Here's the reason why I will NEVER use Brave Rewards for my whole life!

Brave Rewards
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So I finally want to try out the future Brave provided. To try a way to support content creators directly. But that requires me to register an Uphold Account.
I was promoted to give out a lot of personal info, fair for a “wallet” though.
Then I verify my email by clicking the link they send me in a verification email.

After that my Uphold account got immediately suspended. Therefore I can’t start using Brave Rewards.

What happened?

It appears to be that their automatic anti-fraud system has been triggered, and banned my newly registered account. But that must be a mistake. I am using my own identity here!
Filed a support request, at first I got some auto generated responses like “We’ve assigned a specialist to handle your case who will get back to you shortly.”. Didn’t even specify the specialist’s worker#. After that no responses at all.
It’s been 10 days already.

I’m very upset about this. I give out a lot of personal info for this. Phone number, Email, country and city, birthday, if I remembered correctly, even my ID number?
Giving off all these personal information, and verified my email, just to get banned?

I am using my own identity here! The phone number and email account have been used by me, for 10+ years. If I use my own identity and couldn’t get an account, then I guess I shall say “goodbye” to Brave Rewards, before I even have a chance to say “hello”.

I don’t know if I got something wrong. Do I have to use an Uphold account for Brave Rewards? Because Brave Browser told me to. But later somewhere else said I could use Brave Reward on my own browser without an Uphold account, as long as I never need to sync the Reward across multiple devices?

The problem is that I already give out my identity! If they suspended my account to prevent identity theft, then tell me: If I give off all my personal info to them, and they don’t give me an working Uphold account as promised, then WHO IS STEALING IDENTITY HERE?
This is NOT OK. If I don’t have control over MY financial account, someone else is going to control it. I can’t allow anyone to use my identity to scam anyone else!

Since I really don’t know what’s wrong, I can only make guesses.
Was that because I used a VPN to register an account? Well because I live in China and I have to use VPN to access the… Internet!
Was that because I used Firefox Browser to verify my uphold account, instead of using Brave Browser? Well that’s because Firefox’s been my main browser for a long time!
Was that because the uBlock / NoScript plugins installed on my Firefox makes Uphold thinks I’m hiding something, by disallowing any unnecessary javascripts?
Or was that just because I’m in China? I do know that some web services ban China, like Patreon, Linkedin (recently), or PUBG (China region block). If so, could they at least told be before I handle over my identity?

After all, can they… at least… delete the identity I give off to them? I don’t usually give off a lot of personal info for this, so this have made me very uncomfortable.
This might not be the place to talk about things like this, but I should at least TRY to differentiate “me” from “just another identity theft”, right?

Now when I click the Brave Rewards icon, I can see my account is still “pending” approval. If this stays like this forever, then I’m not able to use Brave Rewards, for my whole life.

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@KiloGramGrave,
Thank you for reaching out and apologies for the hassle you appear to be having. Can you please send me your email that you used to create your Uphold account? I’d like to reach out to them myself and see if anyone can shed some light on this.

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You don’t need a uphold account to support creators

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U don’t need an uphold account to support creators, u just need it to cash-out. This btw is an error on uphold’s part, not brave, so i request you to get in touch with uphold. Their support sucks, btw, so dont even expect a response before a week. I still dont get why brave doesn’t allow payouts to binance. None of this is brave’s fault, so no one here can help u unfortunately. You can meanwhile disconnect your uphold id from browser, to use another id. I also doubt if uphold allows you to use its services in china, because of your laws and stuff.

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@KiloGramGrave,
Please let me know once you’ve sent me the above requested DM.

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Yep, burned out on Brave. Been using it for years, through all the bugs (some of which are still there), and found that all my BAT is gone. They have no real support. I posted something in these community forums and got no answer. It’s sad since I really wanted Brave to work.

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Just sent a DM with my email address.
I really should have tried using Brave Rewards without Uphold at first. Now it’s a bit late. I already handed over my personal info, and I don’t feel safe letting them keep it, if I couldn’t even get an account.
Account me in, or forget me, either are okay to me.

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I had the exact same thing happen. I’m not in china I’m in the usa and I used brave to register. I was also using a vpn when I registered but it was a vpn for work which connects me to my corporate network in the states. They basically made it sound like that I had done something wrong or something illegal or at least that’s how I felt. At this point I don’t know what to do. I like brave and my initial reason for signing up was because of brave rewards which I have actually turned off at this point because of this issue with up hold.

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Uphold sent me another email 1 hour ago. Said that my account will stay closed:

Having considered your appeal, we regret to inform you that your account remains closed. Please be aware that any new accounts you create may also be closed.

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So, 2 hours after that email told me that I was rejected, they sent me another email, saying that:

“We’ve taken another look at your case and have decided to revise our earlier decision. We’re pleased to let you know that your account has been reinstated and can be used as normal.”

(I don’t know if any of this is before or after the Brave Admin has reached out to Uphold about my case. I didn’t ask.)
And I’m finally welcome to… give them more information and finally finishing verifying my account.

Here’s the thing, I completely understand why a financial account registering requires so much personal info. And it’s not even the worst case I’ve met, at least they didn’t require me recording a whole video or something.
But if this helps preventing fraud in anyway, why did they just ban me, without giving me a chance to prove that “I am I”? It sounds like that they already believe that I’m not a fraud first, and then require more info to ensure that I’m not a fraud. Oh my.

And, to their defense, I know how serious the identity thefts could be in China. (Assuming my ban has anything to do with being in China.)
Some of them even could trick the video test, by stealing someone else’s photo, and use some software to generate some talking footage. Real enough to trick the automated system, or overworked human who might only have a few seconds to review each footage.
And I know that the last few years P2P lent/rent apps are promoted to almost every Chinese person. Thousands of them. Which means too many identities already being sent somewhere, too many chances to steal one person’s identity.
And I’m aware that websites like “Have I Been Pwned” is not allowed to exist in China. Someone tried, but had to take down the site soon after.
And I even have seen one “personal identities collection” chart. With their names, ID numbers, addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, listed. Millions of them. Didn’t find me in it though.

And I think, I… I mean…

I regret to inform everyone that I have lost interest in registering an Uphold account. Please be aware that if you randomly suspend anyone else for 10+ days, they might also lose interest.

:wink:

Ok jokes aside, I am really tired of this for now. This does go against proving my innocence. And I did require others’ attention to help me out. So if any admin thinks this is not okay, and asks me to finish the verification, I will do it. But without anyone asking, I am putting this to an indefinite hold.

After all I’ve done my part. If there really is a problem preventing lots of users from joining the bRave Party, I already did my best to warn them. Case closed.

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