features). Not enough? Use Tor browser. Still want more? Whonix or Tails.

EDIT* here are some "about:config" that everyone should use in FF: https://www.privacytools.io/browsers/#about_config

Making money would be easy for them that way so I guess its going to be its normal behavior after all they partner up with binance. But it shouldn't be this bold though.
They could have been transparent to it. Possibly letting people know that registering through them could receive more benefits or so.

I'm not a Brave user but as far as I know, hackforum.net participated in developing the browser.  Just so you know too.

Thanks o_e_l_e_o, you helped me to better understand this situation  :D It seems I have judged subjectively, ignorance when reading the OP. In terms of users, no one likes being controlled when accessing any website, they have acted without consent from users. But if you stand on the perspective of a business, profit is required to continue operating and maintaining. It is understandable that they will continue to do it. What interests me is "Have they get any other profits if they don't do it?" It will say their greed, yes or no, very clearly  :D

For me, it is better if they ask the previous user and such links only occur when the user has agreed.

In another case, if they continue to do it without the user's consent, I still don't think it's too bad when using their browser. At least, users lose part of their privacy (may lose more in the future), but it's still better than losing all personal data when using other browsers, right?

Here is another good source regarding about:config tweaks for Firefox: https://gist.github.com/0XDE57/fbd302cef7693e62c769
And if you really want to delve in to hardening up your Firefox, look here: https://12bytes.org/articles/tech/firefox/the-firefox-privacy-guide-for-dummies/

Just because Brave isn't as bad as something like Google Chrome, which is literal spyware, doesn't mean it is a good choice of browser. As tomahawk9 has said above, if you want privacy, you should be using Firefox as your browser (Tor is obviously superior, but most people will refuse to use Tor as their daily browser and only use it when the specific need arises).

As soon as they started their KYC bullshit, I stopped using the browser. Binance acquiring them was like the last nail on the coffin to the once promising privacy based browser for me. I uninstalled it sometime back and even forgot about it.

Nice discovery OP. I guess my instincts were somehow right.

They wasted the project by selling Brave to binance, they could have created their own exchange for bigger profits if that is what they want. Not this ref link as they are just dust from BNB.


That is not the case for some users since they more got into it since they tried earning BAT while they keep browsing the internet. The lockdown also locks them up in using Brave browser while browsing facebook.

The most curious thing is that Brave Browser states: When the browser itself redirects me to their referrals, how is my privacy protected? They already track me when I use their ref link.
This browser isn't different from others for privacy, sadly, marketing purposes everywhere. How can browser show me "relevant" ads and at the same time offer anonymity?

Also, don't forget that this browser received $7 Million from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. To make it more clear, Peter Thiel is the chairman of Palantir Technologies, a company that specializes in big data analysis. And for me, it sounds illogical.

I did like its speed and in-built ad blocker.
I did hate the fact its sync doesn't work and I was almost getting back to Chrome (actually I did get back on my phone).


I am coming from Chrome, so Brave is not worse  ;D at least not yet.
But most probably I'll give another chance to Firefox, although I stopped liking it after it has disappointed me many many years ago.


Edit: Yup, I'm going for Firefox again. Bye-bye Brave.

All things do have corresponding price and a good project that we do believe on would turn out to the other side since they do have been paid up well.

They would be willing to ruin up its users trust because of it.Im not really that surprise though and actually this is a good find and im trying on other

exchange links but i didnt find any ref-code aside from Binance and same as you said that this one wont be the last.

Myself also a regular Tor user, but I only use it at work, with daily activities or forum activities. Tor doesn't seem necessary, and I believe a lot of people think the same way I do, so not many people use Tor every day  :D

Maybe they are experimenting, they can make big money from those referrals, is their coin not enough for them to make money that they are resorting to this, soon we will have all links with their referral links on them, there are other browsers, I'm using Becent, Opera and Edge but they are not implementing this, this can ruin their reputation.

