What happens when you run a new browser on your iPad or iPhone for the first time? What does it do, and with whom does it communicate prior to user navigation? Brave’s Jon Sampson explores those questions here: “Browser First-Run: iOS Edition”

Last year I did a review of several popular desktop browsers, focusing exclusively on what they do when you launch the browser for the first time. Months later, an independent review was conducted by Douglas Leith of Trinity College Dublin. Both investigations found that Brave was, by far, the most private browser among those tested. Today I decided to take a look at various browsers available on iOS 13—specifically, Brave 1.15, DuckDuckGo 7.42.0.1, Mozilla Firefox 24.0, Google Chrome 80.0.3987.95, Opera Touch 2.2.1, and Microsoft Edge 45.2.16. Safari is also briefly examined, but not to the extent of the other browsers, due to certain limitations. Jon Sampson

Read the full post here: https://brave.com/ios-browser-first-run/

Highlights from Matthew Liu & Nick Poulden of Origin’s BAT Community AMA

Welcome to the next installment in our series of BAT Community-run AMAs.



The ongoing AMA series on Reddit features various guests from the Brave and BAT teams, and now, guests from projects and causes that Brave collaborates with.



The most recent AMA took place on April 16th, and featured guests Matthew Liu (Co-founder) and Nick Poulden (Senior Engineer) at Origin, a sharing economy platform that enables buyers and sellers of goods and services to transact on the distributed, open web. The pair fielded both pre-submitted and live questions from Redditors about Origin Marketplace, the first marketplace built on Origin’s own protocol; and Dshop, Origin’s decentralized e-commerce storefront (which powers the new Brave Swag Store). Matt and Nick shared why they believe the world needs blockchain-based commerce and what they see to be the advantages over traditional solutions.



Read the full post here: https://brave.com/guest-ama-with-origin/

Meetup: Panos Papadopoulos, Security Researcher at Brave, to present at upcoming Greek Cryptocurrency Community virtual meetup (Apr. 25, 2020)

The meetup will take place on Saturday, April 25, 2020 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM GMT+3.



More details inside: https://www.meetup.com/Greek-Cryptocurrency-community/events/269930024/

Webinar: FREE upcoming PrivSec webinar: “The Data Protection Crisis of Online Advertising” with Brave’s Chief Policy & Industry Relations Officer, Johnny Ryan (Apr. 30, 2020)

Brave has led a series of GDPR complaints in 16 EU countries against the vast data breach at the heart of the online advertising “real-time bidding” industry. Now, Brave has also filed a GDPR complaint against big tech internal data free-for-alls. Enforcement would be tantamount to a functional separation of the big walled garden’s businesses.

Register with PrivSec for free & book your place today: https://last-thursday-in-privacy.heysummit.com/talks/the-data-protection-crisis-of-online-advertising/

This Week in Sponsored Images

April 21 – 22nd: Nexo (Save the Children)



This week, Nexo joins the list of brands running sponsored campaigns in Brave’s New Tab Page.



April 23 – 26: eToro



Following the recent success of their first set of Sponsored Images, eToro has returned to the new tab page in Brave.

#SavewithCrypto: Double Your Support for #SavewithStories



Nexo is matching crypto donations to Save the Children’s COVID-19 initiative.



With #SavewithCrypto Nexo is matching the first $10,000 donated to #SavewithStories through the Giving Block’s widget on our website. All contributions will go towards providing children in need with food, supplies and education during the coronavirus outbreak.



In challenging moments, it is vital that we act together. After all, sharing the load is what the peer-to-peer model and blockchain space stand for. As an active participant in the blockchain industry, Nexo believes in sharing the responsibility for the wellbeing of society as, in the long run, it is for the benefit of us all, both individually and collectively. As a strong and stable company, we want to provide whatever help we can and feel a responsibility to do so. Hence, #SavewithCrypto.



Nexo joins a growing list of brands that have run Sponsored Images in Brave that includes BlockFi, Newegg, Lokai, Crypto.com, eToro, and Western Digital.

