PSA: Flagged accounts issue (August 2023 update)

Brave Rewards
22

Taking a look. Thanks!

1 Like
23

Sounds like a similar story to mine. I have been unflagged but the payout that was supposed to be in July for June and in August for July haven’t come yet. I have opened a ticket (216088). 3 straight months of opening tickets. Wondering how much this issue is hurting the product.

24

@brokeautistic Just to be clear, you don’t get paid for anything during the time you were flagged. So if you were flagged back in June or earlier, then you’ll not have anything for July or August. All you’d get paid is what you earned prior to being flagged.

They pay you in the next payout. So if you just were unflagged in the recent wave, you’ll get your payout in September.

25

I didn’t receive my July payout so I created a ticket 10 days ago and today I received a reply “your Rewards profiles will remain flagged”.

I have been flagged before and the browser clearly indicated this and I was able to resolve it with the help of support. But this time, I see no indication that I am flagged. I only discovered it after chasing up a missing rewards payout. It still shows that I am connected to Uphold, and I am still receiving ads up to my daily limit. It’s like I am “shadow-flagged”.

Are other people typically only finding out they are flagged when their payout doesn’t arrive? This seems like bad UX and to some degree, deceptive. Or is this by design?

1 Like
26

It happened to me as well now. I‘ve been told by support that my profile has been flagged. Interestingly, this does not show in my rewards panel. I‘m still connected to uphold, still getting served ads, and it still shows an estimate of my monthly earnings, I‘m just not getting payed out (Ubuntu).
I‘ve been opted in to rewards since 2019 and never abused the system. My payouts are small and I‘m giving it away to creators anyways, so I don‘t care about the 30 cents I‘m no longer getting, bit it‘s a shame to see how these issues are currently handeled.

I can only imagine that the issue in my case is that I‘m either using a VPN every now and then or that I‘m constantly travelling between two neighboring countries, which is pretty common if you live close to the border and have family on both sides.

Ticket number: 214636

Thanks a lot Saoiray for being active in the community and constantly bringing these things up in the community calls. I can‘t participate in them due to being in another time zone but I‘m always listening to the recordings.

1 Like
27

Hi,

I haven’t been paid yet.

My ticket number is the following: 208524

Thanks a lot for reviewing every single case. It is appreciated so much effort from your side.

Best regards

Edit: My account now is not flagged. So it is supposed the payment will be in September

2 Likes
28

Yes, this is by design. They pushed a delay to any indication being given to people so it’s not easy to track what particular behavior resulted in the flagged account. That said, I know I and others have been complaining about the current system and some of the teams at Brave are trying to review how they modify things to find a “middle ground” between those abusing the system compared to those who might end up with a false positive.

Ouch, never a good thing. From what everyone has been telling me, this means they’ve done a thorough investigation and means that they are confident that something is being done that’s a violation of Terms. So if you did get that recently, seems like they are doing a permanent suspension/flag.

29

It must have been my VPN. Even though I made a special effort to only connect to VPN endpoints within my local country, just for Brave… Oh well, I can live without Rewards. As long as my creator accounts don’t get banned as well.

30

I am fairly certain I was not flagged when I was told my June (paid in July) payout would be paid this month (ticket 208678 from July 19). Haven’t seen it. Then I was flagged at some point in late July. Keeping track of this mess is beginning to make my head spin and most importantly making me wonder if using the browser continues to meet my needs. I love the concept, but in the past few months I’ve begun to lose a lot of confidence. I’m just not sure I have the time to keep dealing with support for $1 or less/month.

31

They keep saying VPN wont’ get you flagged. That might be true, but my first flagging was likely a combination of travel + VPN although I wasn’t even trying to earn Brave Rewards. Anyone traveling and being smart about privacy would be using VPN to protect yourself at public hotel/airport/airplane WiFi anyway.

The second time I didn’t even try to use Brave. I traveled again overseas and used my VPN. I figured by keeping Brave closed I wouldn’t get into trouble. Then a few days later I get flagged. It’s absurd. If your own fraud detection algorithms can’t detect legitimate VPN use or even legitimate travel, then it’s no surprise people are upset and complaining everyday.

32

Regardless of what they say, it absolutely IS the VPN. I assume they tell us that it isn’t in order to not give away any hints about their algorithm. But it most certainly is. And it’s truly absurd that for a privacy-focused browser and rewards system it’s only the privacy-conscious users of VPNs who are the ones that get kicked off the system!

Keeping Brave closed won’t help, since they likely have background processes or services running even when the browser is closed. I was closing Brave before switching my VPN because I was afraid of triggering their fraud detection, it clearly didn’t help.

33

My account is flagged. Im innocent, I promise X

Error: Brave Rewards profile is flagged

Unfortunately, your Brave Rewards profile has been flagged, and you’re not able to verify with a custodian at this time. This flag can sometimes be due to irregular Brave Ads activity, though it can also be a false positive.

Note that while your Brave Rewards profile is flagged, you won’t be able to verify.

No action is required on your part. Your Brave Rewards profile will be automatically reevaluated on a regular basis to determine when (or if) the flag can be removed. Please try again every so often to see if the flag has been removed.

34

None of my browsing habits or the way I use brave has changed, my account is flagged for like the past 5 months. The warning says nothing about submitting a ticket or where I can do that. This seems like you guys created a massive headache for yourselves and pissed off a lot of folks who supported the project. Not happy with the situation but willing to stick around if it can be rectified.

