9 ms·

A regional catalog is downloaded routinely. The only "data" going out is your region (e.g. the United States). This returns a protobuf catalog of ads for your r

A regional catalog is downloaded routinely. The only "data" going out is your region (e.g. the United States). This returns a protobuf catalog of ads for your region. Your device privately studies this catalog for relevant entries. When an ad is shown, it's presented as a native notification on the OS. This means the user sees a title (text), and a body (text). Screenshots of these notifications are on https://brave.com/rewards https://brave.com/rewards. I also covered this model in brief detail recently https://youtu.be/LsrrT502luI https://youtu.be/LsrrT502luI (skip to about 3:22 if you like).

ehutch79 5y ago
How does it report the ad was viewed?
- gentleman11 5y ago
  and how do they prevent users from faking ad views to accumulate bat?
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  When the notification pops on screen, you are granted the rewards. If your OS is not able to show the notification (due to Focus Assist, DND, or some other reason) then you are not rewarded (a future update to Brave will let users control visibility from within the browser entirely).
  - nieve 5y ago
    I believe the question was about the mechanism by which you viewing the ad is reported to Brave, not how the ad display was implemented. (A weird interpretation of "reported".)
    - jonathansampson 5y ago
      Our Rewards server distributes virtual tokens to the instance of Brave (which has an associated Payment ID). These tokens can be exchanged when ad notifications have been viewed, and when other ad-related events occur. The tokens aren't tied to any user information.
      - 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
        Not to nitpick, but you still didn’t answer the question. I don’t think anyone is confused over the concept “view ad -> get token”. The parent comment was wondering how you determine an ad was viewed.
        jonathansampson 5y ago
        Apologies, I thought I did address that. Here's a deep-link to the process of "confirmation," which means a user has viewed an ad: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-privacy-model-for-ad-confirmations#upon-viewing-an-ad https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-pri....
        9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
        NP, I appreciate the follow up, thanks!
freediver 5y ago
> The only "data" going out is your region (e.g. the United States). Every request Brave makes "home" will transfer private data like IP address of the user and browser fingerprint, regardless of the payload. Can you clarify what is done with this data? Also if it is true what says in the article that some requests "home" can not be disabled, why is that the case?
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > private data like IP address of the user and browser fingerprint Presumably it would send the same data whenever it checks for software updates too. I can't think of a threat model where downloading updates and downloading ads are different in terms of user privacy (except, of course, that a malicious update can do far more harm).
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  What browser fingerprint are you seeing in your research? I don't believe Leith et al found any such issue in their review at https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf, nor did I in https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/ https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/. I'm happy to discuss any requests you like; we also document all of this to the best of our ability on GitHub as well (https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki). As for disabling requests, this is a valid petition. Our goal is to have no extra requests when and where possible. We've worked hard to keep them to a minimal. There are some requests (e.g. product update requests) that we've been hesitant to make more easily blockable, since this could potentially leave large swaths of Brave users disconnected, and increasingly vulnerable.
  - freediver 5y ago
    Thanks for the attempt to clarify. My question was, what do you do with the IP address of the user that you get through these “phone-home” requests and I think it is left unanswered? > We've worked hard to keep them to a minimal. How is 80 requests minimal? (source: your own above-mentioned article). It seems to me that 0 requests would be minimal. What is preventing Brave from being a zero-telemetry browser by default?

ehutch79 5y ago

How does it report the ad was viewed?

gentleman11 5y ago
and how do they prevent users from faking ad views to accumulate bat?
jonathansampson 5y ago
When the notification pops on screen, you are granted the rewards. If your OS is not able to show the notification (due to Focus Assist, DND, or some other reason) then you are not rewarded (a future update to Brave will let users control visibility from within the browser entirely).
- nieve 5y ago
  I believe the question was about the mechanism by which you viewing the ad is reported to Brave, not how the ad display was implemented. (A weird interpretation of "reported".)
  - jonathansampson 5y ago
    Our Rewards server distributes virtual tokens to the instance of Brave (which has an associated Payment ID). These tokens can be exchanged when ad notifications have been viewed, and when other ad-related events occur. The tokens aren't tied to any user information.
    - 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
      Not to nitpick, but you still didn’t answer the question. I don’t think anyone is confused over the concept “view ad -> get token”. The parent comment was wondering how you determine an ad was viewed.
      - jonathansampson 5y ago
        Apologies, I thought I did address that. Here's a deep-link to the process of "confirmation," which means a user has viewed an ad: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-privacy-model-for-ad-confirmations#upon-viewing-an-ad https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-pri....
        9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
        NP, I appreciate the follow up, thanks!

freediver 5y ago

> The only "data" going out is your region (e.g. the United States). Every request Brave makes "home" will transfer private data like IP address of the user and browser fingerprint, regardless of the payload. Can you clarify what is done with this data? Also if it is true what says in the article that some requests "home" can not be disabled, why is that the case?

dane-pgp 5y ago
> private data like IP address of the user and browser fingerprint Presumably it would send the same data whenever it checks for software updates too. I can't think of a threat model where downloading updates and downloading ads are different in terms of user privacy (except, of course, that a malicious update can do far more harm).
jonathansampson 5y ago
What browser fingerprint are you seeing in your research? I don't believe Leith et al found any such issue in their review at https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf, nor did I in https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/ https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/. I'm happy to discuss any requests you like; we also document all of this to the best of our ability on GitHub as well (https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki). As for disabling requests, this is a valid petition. Our goal is to have no extra requests when and where possible. We've worked hard to keep them to a minimal. There are some requests (e.g. product update requests) that we've been hesitant to make more easily blockable, since this could potentially leave large swaths of Brave users disconnected, and increasingly vulnerable.
- freediver 5y ago
  Thanks for the attempt to clarify. My question was, what do you do with the IP address of the user that you get through these “phone-home” requests and I think it is left unanswered? > We've worked hard to keep them to a minimal. How is 80 requests minimal? (source: your own above-mentioned article). It seems to me that 0 requests would be minimal. What is preventing Brave from being a zero-telemetry browser by default?