Official: Brave 1.0 has officially been released — Brave Rewards & BAT now on all platforms including iOS. Let the games begin!

Brave Software, makers of the innovative Brave browser which combines privacy with a blockchain-based digital advertising platform, today announced the official launch of Brave 1.0. The Brave open-source browser fundamentally shifts how users, publishers, and advertisers interact online by giving users a private, safer, and 3-6x faster browsing experience while funding the Web through a new attention-based platform of privacy-preserving advertisements and rewards. In addition to desktop and Android devices, Brave’s private ads and payment platform (Brave Rewards) is now available for iPhones and iPads.



Read the full post here: https://brave.com/brave-launches-next-generation-browser/

Official: Brave’s co-founder & CTO, Brian Bondy, reflects on “The road to Brave 1.0”: A retrospective since Day 1 of Brave (w/ fun facts!)

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.



Read the full post here: https://brave.com/the-road-to-brave-one-dot-zero/

Public AMA: “I’m Brendan Eich, inventor of JavaScript and cofounder of Mozilla, and I’m doing a new privacy web browser called “Brave” to END surveillance capitalism. Join me and Brave co-founder/CTO Brian Bondy. Ask us anything!” (on r/IAmA)

The AMA currently has over 40K upvotes and is now on the Reddit homepage! Thank you for all of the questions, love & support!

Blog: Brave warns US Senate & Congress: foreign state actors can use targeted ads to run code on US government computers, exploiting conventional browsers

In a letter sent to the US Senate and Congress Homeland Security Committees today, Brave warns that conventional web browsers allow foreign state actors to execute code on US government computers by using targeted online ads.



Read the full text here: https://brave.com/malvertising-homeland-security/

Blog: Ryan’s testimony at International Grand Chamber | RTB data breach enables disinformation. Enforcers can be sued.

Dr Johnny Ryan of Brave testified on 7 November 2019 at the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and “Fake News”. Representatives from the US Congress, UK Parliament, and ten other governments gathered for joint hearing on disinformation, in Dublin, Ireland. Dr Ryan’s panel included Roger McNamee, Facebook investor; Carole Cadwalladr of The Guardian; Karlin Lillington of The Irish Times; and Ben Nimmo of The Atlantic Council.



Read the full text here: https://brave.com/dr-johnny-ryans-testimony-at-the-international-grand-chamber-on-disinformation-and-fake-news/

Brave R&D: 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.



Whether due to recent data privacy investigations, high-profile breaches, or emerging government regulations, online privacy is a rising concern for users across the nation. According to a new survey of 1,500 U.S. web users conducted by Brave Software, 76 percent of users feel more concerned with protecting their online privacy than they did one year ago, and 88 percent wish they had more control over how large companies like Google and Facebook use their personal data. It’s time for a change.



Read the full text here: https://brave.com/brave-software-finds-82-percent-of-people-wish-the-web-were-more-privacy-oriented/

Non-Profit: BAT/Brave launches “Brave for Good” campaign & initiative with The Giving Block for Giving Tuesday (December 3rd, 2019)

We are excited to be working again with The Giving Block, this time to promote the #BitcoinTuesday sponsorship as a part of our Brave for Good campaign for Giving Tuesday. By dedicating 100% of our ad inventory to ads from participating charities on Giving Tuesday, we aim to bring a new level of awareness, reach and support to the causes and lives of the people who benefit from their important work. We hope this will be the start of a new tradition for Giving Tuesday that we can carry on for years to come.



Learn more here: https://www.thegivingblock.com/post/brave-presenting-sponsor-for-bitcoin-tuesday-giving-tuesday-crypto



How can members of the community get involved with the initiative?



On Tuesday, December 3rd, we encourage members of the BAT & Brave community to go out into their local communities and do good. Find some creative way to “pay it forward,” donate to a local charity, or just do something kind for someone else. Afterward, tweet about your good deed using the hashtag #BeBraveForGood to spread awareness. Bonus points if you tweet a photo of yourself rocking BAT/Brave gear while doing good!



Of course, we should all strive to do good each and every day, whether or not we happen to be wearing BAT/Brave swag. 😉 But we’ll do our part to pay it forward and award folks with free merch for helping us spread the good by tweeting their good deeds with the hashtag #BeBraveForGood on Giving Tuesday!



Get involved, it would mean a whole lot to us, and you’ll feel great about having done something good, too!