Where do I submit a ticket?

35

You can submit a ticket here: https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?

1 Like
36

I finally got a reply on my flagged account:

After careful consideration, we have determined that your Rewards profiles will remain flagged at this time. Your account will be automatically re-evaluated next month. There is no need to fill out an additional ticket.
We would like to emphasize that “irregular activity” refers to activity that deviates from what is typically expected from an individual using Brave Ads within their regular browsing routine.

I have no idea what I did that was “irregular” and I’m certain that next month, when they check again, I will once again be flagged for whatever the reason is. How can I be expected to “fix” the problem if I don’t know what it is?

I did respond to J asking why, but have not heard back. The lack of detail is a little frustrating. I guess it’s kind of like violating “community guidelines” ?

37

In theory they have every right to ban you. It’s written in the rules. But given how they’ve already admitted MULTIPLE rounds that their flagging was overly aggressive, it really just leads to more frustration and erosion of trust. For instance they didn’t give previous flags a reason either, but magically they admitted they went too hard and many of them are re-instated.

Mods have been pretty adamant that it’s our fault or something to get flagged, but right now there’s no way to tell if you were a false positive or if you were a real violator. That’s the part that makes it so frustrating.

They won’t admit it, but these flagging algorithms are effectively a test of your software development prowess. At my company you would never roll out a customer facing change like this without thorough testing and potentially even a staged rollout, and if it were really this bad in execution, heads would roll and people would get fired.

It’s just all around a bad experience unfortunately, which was why I was so frustrated. I did 2 international trips these past 3 months and got flagged twice. Coincidence? I think not, but if you are going to be all smug and tell me “Brave reserves the right to ban you for any reason” while not also being honest then of course I’m going to be upset. I imagine there’s a lot of confused and upset users about why they got banned for doing nothing wrong.

3 Likes
38

I just want to know what I did to get flagged. I looked here https://basicattentiontoken.org/user-terms-of-service/
but didn’t see anything

I don’t understand why they cannot say “Because you did , your account has been flagged” Can’t you give me the reason other than “irregularities”?

Frustrating lack of information.

39

They wont tell you because the idea is to prevent bad actors from gaming the system and finding out how to maximize the possibilities of gaining rewards without flagging the system. Someone mentioned in a post that it is like telling a bank robber what they did only for them to have another chance to try again this time without getting caught.

Common things that get people flagged is using VPN to appear you are in another country to gain more ads. They say local VPN is fine, but I would steer clear altogether to be safe.

Another thing in the past seemed to be using multiple instances of brave opened while others are too, for example, brave is running on your PC and phone at same time. This is now thought to be not true I believe, however, I would once again err on the past and not have multiple braves open at once.

Now in my case I can give what I belive to be reasons for maybe some of us being flagged. Because I use brave in a way that I would think to be “normal” and yet after getting flagged for the nth time Im over it. But for those who care about $2 a month, I can try and give you my theories on what got me flagged and how to prevent it.

  1. Time. Simply do not use brave for hours on end. I am a student and would use brave from about 5-6am in the morning until maybe 12-2 pm doing research etc whatever. Long hours on end make it seem like I am a robot and having a routine repeatable schedule further makes me look like a robot.

  2. not having a cool down period between brave devices. I,e, done with the PC and not waiting a good amount of time before opening on the mobile device. Often times in the past after shutting down the computer i would then open brave on my cell phone. At first it was instant. then after getting flagged a few times I tried waiting a few hours.

  3. Do not abuse new tab page ads. I abused them in the past, I knew you would get 4 in an hour. Now this one is hard because who doesnt open multiple tabs in a time period. Especially in my case opening new tabs to do research etc.

  4. dont use VPNS. just dont. Now I never used a VPN, still dont know how to even go about using one. so yeah. This one would not apply to me, but I am sure it applies to many. Especially coffee shop travelers and air plane riders. I get it, but yeah not with brave.

Now the thing with me is once I stopped abusing new tab page ads, running absolute blank brave settings with no extensions and trying to adhere to a cool down period between devices, I am left puzzled as to what could have flagged me other than using brave for too much time at once. But I get it, using brave for predictable hours on end does make you look like a robot.

So for those who care, maybe try not using brave for long periods of time and mix it up with varying days of using it. And definitely do not abuse new tab page ads or use VPNs.

I still like using brave and will continue to do so, but the ads system is just so infuriating at this point I feel free being done with it.

40

Wow! Thanks! That is the first answer I have had that makes sense!

I guess right now, I’m ready to give up and forget about the BAT incentive I used to get using Brave. So now in my mind, Brave is equal to any of the other secure browsers out there. Since none of those options look good to me, I guess it’s time to hunt around again and re-evaluate my browser choice now that BAT is off the table. Might stick with Brave, but who knows?

Thanks for the insight!

Matt

1 Like
41

Do keep in mind this is just a theory and is probably total rubbish. However, in my case, I feel as vanilla as it gets when it comes to using a browser and if no modifications (extensions) or VPN usage is the case, then idk, it has to be the long usage of brave for long hours on end repeatedly. In any case, I do like brave as a browser and feel it fits me better than firefox so I will continue to use it, however, forgetting the rewards exist is probably the best thing one can do if they can get over it.