Brave had modified their system for detecting fraud. These changes resulted in an increased amount of accounts flagged this month.
They did investigate after seeing complaints and have been able to reinstate accounts to some people who may have been caught in a “false positive” by the system.
If you’ve submitted tickets and had them investigate again but they’ve maintained your flag, then they feel confident you did something wrong.
While details can’t be given, the team has addressed that the information they look at when they investigate would be more than an “accidental” issue. Simple things like opening too many tabs or using a VPN would not be enough for your account to be flagged. It’s a combination of a lot of factors and are things that pretty much can’t be done on accident. (Not talking automatic flag, but whe investigation they do when you contact them afterwards to appeal the flag)
There are discussions occurring on different levels about trying to change how people are notified when flagged and what the message might say.
From my understanding as has been shared, the way accounts are flagged have changed. If not in place and perfect yet, then it should be something in the works. This change is that accounts will be flagged across devices. So if one device is flagged, all linked device should also be flagged. If done, this would be to combat the people who have long been sharing how to continue earning BAT even when accounts have been flagged. Ideally this means you’ll be flagged on a custodial level and once flagged will no longer be able to connect new devices or profiles. Or at the very least, means you’ll not be able to receive any payouts to anything that gets linked to your custodial account. (I’ll try to get better details later)
NOTE
I still have not heard final updates from people like Chriscat or Luke Mulks, however I have heard and seen enough that I wanted to provide what is essentially a “final update” for this topic. There will be more things shared in coming weeks/months though, which I may just create a new topic to share.
FINAL NOTE
If you pay attention, you’ll see a decent amount of people who were having issues were able to get their accounts reinstated. As always, there are some who didn’t get accounts reinstated and will be complaining. The majority of those should be people who were truly abusing the system and doing things they shouldn’t have been doing.
Don’t get me wrong, I know nothing in this world is perfect. Some might somehow be caught up in it, but it should be less than 1% of 1% who do. Brave is always working on improving systems and working with us to do their best to clear everything. That said, that’s essentially where things are at this time.
I’m glad everyone came together, shared details necessary, and we were able to get Brave to look over everything again. Many of you have been helped and got your issues resolved. If you have submitted tickets and not heard back yet, keep in mind they are still going through everything. There’s a lot of tickets this month, including from some people who submitted 5-10+ tickets per account.
So if not helped yet, just be patient, they will be getting to you. There’s just a LOT of tickets to go through and they are trying to take their time on investigations, putting accuracy over speed.
Original Post
Hey all. I debate whether to say anything as what I know and can share is limited. But I did want to provide some details due to a lot of questions going around with issues this month.
Here’s what I know. (in my own words)
I can confirm that you continue to see ads even though you are flagged. (this didn’t used to be the case, but now they say it is)
In terms of flagged notifications, they hesitate to put a function in the browser because they say would be worried people could use it to kind of measure out what caused the flag and to use that in order to try to avoid detection by antifraud. So they kind of randomize it and wait for people to realize something is wrong.
I had been inquiring more about getting regions supported. Last week it was said antifraud was being tagged in for preparation, otherwise countries were ready to be added.
Support has assured me they are looking through each ticket and doing the best for everyone they can.
I have made requests for Rewards and antifraud team to double check the system, as the number of accounts flagged and the quantity of people being told their accounts won’t be reinstated is significantly higher than usual.
Based on early indications (earlier this week), everything appeared to be working as intended. However, there’s been no official final response on certainty.
What are my personal thoughts?
I’ve been speaking with Brave staff and hoping the teams really are going to look deeper to see if there’s any issues they didn’t recognize.
While I know there are many people who abuse the system and that there are always attempts at fraud, it seems like there’s just substantially more accounts being flagged and not reinstated this month than I’d deem normal.
Part of me thinks that the sudden increase in flagged accounts may have resulted in antifraud trying to clear things up and get ready for the regions that were just added. Hence us arriving at our current little ban wave. But that’s just a small theory and may be 100% inaccurate. So keep in mind it’s just a passive thought.
Before I make any judgments, I’m trying to get a better understanding of what’s going on. While it hardly seems likely this many people have done things that violated terms and/or was considered suspicious, I’ve seen enough in life that I try not to let things surprise me.
In trying to respond to all of you, I can only urge everyone to try to remain patient. My hopes are that there’s an issue they’ll discover and things will be patched. However, I’m also certain that at least a small percentage will not get accounts reinstated for one reason or another.
Usually I have a lot of conversations and all that I don’t share. I know there are people who think I’m just here to defend Brave and I don’t care. While this is phrased awkwardly, I am typing this out to show how I am always looking at issues from both sides. There are a lot of conversations I have “behind the scenes” that often don’t get to be seen.
Unfortunately, since I don’t wok for Brave, I’m restricted on the type of information I have access to and on what I’m able to share.
Just want all of you to know that it’s not like you’re being ignored or anything. Regardless of the outcome, I’ll try to keep you in the loop and be upfront on your options.
Final Note
Just want to remind everyone I’m just a user of Brave like everyone else and am not employed by Brave. While I’ve shared some things that has been mentioned by people at Brave and also contains details of things I’m requesting of them, nothing here is an official response from Brave. It’s also not a promise or guarantee of a positive outcome for everyone. The purpose here is just to try to fill you in on what I know and am able to share.
Thanks for your summary and thoughts. The users who have been affected, myself being one of them have never altered or attempted to to anything other than collect the rewards as they were dealt out at the intervals supplied, and can see there is clearly something amiss behind the scenes.