I tried it out myself just now. Typing Binance.com, it doesn't really "redirect" you to the Binance referral link. The ref link only shows up in autofill.
But I guess that wasn't really the point. The fact that they've added this into their code without telling anybody about it is fishy.
This is indeed such a stupid and "cowardly" move from Brave. LMAO. Back to Firefox.  :D

I am an avid fan of using Brave browser from my laptop and Android phone but it seems they broke their stated mission at the very first place.

Found some ironic comment from Brave:


They also manage to put referrals from ledger, coinbase and trezor:
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/9302

Yeah, it isn't. Their advertised headlines of being "privacy respecting" and "having no trackers" are demonstrably false.

It can't. At the end of the day, Brave is an ad company. To serve you relevant ads, they must track and monitor your activity. This is antithetical to the entire concept of anonymity.

Wow. You can't even type in "btc" without Brave trying to redirect you to their affiliate link. This feels like it has been designed by the kind of spammers you see on social media who write "review" articles or "guides" solely to spam their referral links.

I use Tor or my custom hardened Firefox for most things, a clean Firefox install for the odd occasion my hardened Firefox totally breaks a site, and Ungoogle Chromium for the very rare occasion I need to use a Chromium based browser.

@ o_e_l_e_o  i'll look into those links, thanks.

Their ad blocker is decent, but not as good as uBlock Origin which gives you more customization. You can also get uBlock on Brave Browser, but if you're gonna install uBlock on Brave, you might as well get rid of Brave and install ublock on FF.

I'm genuinely curious to know why exactly FF has disappointed you.

To me it seems like the Brave Team wanted to use the privacy thing and the BAT reward system as a way to attract ppl from niche markets (privacy community and the crypto communty), but it didn't work so now they're selling out and doing some shady stuff. People thought Brave was going to disrupt the browser market and revolutionize the industry but at the of the day their top priority was the same as any other company: profits, and the privacy and crypto related features were secondary. That's not a bad thing (any company needs money), but like you said, the idealism, the "we care about your privacy & security" but then you go and do this "referral links" thing behind the scenes? That's just shitty behaviour.

IMO it's a matter of time before a big company buys Brave Software Inc. And I'm expecting a chinese company to be the one to purchase this browser, just like it happened to Opera^[1]...Heh, that takeover certainly didn't work out for Opera^[2].

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1. https://www.engadget.com/2016-07-18-opera-browser-sold-to-a-chinese-consortium-for-600-million.html
2. https://www.extremetech.com/internet/305149-opera-accused-of-operating-predatory-loan-apps-on-android

Experimenting? This do simply imply that they are just too greedy. They do call themselves as privacy browser but do end up on integrating or inserting a referral link when users tends to visit out binance.

This kind of activity would surely ruin out their reputation specially to those users who are really giving out importance on its main feature.Just like me where i do appreciate this browser

but they do really pull off that kind of trust when i do discover this stuff. Its really a shame thing. If other browsers would intendly to do the same thing then they already have done it in the past
but they dont consider such shady act.

So Brave is not in the league of Google, Opera and some of the top browsers in the internet, they should disable that and apologize to the community, it's cheap trick only low rate browser will do that, not a big project like Brave,this is something unexpected.

People are going to look now for more referral links or redirection.

Brave should change their promise to:

https://i.imgur.com/F4VpObJ.png

Sadly, this "privacy" browser has turned out to be an outright joke...
I'm curious what's next.  :'(

They did and you can disable it on the browser settings https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/gydbi6/referral_link_autocomplete_update_on_github/

This is not the first and would not be the last, these dubious tactics of theirs will bring them down, use firefox instead.

What do you exactly mean by not in the league? AFAIK, the two you mentioned are far worse when we talk about privacy. About the Binance referral, it's been the new default set up.

I was also surprised to see Binance, sponsored images, and recommended top sites when I updated to the latest version. I immediately went to the settings and disabled all that manually. Now I get to see a clean interface.

