Welcome to this week’s BAT Community Update! Thank you to Dan Murphy for his contributions!

Blog: Brave’s R&D team unveils zkSense, a novel privacy-preserving mechanism for bot detection in smartphones

In this blogpost, we present zkSENSE: a novel privacy-preserving mechanism for bot detection in smartphones. zkSENSE leverages device sensors, such as the gyroscope and accelerometer, to measure the device’s moving patterns, while either a human or a bot is interacting with an app on the device. This way, zkSENSE can infer whether specific actions in an app (e.g., click/type events) were carried out by a human or a bot with high accuracy even when there are artificial device movements (i.e., device placed on a swinging cradle). To preserve the privacy of the user, zkSENSE does not transfer potentially sensitive sensor data to a remote server. Instead, zkSENSE uses zero-knowledge proofs to demonstrate to a remote server that an action was carried out by a human without revealing any additional information.



Read the full post here: https://brave.com/zksense-a-privacy-preserving-mechanism-for-bot-detection-in-mobile-devices/

Blog: Dr Johnny Ryan of Brave & Dr Orla Lynskey of the London School of Economics make a submission to the UK Competition & Markets Authority outlining significant digital market problems

The UK Government Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) is examining online platforms and the digital advertising market. Dr Johnny Ryan of Brave, and Dr Orla Lynskey of the London School of Economics have made a submission to the CMA that outlines significant market problems.



Dominant digital companies use their position of market power to create “cascading monopolies”. They do this in part by cross-using data for purposes beyond what the data was initially collected for. This offensive leveraging of data avoids the need to compete in each new domain on the merits.



These firms also use their position to extract amounts of data from individuals beyond what might be considered a fair or reasonable exchange. The digital industry’s data excess norm is similar to the banking industry’s credit excess norm that precipitated the financial crisis. It incentivizes a shadow economy based on unnecessary and insecure data processing.



Read the full post here: https://brave.com/uk-cma/

Blog: Brave writes to all European governments to press for strong ePrivacy protections

Later this week, European governments will deliberate over proposals to reduce the level of privacy protection in the new ePrivacy Regulation. To aid to their deliberations, Alan Toner, a Policy Expert at Brave, has today written to representatives of each government to present Brave’s view of the practical reasons why there should be strong privacy protections in the new Regulation.



Brave’s letter, sent this morning, summarizes why a prohibition on cookie walls is necessary. It also supports the “privacy by default” requirement for web browsers and operating systems. Both have been removed by the Council of Ministers, but Brave argues that there are good economic and practical reasons why the Council should restore them.



We trust that governments across Europe understand the need for strong privacy protections in the ePrivacy Regulation to protect fundamental rights, and to spur innovation.



Read the full post here: https://brave.com/eprivacy-october2019/

Client Updates

Dev Channel v0.71.90

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v0.71.90

Beta Channel v0.70.112

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v0.70.112

Brave Team Tweets

End of September Brave user stats: DAU: 2.8M, MAU: 7.9M



BAT ecosystem details at volunteer-run https://t.co/oTK6lBmnEA. pic.twitter.com/BSNd8Yjr5y — BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) October 8, 2019 Updated user stats from Brendan!

By far one of the best experiences working @brave / @attentiontoken has been working with @dtboyd and @RGA.



They aren't forward-thinking, they are driving forward, at full speed. https://t.co/hQ7psTkTDs — Luke Mulks (@lukemulks) October 9, 2019 Brave team moving the ball forward with R/GA

Here's a neat little secret—if you would like to direct somebody to a platform-specific build of Brave, you can use these shortcuts:https://t.co/dPtekgp043https://t.co/Q7WhwM3vT4https://t.co/Y2N9ptL7hd — Sampson (@BraveSampson) October 5, 2019 Direct links to Brave — send them to your friends! 🙂

Woah! @IABEurope blocked me. What of mature dialogue among colleagues to reform the industry @TownsendFeehan? pic.twitter.com/FxanULyNWz — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) October 6, 2019 They’ve since unblocked Johnny, but come on… play nice IAB.

Update. @IABEurope has now un-blocked me. Most curiously, the account said in a direct message that nobody at the IAB did the blocking, and that they suspect it was the result of someone else taking over their account. Most worrying indeed. I hope they will share Twitter's reply. pic.twitter.com/gwG6PjEI10 — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) October 7, 2019

That’s @brave’s mission. — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) October 6, 2019 Harassing 3rd party trackers…

The @Brave London team is organising an event on 14 November.

I and @yvesalexandre and @sol3gga will be speaking. https://t.co/m0vX50JLCi — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) October 9, 2019 Will you be in London around November 14th? Check this event out.

BAT/Brave in the News

From Wired: Help Us Recognize Tech That Protects Our Values

The Tech Spotlight will highlight products and policies that shape a more responsible future, embrace privacy and accountability, and aim to minimize technological harms. Brave fans, please nominate us by Nov. 30th!



Check the story out here: https://www.wired.com/story/help-us-recognize-tech-that-protects-our-values/



Nominate Brave here: https://www.belfercenter.org/TechSpotlight/Nominate

IPFS Browser Update — Brave now supports IPFS! (Turn it on under Settings > Extensions)

Decentralization can feel slow in providing user-centric approaches to the internet’s biggest problems. Right now, software that is fully in the control of the user is often too technical, too fragile, and too time-consuming to be the default choice.



But we’re making headway. Today, we’d like to share some collaborations the IPFS project has had in the works for a while, which brings us a few steps closer to making unmediated access to information just work… by solving that “last mile” problem and integrating IPFS directly into web browsers.



Read the full text here: https://blog.ipfs.io/2019-10-08-ipfs-browsers-update/

Blockchain in the Enterprise: Charting the Path to Pilots

When Bitcoin crashed in 2018, many analysts called the decentralization movement “dead.” Global corporations were highly scrutinized for exploring distributed ledger technology.



However, behind the scenes, many of the world’s leading companies were working hard to secure strategies to absorb the technology principles to develop solutions that would benefit from the promise of decentralization.



Brave was one of six companies selected from +1000 companies that applied to join the OEBVS program through R/GA Ventures.



Read the full text here: https://medium.com/rga-ventures/blockchain-in-the-enterprise-charting-the-path-to-pilots-7507eb04ca5c

News You Should Know

Twitter “Unintentionally” Used Your Phone Number for Targeted Advertising

Stop us if you’ve heard this before: you give a tech company your personal information in order to use two-factor authentication, and later find out that they were using that security information for targeted advertising.



Read the full text here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/twitter-unintentionally-used-your-phone-number-targeted-advertising

New DuckDuckGo Research Shows People Taking Action on Privacy

Our recent survey of a random, representative sample of U.S. adults (not just DuckDuckGo users — methodology below) found that in the past year a whopping 79.2% (± 2.3) of people have adjusted privacy-related settings on their social media accounts or reduced their social media usage. In addition, almost a quarter of people surveyed (23% ± 2.4) have “deleted or deactivated a social media profile due to privacy concerns.” These numbers echo findings from a 2018 Pew Research Center survey.



Read the full text here: https://spreadprivacy.com/people-taking-action-on-privacy/

Roaring Fans

I owe so much to @brave for developing a platform that gives the power of value back to its community and the content creators surrounding it.



I appreciate everyone who has watched my videos on using the #BraveBrowser & earning $BAT. Thank you! ❤️ 🦁 https://t.co/uDU0j2tlJT pic.twitter.com/4iRcj3PAnV — Tom DeCicco (@TomOverChaplin) October 9, 2019

From Reddit: