This is the reason why this people cannot connect their wallets to their gemini accounts because their regions where suspected to have malicious acts. Sad…!!!
Is there any changes regarding to these regions?
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This is really disappointing for us legitimate users who are just using Brave normally and not abusing the system. It is also a racist move for me. Why not just ban those fraudsters and come up with an automated way of detecting these fraudulent activities? If a certain feature is getting abused, you do not ban an entire country, instead, find a way to limit that feature to a reasonable level or set limits that are reasonable.
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I get your point, but just wanted to point out that it’s the wrong term, for what it’s worth. Racism means discrimination based on a person’s race. This would essentially be based on their skin color. So it would be all alike people regardless of what country they live in.
So it’s an argument to argue discrimination and all, which is an interesting conversation to have as there’s some merits to it but a lot of other things to consider/debate.
Sadly, life doesn’t work this way. Think about it, why do most places around the world require you to be a certain age to drink alcohol or to drive? Why can insurance companies charge you more money based on your age? All of that seems like discrimination and I was against it, especially here in the United States where many places allowed females to enter nightclubs at the age of 18 but men were required to be 21+.
The argument is that businesses have to be able to stay open to do business. If there is a certain demographic or area where there is higher risk and less profit, they can choose not to do business. They can also assign different fees based on those risks. The fee thing references why females have lower car insurance at 21 and males don’t see the decrease until 25 (in the United States), as they claim males have a much higher risk of speeding and getting into car accidents.
Essentially, the same types of arguments get made for countries/regions that they terminate services. Just as right now, because of Russia vs Ukraine, many surrounding countries who did nothing wrong also aren’t able to have services. This also is no fault of the citizens, but it still is being denied to them. It’s not right and there should be better answers. As you said, it punishes the majority for the acts of the few. Yet what we often miss is how big of an impact those few people make.
Think of it this way, let’s say you opened a business driving a taxi. Every time you went to Madison Square you got robbed and/or you got a flat tire from running over something. The expense (due to loss of money in theft/damages) exceeded what you earned by driving there. Would you continue offering services?
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Good points, @Saoiray. I appreciate your positive comments and explanation. I admit, I may be wrong with the racist term that I used, but I am just speaking based on what we feel as a race when we are denied something just because of a small subset of our population. I fully understand all the reasons behind it and will move on from this point.
About my suggestion of coming up with sophisticated anti-fraud mechanisms, that is a valid point from a technology perspective. It is indeed possible to automatically detect and block fraudsters using existing technologies and proper application coding. It is another way of looking at this situation instead of just adding more countries to the blacklist whenever you notice an increase in fraudulent activities - you might eventually run out of countries if this is the only logic being followed. This method of blocking entire countries should be a short-term solution only and I do hope that the team finds a more feasible solution in the future that will benefit everyone.
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W.T.F! this is insane. Is this why it shows “Your request is still being processed, please wait” when I log in? I have been trying to login since I logout yesterday.
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I think banning the whole country for the abuse of a person is a little bit overboard.
The vulnerabilities of the sytem were discovered and yet no action was taken except for the ban implemented to those countries.
Just think of it this way, what do you think will happen if other countries would find out said vulnerabilities? Are the actions of the management limited to banning people/places only?
The action taken seems to just delay the inevitable and not directed towards fixing it/providing solutions. Just saying.
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I’ve turned off the ads on my brave browser until this gets lifted. I still use the browser for its features but other than that I’m no longer viewing their ads. I hope they lift the ban soon.
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Is this a permanent ban? It’s ridiculous to ban a whole country for the malicious acts of few people.
That means all the BAT that the legitimate users have accumulated for years means nothing. Its quite infuriating.
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Sometimes these country bans happen because of this: http://www.fatf-gafi.org/publications/high-risk-and-other-monitored-jurisdictions/documents/increased-monitoring-march-2022.html or laws and regulations coming out of that country. But there must be better ways to get around this without using blanket country bans - that’s what good KYC is supposed to achieve, surely.
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If that’s the reason, I was still able to use Gemini after January 14, 2022. Maybe it took a moment for it to take effect? I only noticed that I was logged out last month (March 2022).
If that’s the case, I think it’s time for me to switch browsers since the only two reasons I am using Brave are for the ad-blocking and Brave rewards. Other than that I have experienced problems with notifications, etc. especially for work-related stuff that I have yet to submit a bug report.
I love this browser and have even recommended it to my family and friends since I feel safe using this browser, yet this news is heart-breaking. I hope there’s a better solution to this rather than just banning a whole country.
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You can still receive rewards but it will stay on your brave wallet, it’s not possible to withdraw those earnings to your custody accounts, uphold or gemini. The only usage of those rewards are for tipping to the publishers you liked.
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Yes this browser has been part of my browsing experience too and it made me excited every 8 of the moths, at least I have something to wait on, but now, It seems it won’t happen again.
The ban was due to the fraudulent activities of some individuals.
Indeed, at least you can use them to tip to your favorite publishers and content creators.
I am hoping too, its not that big but it still helps us people you used their browser.
The bug have been fixed though, but banning seems not the better choice they’ve got.
I think, this is applicable to those new users who have not linked their rewards to uphold for the first time…
I’ll try to link my account to uphold. I still can’t login on my gemini account.
So Brave cannot create a technological solution to stop “fraudulent activities” in one of their functionality, so they just ban countries instead? Penalizing users in those countries who use the feature legitimately (the majority I assume). That’s just lazy and short-sighted.
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