I can't remember if the google, other third party sites and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) were disabled by default. If it's not, they can also be disabled manually.  


It's been "commercialized".

I think the crypto community should understand by now that most online product owners/teams are not totally honest cause a couple of days back it was Google chrome incognito (https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/google-slapped-5-billion-suit-161007257.html) and now brave browser making money through their users and i think we need to re-examine brave browser so-called privacy browsing.

You're absolutely about brave been transparent about the ref issue but I'm not so surprised about this news because have been asking myself "how did brave browser dev maintain their product giving BAT to their broswer user, where are they getting the money" and with this information I'm not surprised.

I'm a brave browser users but i only use binance mobile app but what make you said hackforum participated in developing brave? Any evidence?

I expect this type of thing from a browser. When you think of the amount of potential power you're handing to them by using their product it's mind boggling. It's a portal into your online entirety.

I would not have expected it from a browser that claimed to be your wee buddy on your side. It's a really stupid move on their part as it gobs on exactly the reasons many people took it on in the first place.

I'd much rather pay a browser that guaranteed certain standards of respect and behaviour.

Brave browser might have started with good intentions a couple of years ago when they advertised it as a privacy focused browser but even then many experts were skeptical about its true intentions and even its reason for existence when we already have good browsers that can do the same thing (if not better) such as Firefox.

then after a very short time it started going on a downward spiral and lose that little trust it had when it started adding tokens, run ICO,... and finally the last nail in its coffin was the addition of KYC to an effing privacy oriented browser!!!

this recent attempt of pushing their own ref link is just coming from a copse of a browser. and that surprises me to see people are still using this garbage browser.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions". This quote summarizes what happened with Brave IMHO. I used it since the beginning, it looked a very good alternative but today I have to study which is my alternative. I probably would use my old tweaked firefox.

I didn't really like Brave browser since they started asking for KYC after promoting itself as the most private browser ever. Now they prove again that they are deceivers that may start stealing users info without even informing them or ask for permissions. However, like many others, i still use it in order to avoid ads without the need to install addons like with other browsers.
After reading all the comments above, i want to know if Firefox is a good alternative or does there other options?

What the shit?! ew. I am not surprised but I am not happy about it either. First Kyc, now this, great. Soon before you know it, brave is going to end up being the bittrex of browsers. And we'll kinda be forced to go back to firefox/chrome(visible disgust) and maybe even edge.

fuck this shit im out.

I'm a brave browser user, I feel the benefits of their adblok. But I just found out about the ref link and some of the problems above. It seems like this makes me disappointed in Brave. What is the best browser? please give suggestion for me.

Every other major browser has support for extensions. There is no reason to use Brave only for an Adblock that is available everywhere. Firefox (being the best in my mind), Edge or Chrome - along with all other Chrominium based browsers, like Opera. HTTPS Everywhere, AdBlock, Privacy Badger, Metamask, etc... You can make your browser times better than Brave with the extensions you want. No KYC, no bs ads or token crap.

I'd add Braver Browser, it's something that wants to be the "clean" version of Brave.
And for blockers, uBlock uBlock Origin (!) and Ghostery (nope, Ghostery not good (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5253764.msg54650754#msg54650754)) may be worthy to the list.
BTW, I've switched to Firefox. It's old enough and robust enough.

Edit: corrections

Firefox is the longest browser I've ever heard, thanks for the advice. I turned to Brave, because I think many people say "Brave is good and safe". But this news lost my trust in Brave. They dare to do things that are inappropriate and I think this can extend to other things. Even though there is an apology and this can be arranged, I will not use Brave again.

The extension you actually want is uBlock Origin. Both AdBlock and uBlock have commercial backers and interests, and will let through what they call "approved ads" for companies which pay them enough, whereas uBlock Origin does not. uBlock Origin is also faster and lighter on resources than the others.

