06-12-2021, 10:54 AM
Brave Browser = Scam. A Fake Privacy Browser Sharing Your "Untracked" Data With Face
<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>repost from privacytools sub.</p> <p>​</p> <p>There’s a reason why brave is generally advised against on privacy subreddits, and even brave wanted it to be removed from <a href="https://privacytools.io/">privacytools.io</a> to hide negativity.</p> <p>Brave rewards: There’s many reasons why this is terrible for privacy, a lot dont care since it can be “disabled“ but in reality it isn’t actually disabled:</p> <p>Despite explicitly opting out of telemetry, every few secs a request to: “variations.brave.com”, “laptop-updates.brave.com” which despite its name isn’t just for updates and fetches affiliates for brave rewards, with pings such as grammarly, softonic, uphold e.g. <strong>Despite again explicitly opting out</strong> of brave rewards. There’s also “static1.brave.com”</p> <p>If you’re on Linux curl the static1 link. curl --head<br/> <a href="https://static1.brave.com/">static1.brave.com</a>,<br/> if you want proof of even further telemetry: it lists <strong>cloudfare and google</strong>, two unnecessary domains, but most importantly telemetry domains.</p> <p>But say you were to enable it, which most brave users do since it’s the marketing scheme of the browser, it uses uphold:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>To verify your identity, we collect your name, address, phone, email, and other similar information. We may also require you to provide additional Personal Data for verification purposes, including your date of birth, taxpayer or government identification number, or a copy of your government-issued identification</em><br/> <em>Uphold uses Veriff to verify your identity by determining whether a selfie you take matches the photo in your government-issued identification. Veriff’s facial recognition technology collects information from your photos that may include biometric data, and when you provide your selfie, you will be asked to agree that Veriff may process biometric data and other data (including special categories of data) from the photos you submit and share it with Uphold. Automated processes may be used to make a verification decision.</em></p> </blockquote> <p>Oh sweet telemetry, now I can get rich, by earning a single pound every 2 months, with brave taking a 30 percent cut of all profits, all whilst selling my own data, what a deal.</p> <p>In addition this request: “brave-core-ext.s3.brave.com” seems to either be some sort of shilling or suspicious behaviour since it fetches 5 extensions and installs them. For all we know this could be a <strong>backdoor.</strong></p> <p>Previously in their privacy policy they shilled for Facebook, they shared data with Facebook, and afterwards they whitelisted Facebook, Twitter, and large company trackers for money in their adblock: <a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/facebook-twitter-trackers-whitelisted-by-brave-browser/">Source</a>. Which is quite ironic, since the whole purpose of its adblock is to block.. tracking.</p> <p>I’d consider the final grain of salt to be its crappy tor implementation imo. Who makes tor but doesn’t change the dns? <a href="https://ramble.pw/f/privacy/2387">source</a> It was literally snake oil, all traffic was leaked to your isp, but you were using “tor”. They only realised after backlash as well, which shows how inexperienced some staff were. If they don’t understand something, why implement it as a feature? It causes more harm than good. In fact they still haven’t fixed the extremely unique fingerprint.</p> <p>There’s many other reasons why a lot of people dislike brave that arent strictly telemetry related. It injecting its own referral links when users purchased cryptocurrency <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441605">source</a>. Brave promoting what I’d consider a <a href="https://archive.vn/cAGpe">scam (archive)</a> on its sponsored backgrounds: etoro where <strong>62%</strong> of users lose all their crypto potentially leading to <strong>bankruptcy</strong>, hence why brave is paid 200 dollars per sign up, because sweet profit. Not only that but it was accused of <strong>theft</strong> on its bat platform <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999">source</a>, but I can’t fully verify this.</p> <p>In fact there was a fork of brave <em>(without telemetry)</em> a while back, called braver but it was given countless lawsuits by brave, forced to rename, and eventually they gave up out of plain fear. It’s a shame really since open source was designed to encourage the community to participate, not a marketing feature.</p> <p><strong>Tl;dr:</strong> Brave‘s taken the fake privacy approach similar to a lot of other companies (e.g edge), use “privacy“ for marketing but in reality providing a hypocritical service which “blocks tracking” but instead tracks you.</p> <p><em>Yes brave is certainly better than chrome for e.g, but its not the best option either, as an alternative for ios: snowhaze or firefox is great, on desktop librewolf or hardened Firefox is also good.</em></p> <p>Edit: wow this blew up! To be clear I copy pasted the post from the privacy tools sub, I am not the author. Also some of you are way too triggered.</p> </div><!-- SC_ON --> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Chicky_Nuggy"> /u/Chicky_Nuggy </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/nxce6t/brave_browser_scam_a_fake_privacy_browser_sharing/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/nxce6t/brave_browser_scam_a_fake_privacy_browser_sharing/">[comments]</a></span>Kind Regards R
