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Welcome to the Brave blog. You’ve reached the front page for news on ad blocking, features, performance, privacy and Basic Attention Token related announcements.
What’s Brave Done For My Privacy Lately? Episode #2: Third-Party Cosmetic Filtering
Hiding Privacy-Harming Ads, But Preserving Privacy-Respecting OnesNote: This is the second in what will be an ongoing, regular series of blog posts, describing new privacy-related features in Brave. This post describes work done by Research Engineer Anton Lazarev,...
Failure to enforce the GDPR enables Google’s monopoly
Brave’s submission to the UK Competition & Markets Authority shows how to fix the RTB market and end Google’s advertising monopoly.
Sponsored Images now available on all Brave platforms, rewarding users who opt into Brave Rewards with 70 percent of the ad revenue
Brave users will notice that their new tab page features a Sponsored Image, which is shown in every fourth new tab and alternates with Brave’s regular background images for new tabs.
OK Google, don’t delay real browser privacy until 2022
Google recently announced that their Chrome Web browser will — with luck, and if a bunch of other conditions come to pass — probably start blocking third-party cookies.
Brave uncovers widespread surveillance of UK citizens by private companies embedded on UK council websites
Brave has uncovered widespread surveillance of UK citizens by private companies embedded on UK council websites. “Surveillance on UK council websites”, a new report from Brave, reveals the extent of private companies’ surveillance of UK citizens when they seek help for addiction, disability, and poverty from their local government authorities.
What’s Brave Done For My Privacy Lately-Episode #1: Web Resource Replacements (replacing tracking code with privacy-preserving code that keeps sites working well)
Problem: Blocking Trackers Sometimes Breaks Sites. One of many ways Brave protects your privacy on the Web is by blocking requests to trackers. By blocking these requests, Brave prevents you from being followed around the Web, and from ad companies, data brokers, and other privacy-harming parties from recording your online activity.
Brave 1.0 Performance: Methodology and Results
Brave reached a major milestone with the release of the 1.0 version. As ever, web browsing performance is a key priority for Brave, so we set out to evaluate in detail how it stacks up against the competition and devised a methodology for doing so. In our “1.0 reviewer guide”, we summarized the significant savings Brave users can expect. In the spirit of transparency, we here present our methodology and detailed results.
Google and IAB’s inadequate proposals to reform RTB
This note highlights the inadequacies of Google and IAB proposals to reform RTB, and rebuts the argument for inaction.
The ICO’s failure to act on RTB, the largest data breach ever recorded in the UK
The ICO has today announced that it will be taking no substantive action to fix “RTB”, the largest data breach ever recorded in the UK. Regulatory ambivalence cannot continue. We are considering all options to put an end to the systemic breach, including direct challenges to the controllers and judicial oversight of the ICO.
Introducing Sponsored Images in Brave
Today we’d like to introduce “Sponsored Images”, the latest addition to Brave’s private advertising platform. These branded images will appear in the form of large, beautiful background images within our new tab page. Sponsored Images will bring additional revenue to support Brave’s mission, and give users a new reason to turn on Brave Rewards so they can get compensated for their attention. These images will begin to appear across our mobile and desktop browsers over the next few months. As always with Brave, Sponsored Images are private.
Brave selected as the official browser for the 2019 EAFF E-1 Football Championship (Soccer tournament) in South Korea
San Francisco – December 9, 2019 – Brave Software, makers of the innovative Brave browser which combines privacy with a blockchain-based digital advertising platform, today announced that the Brave browser was selected as the official browser for the 2019 E-1...
Brave Passes 10 Million Monthly Active Users, and Sees 19% Growth since 1.0 Launch
Brave 1.0 was released on November 13th and received very positive press reviews, and also saw a surge in user adoption. Brave went from 8.7 million monthly active users in October to 10.4 million MAU at the end of November, a 19% increase across all platforms.
Brave warns US Senate & Congress: foreign state actors can use targeted ads to run code on US government computers, exploiting conventional browsers
Brave warns US Senate & Congress: foreign state actors can use targeted ads to run code on US government computers, exploiting conventional browsers
Brave Launches Next-Generation Browser that Puts Users in Charge of Their Internet Experience with Unmatched Privacy and Rewards
The Industry’s Most Advanced Browser Offers 3-6x Faster Browsing and Ends Surveillance Capitalism with a Private Ads and Payment Platform that Benefits Users, Advertisers, and Publishers Brave Rewards Now Available on iOS, Completing Cross-Platform Availability San...
Brave Software Finds 82% of People Wish the Web Were More Privacy-Oriented
Brave exposes an inflection point in the online ecosystem, with more users feeling increasingly concerned with protecting their online privacy and fed up with big tech.
The road to Brave 1.0
Over the past 4 ½ years I’ve been helping to build a “big” new startup named Brave. It’s been a wild ride, far exceeding anything I could have imagined. The company has grown from a team of 2, to over 100 passionate mission-driven teammates. Our user base has grown to 8.7 million monthly active users. Our users help support over 300,000 registered content creators via micropayments. And our community is growing and thriving more every day.
Ryan’s testimony at International Grand Chamber: RTB data breach enables disinformation. Enforcers can be sued.
Ryan’s testimony at International Grand Chamber: RTB data breach enables disinformation. Enforcers can be sued.
Brave, Fingerprinting, and Privacy Budgets
This work was written by Peter Snyder, Privacy researcher at Brave, and Dr. Ben Livshits, Brave's Chief Scientist. One of Brave’s core goals is to protect peoples’ privacy online, and to prevent online trackers from following you around the Web. Brave protects users...
In Partnership with The Giving Block, Brave Selects The Tor Project as the Latest Grant Recipient of Brave Ads
In the first two weeks, the campaign has resulted in 344,555 views and 30,995 clicks.The Tor Project became a Brave Ads Grants recipient on October 17th. As part of the program, Tor is receiving approximately $10,000 in free advertisements per month to engage with...
Everipedia and Brave Announce Partnership
Brave to be Featured on Everipedia Homepage, Everipedia Ads to be Featured within Brave GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands – October 30, 2019: Everipedia, the world’s largest blockchain-based encyclopedia, and Brave, a privacy browser combined with a blockchain-based...
Brave input to California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA)
Brave input to California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act (CPERA)
Accurately Predicting Ad Blocker Savings
Estimating the slow road not taken
We have written before on Brave’s performance, energy and bandwidth benefits for the user. Brave Shields is our primary mechanism for protecting user privacy, but many users know by now that ad and tracker blocking (or just ad blocking for short) makes the web faster and generally better for them. So far Brave’s estimates of the users’ time saved have been very conservative and somewhat naive: we take the total number of ads and trackers blocked, and multiply that by 50 milliseconds. Why this specific number? It is at the low end of what others have estimated to be third-party JavaScript execution overheads, but in fact both in the third-party impact study and in our measurements in this study, the average and median impact of an ad or tracker is more than 10 times higher. Clearly, it is time for an update.
Brave reaches 8 million monthly active users and delivers nearly 400 privacy-preserving ad campaigns
High platform engagement persists with 14% click-through rate, compared to 2% industry average Brave is growing on the user front, with daily active users passing the 2.8 million mark recently, and monthly active users now at 8 million. There are also over 290,000...
Brave highlights critical CCPA omission in letter to the Attorney General of California
Brave has written to the Attorney General of California to highlight a critical omission in the CCPA regulations proposed last week.
Brave writes to all European governments to press for strong ePrivacy protections
Brave has written to EU Member States to urge the prohibition of cookie walls, and the inclusion of privacy by default, in the ePrivacy Regulation.
Competition issues in digital markets
This note presents a submission from Dr Johnny Ryan of Brave, and Dr Orla Lynskey of the London School of Economics, to the UK Competition & Markets Authority.
zkSENSE: a privacy-preserving mechanism for bot detection in mobile devices
This research was conducted by Stan (Jiexin) Zhang, a research intern at Brave and a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Security Researcher at Brave, and Dr. Ben Livshits, Chief Scientist at Brave. We gratefully acknowledge the...
Brave Partners with Uphold to Launch Wallet That Rewards Users for Browsing
BAT Rewards can now be transferred into users’ Uphold accounts With today’s updated Brave browser for desktop (0.69), Brave users can choose to transfer Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) out of their Brave Rewards wallet and convert the tokens to many digital assets and...
VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed Virtual Private Network
This research presents VPN⁰, the first distributed virtual private network offering a privacy preserving traffic authorization and validation mechanism. This research was conducted by Dr. Matteo Varvello (Performance Researcher at Brave), Iñigo Querejeta-Azurmendi...
Why marketers must conduct GDPR Data Protection Impact Assessments of RTB
This note examines the GDPR requirement that marketers conduct data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) when buying digital media using “real-time bidding” advertising.
Brave Tops Browser First-Run Network Traffic Results
What does a browser do when you first launch it? One of the first things most of us do when sitting down at our computer is launch a web browser. By and large, we’re usually re-launching a browser that we were using hours before. As such, we’re picking up where we...
Brave uncovers Google’s GDPR workaround
Brave presents new RTB evidence, and has uncovered a mechanism by which Google appears to be circumventing its purported GDPR privacy protections.
Wikipedia is now a Brave Verified Publisher, Ready to Receive BAT Donations from Brave Users
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, has joined the Brave platform as a Verified Publisher. Created in 2001, Wikipedia is edited and verified by volunteers around the world. Wikipedia is offered in 300 languages containing a total of more than 50 million articles,...