Finally, stay tuned for our upcoming AMA + livestream with Alex Wilson & Patrick Duffy of The Giving Block, Joel Harper of FreedomThree, and Luke Mulks, Director of Business Development at Brave, coming up next Tuesday, November 19th, 2019, where the group will discuss the Brave Ads Grant Program and go into greater depth on their plans for Giving Tuesday.

Swag: BAT & Access79 partner to bring YOU two limited edition fine custom BAT jewelry pieces!

We are teasing something super exciting and special that we have coming up… It’s shiny, it has to do with BAT, and you can wear it… It’s a product collaboration with one of our advertisers, Access79! You may have seen their ads pop up in Brave over the last several months. Access79 is a try-before-you-buy luxury fine jewelry service for clients who buy jewelry for themselves or as gifts for others. Clients take a fun style quiz to determine jewelry preferences, lifestyle, and budget. Then, Access79 matches you up with one of their personal jewelers, who are experts in gemology as well as style! Next, you’ll have a consultation via email, text, or phone. Your personal jeweler will then curate a lookbook of pieces for you to review, and you’ll finalize the selections. Your 3 unique pieces will then be sent in beautiful packaging. You have 7 days to try them, show your friends, significant other, etc. before buying what you love and sending the rest back. If you’re gifting Access79, you can either let her decide from the 3 pieces which one she wants or you decide the one you want to present. The service requires a $149 deposit which is applied toward any pieces you decide to buy.



You get the convenience of never having to go to a jewelry store, the luxury of having your own personal jeweler, and the excitement of discovering pieces from innovative designers curated just for you. This is taking shopping for fine jewelry to a whole new level!



Visit Access79’s website and take your jewelry quiz here: https://access79.com/



Now, back to the collab: BAT and Access79 have been working together over the past little while to create two very special, fine, limited edition, collector’s BAT jewelry pieces! Ahhh!



We will be releasing two custom BAT jewelry pieces: A unisex BAT-logo signet ring and a BAT-logo dog tag necklace! Both pieces will be available in silver and gold finishes.



I’ve seen the finished products and I honestly can’t wait to rock them! Very soon, we will have for you a link where you can go to pre-order these limited edition pieces, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, leave a comment below wherever you’re listening to this podcast and let us know if you’re excited for us to reveal these collector’s BAT jewelry pieces, and whether you’ll be buying one for yourself (or perhaps for your BAT-obsessed friend or significant other) as a holiday gift!



We’ve also created a Twitter poll where you can let us know just how excited you are! The more interest there is surrounding this collab, the more likely we’ll be to introduce additional limited edition pieces (hint: custom Brave pieces) in the future!

Would you buy any of these pieces for yourself or as a gift for someone else? 😍💎



Comment below letting us know whether you prefer silver or gold! ✨✨ — BAT Community (@BAT_Community) November 16, 2019

Client Updates

Brave Release Channel version 1.0 is here!

In this latest release, we’ve added Brave Rewards widget to the New Tab Page (#6370), fixed auto-contribution still occurring when auto-contribution is disabled within brave://rewards (#6716), fixed the “Clear cookies and site data when you quit Brave” toggle under brave://settings/content/cookies reverting to default state after closing the tab (#6119), and much more!

To see the full release notes, visit: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.0.0

Brave Desktop Beta Channel v1.1.1

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/releases/tag/v1.1.1

Android v1.5.1

https://github.com/brave/browser-android-tabs/releases/tag/v1.5.1

Release notes

Upgraded to Chromium 78.0.3904.96 (#2257).

Small text fixes (#2272, #2274).

Brave iOS v1.13

https://github.com/brave/brave-ios/releases/tag/v1.13

Big news: Brave Rewards is now available.

Brave Rewards lets you support the creators you love while blocking online trackers and the invasive ads which rely on them. Tap the triangular BAT icon in the URL bar to get started with Brave Rewards.

We’ve also made some improvements to Dark mode and a few other housekeeping fixes.

Brave Team Tweets

Sorry for the delay, I usually tweet these out within the first week of the next month: @Brave October DAU 2.8M, MAU 7.9M users. Current numbers bigger, tracking to 9M+ MAU and 3M++ DAU for November. https://t.co/7IX17u2dkt — BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) November 14, 2019 New usage statistics… Tracking to 9 million monthly active users!

Quite a crowd at @brave privacy meetup tonight! pic.twitter.com/Q7n3L4feJF — Andrius Aucinas (@AndriusAuc) November 14, 2019 Brave hosted a privacy meetup in London!