<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>repost from privacytools sub.</p> <p>​</p> <p>There’s a reason why brave is generally advised against on privacy subreddits, and even brave wanted it to be removed from <a href="https://privacytools.io/">privacytools.io</a> to hide negativity.</p> <p>Brave rewards: There’s many reasons why this is terrible for privacy, a lot dont care since it can be “disabled“ but in reality it isn’t actually disabled:</p> <p>Despite explicitly opting out of telemetry, every few secs a request to: “variations.brave.com”, “laptop-updates.brave.com” which despite its name isn’t just for updates and fetches affiliates for brave rewards, with pings such as grammarly, softonic, uphold e.g. <strong>Despite again explicitly opting out</strong> of brave rewards. There’s also “static1.brave.com”</p> <p>If you’re on Linux curl the static1 link. curl --head<br/> <a href="https://static1.brave.com/">static1.brave.com</a>,<br/> if you want proof of even further telemetry: it lists <strong>cloudfare and google</strong>, two unnecessary domains, but most importantly telemetry domains.</p> <p>But say you were to enable it, which most brave users do since it’s the marketing scheme of the browser, it uses uphold:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>To verify your identity, we collect your name, address, phone, email, and other similar information. We may also require you to provide additional Personal Data for verification purposes, including your date of birth, taxpayer or government identification number, or a copy of your government-issued identification</em><br/> <em>Uphold uses Veriff to verify your identity by determining whether a selfie you take matches the photo in your government-issued identification. Veriff’s facial recognition technology collects information from your photos that may include biometric data, and when you provide your selfie, you will be asked to agree that Veriff may process biometric data and other data (including special categories of data) from the photos you submit and share it with Uphold. Automated processes may be used to make a verification decision.</em></p> </blockquote> <p>Oh sweet telemetry, now I can get rich, by earning a single pound every 2 months, with brave taking a 30 percent cut of all profits, all whilst selling my own data, what a deal.</p> <p>In addition this request: “brave-core-ext.s3.brave.com” seems to either be some sort of shilling or suspicious behaviour since it fetches 5 extensions and installs them. For all we know this could be a <strong>backdoor.</strong></p> <p>Previously in their privacy policy they shilled for Facebook, they shared data with Facebook, and afterwards they whitelisted Facebook, Twitter, and large company trackers for money in their adblock: <a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/facebook-twitter-trackers-whitelisted-by-brave-browser/">Source</a>. Which is quite ironic, since the whole purpose of its adblock is to block.. tracking.</p> <p>I’d consider the final grain of salt to be its crappy tor implementation imo. Who makes tor but doesn’t change the dns? <a href="https://ramble.pw/f/privacy/2387">source</a> It was literally snake oil, all traffic was leaked to your isp, but you were using “tor”. They only realised after backlash as well, which shows how inexperienced some staff were. If they don’t understand something, why implement it as a feature? It causes more harm than good. In fact they still haven’t fixed the extremely unique fingerprint.</p> <p>There’s many other reasons why a lot of people dislike brave that arent strictly telemetry related. It injecting its own referral links when users purchased cryptocurrency <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441605">source</a>. Brave promoting what I’d consider a <a href="https://archive.vn/cAGpe">scam (archive)</a> on its sponsored backgrounds: etoro where <strong>62%</strong> of users lose all their crypto potentially leading to <strong>bankruptcy</strong>, hence why brave is paid 200 dollars per sign up, because sweet profit. Not only that but it was accused of <strong>theft</strong> on its bat platform <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734999">source</a>, but I can’t fully verify this.</p> <p>In fact there was a fork of brave <em>(without telemetry)</em> a while back, called braver but it was given countless lawsuits by brave, forced to rename, and eventually they gave up out of plain fear. It’s a shame really since open source was designed to encourage the community to participate, not a marketing feature.</p> <p><strong>Tl;dr:</strong> Brave‘s taken the fake privacy approach similar to a lot of other companies (e.g edge), use “privacy“ for marketing but in reality providing a hypocritical service which “blocks tracking” but instead tracks you.</p> <p><em>Yes brave is certainly better than chrome for e.g, but its not the best option either, as an alternative for ios: snowhaze or firefox is great, on desktop librewolf or hardened Firefox is also good.</em></p> <p>Edit: wow this blew up! To be clear I copy pasted the post from the privacy tools sub, I am not the author. Also some of you are way too triggered.</p> </div><!-- SC_ON --> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Chicky_Nuggy"> /u/Chicky_Nuggy </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/nxce6t/brave_browser_scam_a_fake_privacy_browser_sharing/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/nxce6t/brave_browser_scam_a_fake_privacy_browser_sharing/">[comments]</a></span>Kind Regards R