Privacy-Preserving Product Analytics (P3A)
Introduction At Brave, we want our browser not only to provide the best protection against the surveillance economy, but to be the very best way to experience the web. We rely extensively on community feedback to make sure that the product provides the most vital...
With Yubico partnership and support for the new YubiKey 5Ci, Brave is the first web browser to offer secure phishing-resistant authentication via robust security keys on iPhones & iPads
Earlier this summer, Brave and Yubico announced a partnership to bring YubiKey support to Brave for iOS. Yubico is the leading provider of hardware security keys which use the U2F and WebAuthn protocols to provide secure phishing-resistant authentication for online...
Response to IAB Europe statement on its failure to answer the Irish Data Protection Commission
Dr Johnny Ryan responds to a statement from IAB Europe regarding its failure to answer the Irish Data Protection Commission. Four months on, both I and the Data Protection Commission are still waiting for the first explanation of how “IAB Europe is confident that the way it obtains consent for the use of cookies on its website complies with the requirements of the law”.
IAB Europe fails to answer Irish Data Protection Commission
IAB Europe fails to answer questions from Irish Data Protection Commission arising from formal GDPR complaint by Brave’s Dr Ryan against IAB Europe’s “forced consent” and consent walls.
Brave’s Luke Mulks among DMN’s 2019 40UNDER40 Award Winners
We are proud to announce that Luke Mulks, director of business development at Brave, was recognized as one of the top 40 game-changers impacting the marketing and advertising industry for the 2019 DMN 40under40 Awards. Winners of the 2019 40UNDER40 Award presented by...
Tipping with Brave
Tip Your Favorite Twitter Creators with Brave Great content keeps us coming back to the same sources, whether it’s reading Web sites, engaging with our favorite influencers on social media, or watching our go-to channels. Compelling and original content leads to...
Guest AMA with Alex Wilson & Patrick Duffy of The Giving Block
Welcome to the twenty-second post in our series of BAT Community-run AMAs. The ongoing AMA series on Reddit features various guests from the Brave and BAT teams, and, as of recently, guests from projects that Brave partners or works with. The most recent AMA took...
Brave Expands Advertising Platform to Mobile Devices and Launches Brave Ads Certified Vendor Program
Privacy-preserving Brave Ads now available on Brave Android browser, rewarding users with BAT Two months after launching the first advertising platform built on privacy for its desktop users, Brave is making it available on its Android app. Users who consent to...
Guest AMA with Taylor Monahan & Jordan Spence of MyCrypto
Welcome to the twenty first post in our series of BAT Community-run AMAs. The ongoing AMA series on Reddit features various guests from the Brave and BAT teams, and, as of recently, guests from projects that Brave partners or works with. The most recent AMA took...
Brave Improves Its Ad-Blocker Performance by 69x with New Engine Implementation in Rust
This blog was written by Dr. Andrius Aucinas, performance researcher at Brave, and Dr. Ben Livshits, Brave’s Chief Scientist. Brave Shields, which protect users’ privacy from trackers and ads, are one of the cornerstone components of the browser involved in handling...
A summary of the ICO report on RTB – and what happens next
This note summarizes the ICO report on real-time bidding, which vindicates the GDPR complaints initiated by Brave, and points toward the solution.
Adding YubiKey Support to Brave for iOS
We're excited to partner with Yubico to bring YubiKey support to Brave for iOS. Yubico is the leading provider of hardware authentication security keys — devices which protect logins to online accounts from phishing, man-in-the-middle, and other threats of account...
AMA with Marshall Rose
Welcome to the twentieth post in our series of BAT Community-run AMAs. The ongoing AMA series on Reddit features various guests from the Brave and BAT teams, and, as of recently, guests from projects that Brave partners or works with. The most recent AMA took place on...
Major publisher group DCN tells regulators “the sky won’t fall” if RTB switches to safe, non-personal data.
DCN’s CEO, Jason Kint, says removing personal data from bid requests might disadvantage adtech companies, but the sky won’t fall for publishers.
Brave answers US Senators questions on privacy and antitrust
Brave answers Senators Whitehouse, Booker, Graham and Leahy’s questions for the record from the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on privacy and anti-trust.
Guest AMA with Daniel Gouldman and Ian Kane of Ternio
Welcome to the nineteenth post in our series of BAT Community-run AMAs. The ongoing AMA series on Reddit features various guests from the Brave and BAT teams, and, as of recently, guests from projects that Brave partners or works with. The latest AMA took place on...
Supporting The Web Privacy Community
Brave is a proud member of the Web privacy community. Brave relies on the terrific work of the Tor Project, EasyList/EasyPrivacy communities, Disconnect, and the uBlock Origin/uMatrix projects, among many others, to protect Brave users’ privacy. Brave contributes to...
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