Beware Brave

<p>Correct me if I'm wrong here but reading the article it essentially seems that if someone goes to a certain crypto website online (say via a Google search, or entering the URL directly) then Brave is changing the URL to pretend that if referred you to them, so it gets a payment. If so, then yeah, it's a little shady, sure, but ultimately not creating any security-risk… you're still going to the actual website.</p><p><br></p><p>And the article only mentions it does this for crypto-trading and crypto-wallet sites, not, for example, that if you click on a link to an Amazon product on someone's personal website that Brave changes their referrer to its own. So if it is purely just cryto-currency websites then this issue is going to affect, what, 2% or-less of Brave's userbase who actually use crypto?</p><p><br></p><p>I don't think this is on the same scale as (1) Opera browsers claiming they have a built-in VPN when it's actually just a secure proxy-server; (2) how Opera Mini breaks encryption for websites on their servers, then re-encrypts it before sending it to you, giving a window on their servers when a secure site is not encrypted; (3) how Firefox have run certain "studies" in the past, with users being unaware, including installing add-ons or browser changing settings (4) or how some anti-virus apps, like BitDefender Free, hijack your certificate-store and put their own certificate at the root-level so they can break encryption on secure sites to virus-check them before re-encrypting them.</p><p><br></p><p>If you're that concerned, there's always Vivaldi…</p>