Ghostery is awful. They have a shady privacy policy (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/privacy/) which permits them to collect data on you, including every web page you visit, and permits them to serve you ads via "Ghostery Rewards". They have moved to a subscription model, meaning their free version is now very limited. It also doesn't do anything that you can't do with uBlock Origin.

I also wouldn't recommend Braver browser. All browsers based on Chromium, even those that have been stripped back to the bare minimum such as Ungoogled Chromium, still send some data to Google. It is unavoidable. Similarly, Braver browser will almost certainly have some remnants of privacy invading code from Brave left over in it. Although their intentions are good, I don't see the point of using a browser which has been built by two privacy invading companies and then attempted to be "sanitized" (so to speak), when you could just pick Firefox or Tor and know that you are clean from the start.

I stand corrected. I meant uBlock Origin, I didn't know about the other uBlock.


Woah. I didn't know. I use the free version. I use Ghostery for many years, with no rewards and such. Back then when I started it was praised to be great. I guess that over time they made some poor/commercial decisions and I was not keeping pace with that. Also I didn't know that uBlock Origin is that powerful.
So.. bye-bye Ghostery. And a big thank you for the heads up.

Both the /r/firefox and /r/privacy subreddits are good sources of information for stuff like this, which is little ironic given how anti-free speech reddit is.

Here are a couple of good threads about the issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/f18dmf/is_ghostery_a_worthwhile_service_to_use_in_2020/
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/gx1goc/does_ublock_do_everything_ghostery_does/
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/fbb9wo/please_rethink_giving_the_extension_ghostery_the/

In terms of which Firefox add-ons to consider, I would start with the following two links:
https://www.privacytools.io/browsers/#addons
https://prism-break.org/en/all/#web-browser-addons

Worth pointing out that if you install too many add-ons you make your browser fingerprint more unique. If you want/need to avoid this, then you should either be blocking JavaScript with an extension such as NoScript, or using Tor (bundled as-is without any additional add-ons or customization).

And what? Most of us Have Binance account already and what is the difference between the referral link and normal, does it impact created account somehow?

I know some of these replies are old but I have some things to say.


I wouldn't be surprised about Chrome incognito tracking especially if said users were signed into Google and other services' websites while using them, because the sign-in process loads the same URLs for normal and private browser windows so there's nothing really stopping you from getting tracked. But I think Google has a strong legal argument to throw out this lawsuit by saying that the claims are only valid if people sign in to Google services and not if they are used anonymously. I'm not condoning Google's behavior, I'm just stating the facts.


I can concur Ghostery is awful. It's the only adblocker I couldn't import Scamwhammer filters into, because they don't support filter lists.


Here's a start ;) https://github.com/ZenulAbidin/brave-browser (https://github.com/ZenulAbidin/brave-browser), I do know node so on the outside it sounds intuitive to remove the referral links and token crap, but don't expect this to be something I'll actually work on. Chromium codebase is extraordinarily big and complex and requires a lot of resources to test and time to understand.


Because sometimes we don't want to support the referral linker for moral reasons.

No, signing up via the referral link does not impact your account, but you are missing the point.

Brave was supposedly all about privacy, all about anti-tracking, all about giving users back control. The fact that Brave will hijack your browser and redirect you to URLs you did not enter is a breach of all of these things. Combine this with the fact that they embedded code from Binance in to their browser, and it shows that for a little bit of money Brave are quite happy to abandon their principles and push whatever their sponsors want them to. They don't care about their users; they care about their profits.

If it is not reported they can do it on almost every site that people will visit and sign up, and we all become Brave's referrals and company will be happy to advertise on Brave knowing that they insert a code to make the advertised company to always show up in keywords, searches are searching.

There will be no impact on your account if you use the referral link of anyone including the brave browser but the brave team will get benefit from it as they will get referral commissions.
This is really sad to know because i switched from firefox to brave browser as it help to block the ads but after knowing this i do not feel confident to continue using brave browser.

