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.
I agree with your statement. :-)
I don’t use it, and probably never will. I tried it in its infancy and found it lacking. I prefer Flashpeak Slimjet and Palemoon.
Huge nothingburger. The left still has it out for Eich for supporting traditional marriage.
IE and Edge will direct you to Bing which is al;so owned by Microsoft. You type in the correct address but you still end up at Bing.
I’ll stay w/ Opera v68.0, thankyouverymuch.
Opera is owned by the Chinese.
“I know a lot of FReepers swear by Brave.”
I’ve used it for years, and never had an issue. I wouldn’t care either way—don’t rely on autocomplete. I much prefer my own misteaks. ;)
I just shut down my last social media account yesterday (Linked In) and don’t use any regular search engines, so I feel pretty good. Brave is decent, and I’d rather support someone who is a PC outlaw...
I like brave. I don’t care if they make a buck or two as long as I get where I’m going, safely and without invasion of my machine and personal stuff. I wanted a browser independant of google and microsoft, and I got it. I don’t like tracking and I don’t like that I can’t add a privacy software to it that I like. I can’t think of the name of it...u origin or something to that effect.
But one thing I do love is that I don’t have to endure the ads in utube vids. A good part of the reason for not watching tv has is advertizing. I hate advertising! If I want something I know how to search for it. I don’t even read magazines anymore because advertising is so out of control.
I like brave better than anything else I’ve used out there.
My Norton 360 and MalwareBytes Premium monitor it closely.
“Chromium” should be the clue!
Are you saying linix is isntallign stuff on us without our knowledge? (I have a cold today and am not thinking clearly- so i might be reading what you are saying wrong)
[[A good part of the reason for not watching tv has is advertizing. I hate advertising!]]
We have a DVR and record all the movies we want to watch so that we can skip through commercials- TV is nice to watch again thanks to DVR-
Commercials used to be about every 1/2 or 20 minutes or so, and only a couple of short ones- now they seem to play them every 10 minutes or so, and they just go on and on and on, AND as if that’s not bad enough, when the show comes back on, they pop up smaller advertisements- smaller commercials, in a small box in lower right, or left- covering up parts of the screen, so that you miss key stuff- They are running advertisements WHILE you are watching the very short 10 minutes of program between commercials now- it’s infuriating! but at least i can skip through regular commercials now-
It’s getting to hte point where we’re paying nearly $100 a month to watch commercials-
It is still owned by the Chinese.
Isn’t much of everything owned by them?
Not Brave
Nor Chrome, but Google and the NSA own it.
“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. “
this is basically bullshit and nothing more than a political attack on Brave ... there are millions of links on thousands of sites (usually product review sites) that point to amazon items that include information that tells amazon where the link originated so amazon can spiff the originator with some kind of kickback ... this is pretty much now simply standard operating procedure ...
(btw, one of the interesting issues i’ve seen with these type of product review links is that while the review site sings the products merits to high heaven, when you look at the actual verified purchaser reviews on amazon, the products are often three star or lower, so as usual, buyer beware and free reviews are worth how much you paid for them.)
FYI ping
ok, so you said most everything is owned by China, now come up with browsers that aren’t owned by China... but you prefer the Chinese browser?
I started with Opera when it first came out in 2006, and also use Pale Moon and Chrome, as back-ups. Those aren’t Chinese-owned, but don’t have the features Opera does.
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