Thanks to ShadowAce for the ping!
Posted on 06/09/2020 6:49:48 AM PDT by rarestia
Chromium-based Brave stumbles in its efforts to shake up the browser business with cryptocurrency and privacy.
Brave, the privacy-focused Chromium browser from Mozilla co-founder and JavaScript creator Brendan Eich, has come under fire for automatically redirecting URLs typed into the browser's address bar to a version of the URL it profits from.
Brave is trying to carve out a new business model by offering users the choice of viewing ads in exchange for Brave's cryptocurrency, the Basic Attention Token (BAT).
Users can also tip websites they regularly visit in BAT credits based on the idea that website visitors want to pay sites based on user attention to content instead of ads served. It now has 15 million users who have chosen it for its privacy promises.
But, as reported by cryptocurrency news site Decrypt, Brave was caught redirecting the typed URL for Binance, a popular crypto exchange, to a different version of the site's URL that Brave earned revenue from. It was doing this without gaining the consent of Brave users.
The redirect was discovered by Yannick Eckl who revealed on Twitter over the weekend that typing in binance[.]us or binance[.]com in Brave redirects the user to the affiliate link 'binance[.]us/en?ref=35089877', which earns Brave money.
Brave promoted a deal it struck with Binance in March to bring the exchange's widget to the browser as part of its effort to create a different business model to other browsers, such as Mozilla's Firefox, which has historically earned most of its revenues from deals with search-engine providers, such as Google. The widget was designed to make it easier for Brave users to trade cryptocurrency.
The practice is a betrayal of trust for Brave users and potentially its affiliates too, which arguably shouldn't be paying Brave for visitors who type the affiliate's URL directly into the browser's address bar.
Eich, Brave's CEO, apologized for the redirects and offered an explanation for the behavior, claiming it was a "mistake".
"It's not great, and sorry again. I'm sad about it, too," he wrote.
"We made a mistake, we're correcting: Brave default autocompletes verbatim 'http://binance.us' in address bar to add an affiliate code," wrote Eich.
"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."
However, other Twitter users challenged the idea that Brave had simply made a mistake. Further research of Brave's GitHub repository revealed it was also redirecting the URLs of Ledger, Trezor and Coinbase to URLs that Brave profits from.
In defense of the apparent error, Eich also explained that Brave is "trying to build a viable business that puts users first by aligning interests via private ads that pay user >= what we make on fixed fee schedule, no browser data in the clear on any of our servers, and so on. But we seek skin-in-game affiliate revenue too".
"The autocomplete default was inspired by search query clientid attribution that all browsers do, but unlike keyword queries, a typed-in URL should go to the domain named, without any additions. Sorry for this mistake – we are clearly not perfect, but we correct course quickly," he wrote.
He stressed that Brave was not rewriting links in webpages and never would. The behavior was limited to autocompletions when users type in a URL in the browser's address bar, according to Eich.
Users who don't want URLs to the crypto sites to be automatically converted to ones that profit Brave can disable the feature 'Show Brave-suggested sites in autocomplete suggestions'. A future update will switch the setting off by default.
It is autocompleting a URL for you, in a manner that is profitable for them... but you still get to the site you are going to.
I could use Mozilla Firefox 77.0.1 (the current version), but its own web layout engine is a tad slow at times.
I'm one of them. Dang, this doesn't make me happy. Yesterday I learned that Ubuntu 20.04 installed an empty chromium package and some issues with snap installing by default w/o user knowledge or consent, now this.
This after I made the very conscious decision to kick Micosoft all the way out of my house and convert everything I had to Ubuntu Linux.
Just damn.
What's a privacy minded luddite like me to do to protect my privacy and security? It's damn' near impossible.
Lately I have been using the Avast browser and it seems pretty good. It’s chrome based, it has some privacy features and it’s stand alone so you don’t have to install Avast anti virus to use it.
Better Brave than Google keeping tabs on you...
It is autocompleting a URL for you, in a manner that is profitable for them... but you still get to the site you are going to.
~~~
I agree with that sentiment. I was thinking the same thing. You are still getting to the same place you wanted to, and the only difference was somewhere else. It’s only a betrayal of trust, in the complete sense, if your actual experience was changed.
I don’t blame them for wanting the referral bonus in this case.
What I do think is wrong is apologizing and calling it “a mistake” when obviously it wasn’t. That’s not an apology in my opinion. It’s a lie.
Brave has been a thorn in my side on win7.
I have found very stable and use Waterfox.
Is there anything wrong with Waterfox ?
Tech Ping
I disagree.
It's a betrayal of trust of the browser does *anything* you did not ask it to do. That includes re-routing the URL without your knowledge, consent, or active input. Brave is, in essence, making decisions for you--just like Microsoft does with its OS. It is using *your* resources to profit (or attempt to profit), without obtaining your agreement beforehand.
agreed! Why do we constantly feel compelled to lie? Admit it. I like the Brave browser (except the few sites I cannot log into using it), and if I want Brave to continue, they have to make money somewhere.
I also wanted a Linux desktop OS that respected my privacy and required my consent to install anything -- including "backdoor channels" to its own snap based software store.
I'm not happy about the Brave browser issue and getting re-directed to its profit making URL's without my consent. Having said that, I recognize "free" software isn't really free and that the developers of the Brave browser should be paid for their efforts. I'd have opted in to the re-direct URL's to help pay them, it should've been my choice to do so. That Brave is issuing a "patch" to enable/disable url re-directs to help fund them I think is the right thing to do and it should be set to OFF by default. Allow the end user to opt in, that's the right thing.
I'm not completely sure the snapd/chromium issue between Mint and Ubuntu is a deal-breaker for me. Still thinking through that. I'm not sure it's going to cause me to migrate my 7 PC's and laptops at home from Ubuntu 20.04 to a different linux flavor. Time will tell. I'm willing to be wrong and be convinced otherwise here.
Funny. I never used it but once was going to try. DDG ive been using since for years now becaause of the anti-tracker feature for privacy which everyone here likes.
I agree. What do I care if they get a bonus? I could see Binance being cheesed off at paying for something Brave didn’t help them get but I can’t get too exercised about it.
Thanks to ShadowAce for the ping!
This is just anti-Brave propaganda. Initially it was touted that Brave rewrote links in pages. But it's just doing it in the autocomplete. In what is basically the search bar, and frankly Google does it with search too, benefiting ad programs. Often I catch link shortening services doing the same thing with temporary redirects.
It's a nice browser, and the auto-complete can be switched off, which isn't a bad idea anyway (my daily driver is so old there isn't any autocomplete anyway; Brave isn't available). Mostly works faster than most, although the load time for the background graphic when opening a fresh window or tab seems to take forever when I'm at work (aging CPUs).
I will personally vouch for Brendan Eich as good guy. A fairly conservative, pro-life, family man. He is trying to make Brave work as a business model and that may mean misjudgments along the way. He is human. All things considered this is minor.
You are still a long way to the good.
Don’t let “better” be the enemy of “perfect”.
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