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You're going to have to help me understand how Brave's current ad model is at odds with protecting your privacy. Brave [does not] send any data to advertisers.

You're going to have to help me understand how Brave's current ad model is at odds with protecting your privacy. Brave [does not] send any data to advertisers. That means no PII from the user, no meta data from the user, and no cohort ID or anything else for the user.

annoyingnoob 5y ago
> Brave [does not] send any data to advertisers. What about Brave itself? Brave Ads offers a lot of IAB advertising categories for sale to advertisers. If everything is pushed to the client and happens on the client, how does Brave Ads even know which IAB categories might be missing (and not exactly for sale in its network)? How would an advertiser know if/when an ad was even served? The model still relies on assessing the folks that install Brave to know what you have to sell, and advertisers at least feeling like they are getting value from that advertising, most want some kind of measurable result. It would seem that some information is flowing back to Brave to allow for attribution and payments. Why do I trust anyone to hold this information? How can I know what happens to this information in the future? I can probably be deanonymized from Brave data.
- jonathansampson 5y ago
  No, Brave (the browser) doesn't send user data to Brave (the company) either. Matching happens on device. Categories are enumerated in the regional ad catalog. Local, on-device machine-learning decides whether a given ad is appropriate for the user. The data which comes back consists of cryptographic attestations; no user data. See https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-privacy-model-for-ad-confirmations https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-pri... for more information. We have also added a way to anonymously detect conversions, such as when a user purchases a product or service after having viewed an ad-notification. This too relies on cryptography, and not user data. Although, if you purchase a product from an advertiser, you are likely already giving them some form of user data (e.g. Name, Address, etc.), but Brave doesn't have/transmit any user-data to ourselves or advertisers.
  - annoyingnoob 5y ago
    > The data which comes back consists of cryptographic attestations; no user data. I'll be honest, I have no idea what that means, other than data going from the Brave browser going to the Brave Ad network. And I cannot see or verify that data. I don't want a browser that is a browser and an ad network, in which case I don't need Brave. I'm interested in how you define 'user data'. Do you mean PII? In my opinion, if I interact with the Brave web browser and Brave creates a log of that then that is 'user data', its not browser data or advertising data. PII is one kind of user data. Data I enter into browser windows is another kind of user data. My interactions with the browser, as generated by me the user, generate user data too.

annoyingnoob 5y ago

> Brave [does not] send any data to advertisers. What about Brave itself? Brave Ads offers a lot of IAB advertising categories for sale to advertisers. If everything is pushed to the client and happens on the client, how does Brave Ads even know which IAB categories might be missing (and not exactly for sale in its network)? How would an advertiser know if/when an ad was even served? The model still relies on assessing the folks that install Brave to know what you have to sell, and advertisers at least feeling like they are getting value from that advertising, most want some kind of measurable result. It would seem that some information is flowing back to Brave to allow for attribution and payments. Why do I trust anyone to hold this information? How can I know what happens to this information in the future? I can probably be deanonymized from Brave data.

jonathansampson 5y ago
No, Brave (the browser) doesn't send user data to Brave (the company) either. Matching happens on device. Categories are enumerated in the regional ad catalog. Local, on-device machine-learning decides whether a given ad is appropriate for the user. The data which comes back consists of cryptographic attestations; no user data. See https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-privacy-model-for-ad-confirmations https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Security-and-pri... for more information. We have also added a way to anonymously detect conversions, such as when a user purchases a product or service after having viewed an ad-notification. This too relies on cryptography, and not user data. Although, if you purchase a product from an advertiser, you are likely already giving them some form of user data (e.g. Name, Address, etc.), but Brave doesn't have/transmit any user-data to ourselves or advertisers.
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  > The data which comes back consists of cryptographic attestations; no user data. I'll be honest, I have no idea what that means, other than data going from the Brave browser going to the Brave Ad network. And I cannot see or verify that data. I don't want a browser that is a browser and an ad network, in which case I don't need Brave. I'm interested in how you define 'user data'. Do you mean PII? In my opinion, if I interact with the Brave web browser and Brave creates a log of that then that is 'user data', its not browser data or advertising data. PII is one kind of user data. Data I enter into browser windows is another kind of user data. My interactions with the browser, as generated by me the user, generate user data too.