Just a small update from two different sources: (with me paraphrasing)
Luke Mulks: Chriscat is looking into it. Not sure when he’ll have answers. I’ll get him on next week for Community Call. (to answer on this if not already announced, but also to share more details on Rewards in general)
Support: This has been brought up to ads and antifraud teams. Everything is working as intended and they are confident a majority of these users are irregular.
Main thing to keep in mind is you have people checking in on this at different levels. I know it’s nearing the end of the month and a decent amount of people here are frustrated. Sorry I’m not able to get better and more thorough answers. But at least wanted to advise it’s still somewhat a work in progress and I’m hoping by the end of next week to have more details/answers for everyone.
Thank you for keeping us as informed as you are able. I am now in the flagged group for some reason just waiting to see if it will be reversed as I have done nothing different from what I normally do. As a Linux user I do from time to time change my desktop environment but I have my Brave settings saved on an external SSD and I always copy them back and continue as normal. I did move to Debian 12 last week and had some installation issues that meant I had to reinstall Brave a few times but it was running fine after that and then the flag happened. If I feel I need to use a VPN I use one from here. Now I just have to wait and see what they say, still flagged or flag removed. Hopefully this is just a glitch in the Matrix as there seems to be an inordinate amount of flagged accounts that are being told that they will not be reinstated. We shall see what happens. Once again, thank you for keeping us as up to date as you can.
Brave had modified their system for detecting fraud. These changes resulted in an increased amount of accounts flagged this month.
They did investigate after seeing complaints and have been able to reinstate accounts to some people who may have been caught in a “false positive” by the system.
If you’ve submitted tickets and had them investigate again but they’ve maintained your flag, then they feel confident you did something wrong.
While details can’t be given, the team has addressed that the information they look at when they investigate would be more than an “accidental” issue. Simple things like opening too many tabs or using a VPN would not be enough for your account to be flagged. It’s a combination of a lot of factors and are things that pretty much can’t be done on accident. (Not talking automatic flag, but whe investigation they do when you contact them afterwards to appeal the flag)
There are discussions occurring on different levels about trying to change how people are notified when flagged and what the message might say.
From my understanding as has been shared, the way accounts are flagged have changed. If not in place and perfect yet, then it should be something in the works. This change is that accounts will be flagged across devices. So if one device is flagged, all linked device should also be flagged. If done, this would be to combat the people who have long been sharing how to continue earning BAT even when accounts have been flagged. Ideally this means you’ll be flagged on a custodial level and once flagged will no longer be able to connect new devices or profiles. Or at the very least, means you’ll not be able to receive any payouts to anything that gets linked to your custodial account. (I’ll try to get better details later)
NOTE
I still have not heard final updates from people like Chriscat or Luke Mulks, however I have heard and seen enough that I wanted to provide what is essentially a “final update” for this topic. There will be more things shared in coming weeks/months though, which I may just create a new topic to share.
FINAL NOTE
If you pay attention, you’ll see a decent amount of people who were having issues were able to get their accounts reinstated. As always, there are some who didn’t get accounts reinstated and will be complaining. The majority of those should be people who were truly abusing the system and doing things they shouldn’t have been doing.
Don’t get me wrong, I know nothing in this world is perfect. Some might somehow be caught up in it, but it should be less than 1% of 1% who do. Brave is always working on improving systems and working with us to do their best to clear everything. That said, that’s essentially where things are at this time.
I’m glad everyone came together, shared details necessary, and we were able to get Brave to look over everything again. Many of you have been helped and got your issues resolved. If you have submitted tickets and not heard back yet, keep in mind they are still going through everything. There’s a lot of tickets this month, including from some people who submitted 5-10+ tickets per account.
If you have not been helped yet, just be patient, they will be getting to you. There’s just a LOT of tickets to go through and they are trying to take their time on investigations, putting accuracy over speed.
@ptpck29 unfortunately, no easy way of doing so. It used to be that you’d just disconnect from custodial partner and try to reconnect. If it was flagged, you’d be told so. However, they removed the ability to disconnect yourself from the custodial partners now. So unless you just happen to randomly get disconnected, you’re not able to try to connect to and find out if it’s flagged.
So pretty much just have to send in a support ticket and they’ll look to see what the issues are, if you’ve not been earning BAT or receiving payments.
hello I have not received my rewards for the month of May I submitted a ticket 200494 since June 12 I have not had any answers can you help me
Cordially
Why are accounts getting flagged? What are the reasons for being flagged? What are the exact rules?
I have never spoofed my location. Maybe VPN use when I travel causes that, but I’m using VPN when I travel specifically to protect my data from being stolen from public hotspots (hotels, planes, etc.). If that caused me to get flagged, that’s really unfortunate. I’ve never used it to spoof my location.
I have been 100% honest about using Brave, selecting the state and country I live in as well as performing KYC on Gemini. I have no idea how I would get flagged, and I think you guys are way overflagging people with false positives.
To me this is 100% incompetence on Brave’s part. Devices today have more geolocation capabilities than simply VPN (IP Address). People use VPNs for all sorts of reasons. I use VPN when traveling to do work because my company MANDATES us to use VPN. That connects us to US servers whether we are in Asia or Europe. I use personal VPNs to protect my web data from being hacked while at hotels or on planes.
To me, it’s on Brave to figure out if someone is using VPN to hide their location (e.g. their Gemini KYC location doesn’t match their Brave Rewards location) versus people who travel.
I even tried to be honest during Thanksgiving last year when I went to another state to visit my In laws and switched the state on the Brave rewards phone I had on me. If that got me flagged for trying to spoof a location then… wow you guys need some basic programming skills.