Welcome to this week’s BAT Community Update! Big thanks to Dan Murphy for his contributions!





Brave Ads now available for testing in Brave Beta !

Our beta channel now features Brave Ads for testing. Users can opt-in to view private ads via Brave Rewards, and will be able to claim BAT accumulated for having viewed ads.



Download Brave Beta here.



If you’re an advertiser that’s interested in joining our Brave Ads Wait List.



For more information about testing in our Brave Ads Preview, click here.





Brave Sync now available for iPhones and iPads!

Brave Sync is now available in today’s Brave for iOS release (version 1.9). Already a feature in the Brave desktop browser and Brave for Android app, Brave Sync for iOS enables users to automatically sync browsing data between devices running the Brave browser .Brave Sync currently supports bookmarks. Other data such as tabs, history, passwords, autofill, as well as Brave Rewards, will be available in the coming months.



Read the full post here.﻿





BLOG: Formal GDPR complaint against IAB Europe’s “ cookie wall” and GDPR consent guidance

A formal complaint has been filed with the Irish Data Protection Commission against IAB Europe, the tracking industry’s primary lobbying organization . Dr Johnny Ryan filed the formal complaint with the Irish privacy watchdog against IAB Europe’s use of an unlawful “cookie wall” on its website. Dr Ryan is the Chief Policy & Industry Officer of Brave, the privacy web browser co-founded by Brendan Eich, the inventor of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla and Firefox.



Visitors to IAB Europe’s website, www.iabeurope.eu, are confronted with a “ cookie wall” that forces them to accept tracking by Google, Facebook, and others, which may then monitor them. Dr. Ryan has complained to the Irish Data Protection Commission that this is a breach of the GDPR, which protects people in Europe from being forced to accept processing for their data for any purpose other than the provision of the requested service.



Read the full post here.





COMMUNITY: Pledge your support to your favorite sites and creators with BAT !

In the past, members of the community have leveraged social media to gain the attention of creators for whom they had pledged their support. Leon Lush, a popular YouTuber with over 1 million subscribers, is one example of a creator who verified with Brave after being tweeted by a fan about the Brave browser, BAT, and how they could benefit him.



If one person was able to get Leon’s attention by tweeting him, imagine what the BAT community could accomplish by banding together!



Read the full post here.





VIDEO: Luke Mulks discusses how BAT & Brave are reducing ad fraud at the Never Stop Marketing Research webinar (April 3, 2019)

Luke’s presentation begins around 14:30. 😉





Client Updates

New Brave client releases:

Release Channel v0.62.50



In this release, we’ve added Widevine support for Linux (#413), added social media blocking for Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook (#3489), fixed issue where users couldn’t create Brave wallet (#3046), fixed monthly tips not being displayed in summary when accessing from tip panel (#3177) and much more!



For the complete list of additions and fixes, click here.



Beta Channel v0.63.31

Dev Channel v0.64.36



iOS release v1.9.1, now with Brave Sync! Brave Sync now lets you sync your bookmarks — with total privacy, even from Brave. We’ve also made a whole bunch of smaller improvements all over the place.



Android release v1.0.89-rc.2

Upgraded to Chromium 73.0.3683.90.

Added menu to disable bottom toolbar.





Brave Team Tweets

Brave Beta: Now with Private Ads!

The @brave Beta channel now features Brave Ads for testing. Users can opt in to view private ads via Brave Rewards, and will be able to claim BAT accumulated for having viewed ads. Link to download Brave Beta: https://t.co/GPm4xntSzh — BasicAttentionToken (@AttentionToken) April 2, 2019



Self-serve buying in the platform in the works.

Process improvements in progress. Team is working hard on self-serve buying platform. Wait list will become less blocked as we approach our upcoming general release. Preview phases in Dev and Beta channels w/lower volume./less inventory. Stay tuned. — Luke Mulks (@lukemulks) April 4, 2019



Sampson tipping the content he loves.

I found myself watching a @VICELAND video just now and decided to check to see if I could tip them. To my surprise, they appear to be verified again. Awesome! Here comes some @AttentionToken 🙂 — Sampson (@BraveSampson) March 29, 2019



Brave, BAT, and a bat.



Woot woot! 100,000 addresses



Zuck is a little late.

Now that Zuck has joined the party, remember that @BrendanEich of @Brave was calling for a US GDPR before it was cool. https://t.co/ucwkFrSjQ0 — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) April 1, 2019



Check out Johnny’s article in The Register.

I spoke with @TheRegister @BekiHill about the formal complaint filed today against IAB Europe's unlawful approach to GDPR consent https://t.co/Hikep23Y8h pic.twitter.com/9v92RbXD03 — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) April 3, 2019



Now it’s easy to block those sneaky social media logins and embeds.

In today's @brave 0.62.50 release, you can now control if social media logins and embeds are allowed. If you prefer less tracking and faster page loads because you don't use them in a 3rd party context, you can disable them in about:settings pic.twitter.com/y1IzpXtKqj — Brian R. Bondy (@brianbondy) April 3, 2019



New additions in v0.62.50!

The latest Brave desktop browser (0.62.50) features Widevine support for Linux, improvements to dark/light theme support, improvements for Sync and Brave Rewards, and new controls for social media buttons and logins (under Settings or Preferences). https://t.co/4wVWi9bfK3 pic.twitter.com/6GDG0HiJm8 — Brave Software (@brave) April 3, 2019



When are new geographic areas coming to Brave Ads?

1st geos:

US, UK, Canada, France, Germany



We will be rolling out to additional geos over two more phases, eventually covering all. We have to language-localize the ML model, so we are being strategic with the rollout (also hitting countries with most ad interest first). — Luke Mulks (@lukemulks) April 4, 2019



The Irish Times talks about Johnny’s filed complaint against the IAB

The Irish Times' @JackHoJo covers my complaint before @DPCIreland against IAB Europe's forced consent cookie wall, with @Tupp_Ed. https://t.co/GjrMXm65ru — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) April 5, 2019



BAT/Brave in the News

BAT Q1 2019 Partnerships That Puts It Ahead Of Its Competitors

BAT growth experienced notable growth in 2018, with the Brave browser surpassing 5.5 million monthly active users at the end of 2018 compared to 1 million monthly active users at the start of the year. The speed of the desktop app was increased by 22%, and the platform grew the number of verified users to 7 times what it was at the beginning of the year. The project also developed new partnerships such as Dow Jones Media Group, Townsquare, Civic, Qwant and HTC.



In 2019, the project has begun on a good foot with the Brave browser reaching 20 million downloads on Android. The project also secured new partnerships in 2019 with Tap Network and Cheddar.



Read the full text here.







Fortune favours the Brave: Privacy browser chap takes gripes over adtech body’s website to Irish data watchdog

Adtech industry body IAB Europe is facing down another data protection complaint from Brave browser bod Johnny Ryan, this time over the all-encompassing cookie wall stalking its site.



The complaint, filed today in Ryan’s home nation of Ireland, seeks to win a long-running argument between privacy activists and the tracking industry over methods employed to force users to choose between cookies and accessing a website.



Read the full text here.





News You Should Know

Researchers find 540 million Facebook user records on exposed servers

Security researchers have found hundreds of millions of Facebook user records sitting on an inadvertently public storage server. In the researchers’ write-up, Mexico-based digital media company Cultura Colectiva left more than 540 million records — including comments, likes, reactions, account names and more — stored on the Amazon S3 storage server without a password, allowing anyone to access the data.



Read the full text here.





Roaring Fans

Looks as though @brave is the browser I have been looking for. Chrome-like devtools, privacy first, build in add blocker, fast and even access to Tor (not that I use it) — Mathias Egekvist (@Mr_Matten) April 4, 2019



aye @NemRaps

download and use @brave as it uses the foundation of chrome, but doesn't have that data collecting shit plus it's user privacy friendly with tor built in — Dregs (@0fficialDregs) April 4, 2019

From Reddit :

The Brave Browser is a safer and faster Chrome alternative



10 Days as the default browser and already saved 10 minutes of my life. Thank you, Brave.