Featured Creators

Carl Eric Martin (aka The Moon) 🌚, YouTuber

Channel description:



This channel focuses on all cryptocurrencies, but mainly Bitcoin. In every video I do technical analysis suitable even for beginners, I go through daily Bitcoin news & crypto news, and I also make some general crypto-market analysis. I believe that fundamental analysis and technical analysis go hand in hand, so I incorporate both in my Bitcoin videos. Cryptocurrencies, but most importantly Bitcoin, is going to change the world, so go buy Bitcoin, subscribe to this channel and be part of this amazing revolution!



Check out Carl’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc4Rz_T9Sb1w5rqqo9pL1Og/featured



Read Everipedia’s entry on Carl: https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/carl-eric-martin

ibxtoycat 🐱🎮, Twitch Streamer & YouTuber

Ibxtoycat loves to play & discuss Minecraft. Apparently, ibxtoycat is not alone, because their YouTube channel has over 1.44M subscribers! ❤️



Minecraft fans, don’t miss out on ibxtoycat!



Subscribe to ibxtoycat on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_GQ4mac4oN3wl1UdbFuTEA



Read Everipedia’s entry on ibxtoycat: https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/ibxtoycat

Client Updates

Desktop Dev Channel v1.9.38

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.9.38

Beta Channel v1.8.83

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.8.83

Desktop Release Channel v1.7.98

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.7.98

Brave Team Tweets

Brands on ad buy side, but on creators side, we have >600K sites, channels, and accounts signed up now. https://t.co/Dinvi8fuMY. Getting toward 1M and the full all-crypto-for-everyone vision. pic.twitter.com/zoor7FfQYZ — BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) April 24, 2020 Brendan Eich, Founder & CEO

Brave desktop and Android users, navigate to about:components via the address bar and click Update next to the Brave Ad Block Updater entry. Make sure you're on v1.0.551 or greater. Restart Brave for good measure. That's all for now 🙂 — Sampson (@BraveSampson) April 23, 2020 Jonathan Sampson, Senior Developer Relations

now selling shirts / mugs / bags / phone cases / duvet covers / blankets / towels / buttons / bath mats featuring Rachel Fong's doodle of Azuki the bunny https://t.co/4R6HiPbF8Q



all proceeds go to @SaveABunny so they can rescue abandoned rabbits! pic.twitter.com/y4ltRXIskc — yan (@bcrypt) April 24, 2020 Yan Zhu, CISO

News You Should Know

The Register: Forget tabs – the new war is commas versus spaces: Web heads urged by browser devs to embrace modern CSS

The web is being reworked to display a rainbow of previously unavailable colors, but part of the transition demands abandoning commas for spaces when coding CSS color-space parameters.



Word of the new cruelty went out via Twitter on Thursday when Mathias Bynens, who works on Google’s Chrome team, advised web developers to adopt “the modern comma-free CSS color syntax.”



The reason, he explained, is that modern CSS color display functions, specifically lab(), lch(), and color(), don’t work with commas. These functions provide different ways to express color values



CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, is a domain-specific declarative programming language for laying out web pages, usually in conjunction with HTML and JavaScript. It has used commas since its first appearance in the mid-1990s, and it continues to do so.



But CSS is evolving, and since 2016 there’s been an effort spearheaded by Tab Atkins Jr, a developer on the Google Chrome team, and Elika Etamad (@fantasai), a member of W3C CSS Working Group and a Mozilla contributor, to get rid of unnecessary commas in CSS code related to color.



Read the full text here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/24/no_comma_drama_css_devs/

Forbes: Use Houseparty? Here’s How You Are Being Tracked On Your iPhone

Video chat app Houseparty has been a lifeline for many people during the COVID-19 crisis. But the resulting surge in people using the app inevitably leads to questions about its security and privacy.



Despite rumours of a cyber-attack, Houseparty’s security seems pretty solid, so what about the video chat app’s privacy? A closer inspection of Houseparty’s iPhone app shows multiple trackers and data collection that you probably don’t know about, according to a privacy review undertaken by iOS and Mac app Lockdown.



You might remember Lockdown–an open source firewall app that detects who is tracking you on your iPhone and blocks them–from a previous article.



The folks at Lockdown have done the privacy review of Houseparty as part of a series of analyses of popular iOS apps.



Read the full text here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/04/24/use-houseparty-heres-how-you-are-being-tracked-on-your-iphone/?ss=consumertech#1c617a17209e

Roaring Fans