Brave, a blockchain browser that protects user privacy and is friendly to cryptocurrencies, added the “One Piece Buying” expansion component of the Binance exchange at the beginning of last month, but recently Brave was discovered by users through When the browser searches and visits the Binance.US Binance.US website, the ref parameter suffix indicating the source appears at the end of the URL.
Fill in URL automatically
A Brave user Yannick Eckl on Twitter (account name CRYPTONATOR1337) posted a tweet. He noticed that when Brave users searched for “binance“, the browser would automatically redirect to the URL version with tracking parameters, and Brave is suspected by the community to benefit from affiliated companies in this way.
Dimitar Dinev, general manager of decentralized investment bank JRR Crypto, further pointed out that after entering Brave’s GitHub page to view the code, Dinev found that Brave also directed its users to the websites of Ledger, Trezor and Coinbase (all with tracking parameters), which is Browser companies that value privacy seems to be not normal processes.
Will not reveal privacy?
In response, Brave’s CEO and co-founder Brendan Eich apologized immediately after the announcement of these tweets, expressing his apology for such mistakes, and in the tweet he added that the issue has been resolved and that it will never be guaranteed again. Modify the domain name entered by the user.
In a subsequent explanation, Eich stated that Brave is “trying to establish a viable business model.” At present, the company earns revenue by providing users with privacy-priority advertisements paid in cryptocurrencies, so Brave must use all major browsers. In order to enable users to enter the exchange through small plug-ins and seek income from them, he further emphasized that according to the browser’s privacy priority procedures, these redirecting actions did not disclose any user data to related companies.
In the Binance redirect URL, the code is the code of the Binance related company, and all users have the same value. It cannot identify you, but we are removing it from the source code anyway.
Eich finally stated that these codes and URLs are not hidden in it deliberately or secretly. It has been in the source code for several months.
However, some users and critics did not pay for Brave’s statement. He believed that the reason he apologized for the big move was only that the incident was caught, and he thought of it as a simple “mistake”.
According to a report released by Brave on June 1 , its monthly active user base has exceeded 15 million people, with an annual growth rate of more than 100%, of which about one-third of users use the browser daily Device.