One would call it a clever move, to get even more profit without hurting anyone. It is normal that company wants to maximize profits I honestly do not get your point guys.

I explained the point in my post above.

It is not that they want to make profits - it is the way in which they are doing it. Embedding code written by third parties and implement changes recommended by third parties who are paying them is proof that users' privacy and control is taking a back seat to the interests of advertisers and sponsors. First it was Binance ads, then it was a Binance widget on every new tab, now it's hijacking browsers to send users to Binance links they didn't type. It's quite clear that for the right price, Binance can do anything they like with Brave browser.

The point here is deception, I sign up download their browser and now I'm using it now, but they did not tell me anything that will compromise my privacy and they are using the platform as a referral-based to some programs,

Now this is not right, they are promoting their browser as something better than Chrome and other browsers in terms of privacy but they are in fact deceiving their users, they already made a profit from their token, they must keep their promise. 

I know what you feel man when youre being deceived yet you do believe that this browser is much more better than those traditional ones that we have known when it comes to privacy aspect but it seems
they are doing the contrary thing.They've gone too far or just being too confident that they do able to get publics attention and trust and now they how embedded a referral link when you do tend to make up a binance search up? I have tried this before and they are indeed having that one but now it seems they've been busted and it already got being removed.

And what was the Brave response to that?

https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1269313200127795201

Brendan Eich is the CEO of Brave. That thread plus a bunch of his other twitter responses around that time detail how they are dealing with the issue. You can read it and decide for yourself whether or not you think their reasoning is acceptable.

The subtext of it all is essentially "Yes, we refer to Binance, but we meant to do it in the background rather in the URL bar. We are going to keep referring you, but we'll change how we do it so it is not so obvious anymore." Not exactly the kind of behavior I would expect from a browser which pushes itself as the be-all and end-all for privacy.

every browser tells that they are the best but brave does really have a specialty when it comes to privacy compare ro google and other standard browser but  i feel sorry for them . its like thier head got big , they only waste the trust that people gave to them . i know many inocent users will not complain about this because they only care about those bat rewards but to some privacy is a big thing . its nice to know that their modus got busted , thanks to those who are concerned .  

Not only this but every month they push adverts to users for BAT token only for the majority of people getting the message.

Sorry please try again next month.

So not only are they now pushing there own referral links build in but they also require you to KYC to get your BAT tokens.

So privacy browser that :

1. Fails to provide the tokens to users who have advertising active.
2. Require you KYC you private personal information to withdraw (if your lucky enough to be able to claim you BAT)
3. Embed there own referral links to binance into there browser.

Brave is losing touch with there core idea and selling out next stop selling user data...

Sort your shit Brave!

 

Their head really gotten big and thats really a wrong move for them and for sure it do decrease out its credibility.

We know those popular browsers that we've known but they arent involved into such issue like this one.Popularity of Brave

was known due to that privacy aspect but they've become greedy when theyve gotten popular.

Not that cheap if thousands of people do use your ref link haha
Seriously though Brave still has a chance to live even after such drastic mistakes they've made.
Their client base is so wide that some of them maybe ignorant to such problems

I just started using brave browser I really like it, using it to type right now, was getting frustrated with Firefox this days, but why they will pull such stunt and believe somebody will not notice it, I hope this is not in every website someone will visit, imagine the amount of referrals they get a day.

Yeah I've seen many people uses brave browser simply out of reddit recommendation or such and usually don't even care that crypto exists.
They are growing great and now turns out they become like this, I guess money is very interesting after all. Although I know it too well that browser competition is kinda fierce.

OMG, i will uninstall the brave browsers from my desktop and laptop. So they claim to help you to prevent data gathering but will trick you from going affiliates. Watch out Brave browser users you might end up being hacked by this trojan mafia.

That's way too exage but yeah uninstalling the browser could prevent you related to the issue of them for their hidden affiliates redirection.