Our colleagues at Google have announced a (very small) step to solve the data protection issues at the centre of our GDPR complaint.

As I say on the front page of today's Financial Times, it is an empty gesture. Our complaints to the regulators stand. pic.twitter.com/vV4bNVAkLg — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) November 15, 2019 Hmmm… is Google not trying hard enough?

Advertising can be highly effective.



Treat people as People, as opposed to drug users in a geo-fenced free-fire zone to pepper with hot garbage on every pageload, and they may even opt-in to a better advertising experience. — Luke Mulks (@lukemulks) November 13, 2019 I wonder who has a better way to advertise… *cough* (Brave) *cough*

Yes, it is.



We're working on building demand in India. We just recently supported the country, and are re-engaging with interested advertisers that we've been in on-off discussions with during the initial rollout. — Luke Mulks (@lukemulks) November 14, 2019 Building up some demand and ad inventory in India… stay tuned!

Just another reminder about this excellent talk that goes into detail regarding the ad event confirmation protocol @Brave introduces to the space.



The best way to limit data breach, build a better accounting protocol and matching model that doesn't require data collection. https://t.co/ySltIKbxic — Luke Mulks (@lukemulks) November 14, 2019 Learn more about blinded tokens and privacy.

I’ll be in Amsterdam next week to share @Brave's view of the future of the news business at the @FinancialTimes @FT #FTfutureNews Summit https://t.co/19afEGV2Ve pic.twitter.com/basBW2fiYI — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) November 11, 2019 Johnny will be in Amsterdam next week at the Financial Times Future News Summit!

Video and text of my full testimony before leaders from 10 parliaments last week https://t.co/PItNugk7HB — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) November 12, 2019 Ryan’s testimony at International Grand Chamber about Real Time Bidding data breaches.

As I told The Financial Times @FT, Google removing categories from RTB bid requests does not stop the biggest data breach in history.

Google RTB will still broadcast what you are reading, watching, or listening to, and where you are, to countless companieshttps://t.co/9zd4E38UxD pic.twitter.com/AVtITmvVwr — Johnny Ryan (@johnnyryan) November 14, 2019 Google doesn’t care and loves to share your data.

BAT/Brave in the News

We have a ton of articles in the news about the release of Brave 1.0! Here’s a sampling. 😉

CNET: Brave 1.0 Browser Review: Browse Faster And Safer While Ticking Off Advertisers

Read the full text here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/dwd7s9/cnet_brave_10_browser_review_browse_faster_and/

Brave browser reaches v1.0, its first stable version

Read the full text here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/brave-browser-reaches-v1-0-its-first-stable-version/

Brave 1.0 review: This excellent, privacy-focused browser can make you money, too

Read the full text here: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3453376/brave-10-review-this-excellent-privacy-focused-browser-can-make-you-money-too.html

News You Should Know

Google’s secret cache of medical data includes names and full details of millions – whistleblower

A whistleblower who works in Project Nightingale, the secret transfer of the personal medical data of up to 50 million Americans from one of the largest healthcare providers in the US to Google, has expressed anger to the Guardian that patients are being kept in the dark about the massive deal.

Read the full text here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/12/google-medical-data-project-nightingale-secret-transfer-us-health-information

Facebook app accesses iPhone camera without user’s knowledge

The way the iOS Facebook app mismanages the iPhone’s camera has been uncovered, one which may be a privacy risk. The app is shown to be using the camera on the iPhone while the user is browsing the app, even if they are not actively taking a photograph or performing some other task with any of the imaging sensors.



Read the full text here: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/11/12/facebook-app-accesses-iphone-camera-without-users-knowledge

Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Electronic Devices Unconstitutional

In a development that the Electronic Frontier Foundation declared “an enormous victory for privacy,” a federal judge in Boston ruled Tuesday that suspicionless searches of travelers’ phones, laptops, and other electronic devices by government agents at U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional.



Read the full text here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/12/enormous-victory-us-judge-rules-suspicionless-searches-travelers-electronic-devices

Roaring Fans

Check out @brave browser, I have been waiting for something like this for ages. Good riddance ads and tracking nonsense. And you can pay some money to not see ads, but still support the websites you visit 😎 https://t.co/mIfyeqDZGa — Lindsay Watt (@linzwatt) November 14, 2019

Uninstall all your browsers and download @brave Browser — zʎǝʞllǝʍ (@ILLYTHAGREAT) November 14, 2019

Day 1 of switching to @brave. — Marty Ericson (@MartyEricson) November 14, 2019

From Reddit: