Submitted a ticket about missing May rewards; account now flagged

Brave Rewards
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I noticed a huge influx on the community boards about lack of May payout. I was missing mine so I submitted a ticket like requested and now they flagged my account even though I haven’t done anything outside of normal??? It was a generic automated answer:

"Sometimes your Brave Rewards profiles can be “flagged”. That usually means our systems noticed some irregular activity associated with Brave Ads. “Irregular activity” is activity that would be considered unusual compared to an ordinary person using Brave Ads as part of their overall, everyday browsing experience.

We have reviewed the flag, and your Rewards profiles will not be reinstated. They will remain flagged. Please note, flagged profiles are ineligible for payouts."

I have been using Brave since 2019 with minimal issues. I only use it on my phone and my laptop. I responded to the email asking for clarification. Even though I am “flagged”, I am still seeing adds and accruing BAT. It’s just not going to my Uphold account.

I know others are having this issue, but I feel the more we voice the concerns the more likely they will address this?

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Yes I read through all of that but clearly there is a systemic issue going on.

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Same exact issue here. I don’t know what the problem is but I’ve never had anything like this before and have been using Brave the exact same way for years

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You’re putting that in reverse. You were flagged and therefore didn’t get your payment. You submitted a ticket and they then let you know that your account isn’t being reinstated.

If I’m honest with you, not really. At least not in the way you make it sound. Constantly posting or complaining will not make any impact. However, having everyone do as they are and share that this is an issue is enough. I know I’ve already brought it up with some of the key people at Brave and they are looking through things, but at this point they are saying everything is happening as intended.

Not necessarily. I will say that antifraud was made more active lately than usual, in preparation for some other things that’s going on. This tends to happen on occasion. If you’ve been around here on Community often, you’ll notice that like once a year, give or take a few months, there’s an explosion of people complaining about being flagged.

This is not anything new when it comes to antifraud. You see it in many communities on a regular basis, especially in gaming. For example:

https://www.futuregamereleases.com/2023/04/pokemon-go-banhammer-in-action-again-new-ban-waves-sent/

https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/262516312?sort=0&page=0

https://wowvendor.com/en-us/portal/wow-classic-tbc-woltk-vanilla/120000-accounts-caught-up-in-blizzards-banwave/

https://dotesports.com/mmo/news/final-fantasy-xiv-drops-the-ban-hammer-on-massive-number-of-rmt-accounts-in-fight-to-crack-down-on-gil-sellers#:~:text=In%20this%20ban%20wave%2C%206%2C099,not%20related%20to%20RMT%20vendors.

https://www.reddit.com/r/newworldgame/comments/xmtv9g/just_got_caught_in_the_latest_ban_wave_this_is/

Essentially what they do is delay when accounts might get flagged/suspended/banned. They do this because they don’t want to give anyone clues on what might have got them caught in what they were doing wrong. So it monitors behavior and tracks over time. Then ever so often, they push out a lot of suspensions/bans. This is what Brave has been doing. That doesn’t mean that flaggs/suspensions/bans don’t happen year round, just that you can think of it that 1-2 times a year it “cleans house” and takes larger action.

May be the case, but I guess also would be the question of what’s normal for you. Such as VPN/Proxy usage, modifying files, using automation, leaving devices running and active 24/7, etc.

Shouldn’t be the case.

In any case, I rambled just to try to answer generically for a lot of people who will see this reply. As for you personally, I’ll say I hear you and I am sincerely trying to get these questions/issues to the right people at Brave. Just have to give it time and see if they find issues or if they stick to the idea that things are working as intended and they are confident those not being reinstated are because they violated terms. (Would be nice if they’d tell us more details, but they don’t.)

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I literally do not do any of that. I basically just use my phone browser to window shop shoe stores or read articles about celebrity drama. Tbh. No VPN, no files being opened, nothing. Like I use the bare minimum.

Them not telling me why I was flagged is the most frustrating aspect when I’m still getting ads and accruing BAT almost hourly**.

Noticing it more so now because you’re saying I shouldn’t be getting them so I have been checking when they pop up on my notifications screen

It’s the lack of transparency I feel frustrating. It’s showing as all good on both Uphold and Brave yet they are telling me I’m flagged? It’s still connected any everything.

I would disagree with you about not not voicing concerns. If we never spoke out, they would never know these problems are occuring. I’m sure there are many impacted who have not said a thing.

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Let me bring some clarity on that. What I’ve seen in the past is where a lot of people start to troll around on it and/or spam post. They comment everywhere and throw shade on a lot of people. That never ends well for those who do that. This was the first thing you had me think of when I saw that comment. It’s also why I differentiated and tried to make clear that creating the post as you had is the proper step.

Problem with that is it’s common practice these days. I’d have to dig through to see if I can find post I made before, but a lot of places refuse to say what specifically gets you suspended. This is especially true for banks, crypto exchanges, etc.

Main issue is many used to be more specific, but all that happened is people just would try to argue, look for loopholes, or just use that information to try to learn how to avoid detection. As a result, they saw that it was pointless to provide details.

As with many things in life, people doing wrong ended up ruining it for those of us who aren’t doing anything wrong. It doesn’t seem right but they have to protect themselves and take steps to prevent any harm.

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So basically you’re saying a lot of us are SOL? I just don’t understand. I followed everything to a T.

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What I’m saying is that from what I’ve heard from people at Brave, they are confident in the system. What I hadn’t been saying publicly is that part of why it was happening now is because they had tagged in antifraud as they were ramping up to add more supported regions. So they were going through all the accounts that the system noted suspicious activity. And, as you can see as of not long ago, NOTICE: New Regions Available with Uphold

As to people being told their accounts won’t be reinstated, then those particular browser profiles are SOL. Brave is saying they have investigated those and believe there definitely was violations of terms or at least activities that throw alarms for fraud.

At this point, flagged accounts aren’t “banned” based on their custodial account or anything. What this means is you may be able to reset your Rewards and then connect to your Uphold account with no issues and begin earning again. However, if truly was activity shouldn’t be doing, eventually will get flagged another time in the future.

That said, as I mentioned before, I’m still trying to have a deeper conversation with Support and others at Brave to see if they can’t give more information, but also to try to make this process go smoother in the future.

Okay, do advise if you see it. Keep in mind NTP ads and Brave News ads still will show if you have it enabled. It’s just the ad notifications that should stop, last that’s been said.

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Oi vey. Okay, how do I go about resetting my rewards account and reconnecting? I find this all very confusing. Like I said, I just use my stuff to browse like celebrity gossip and shop. I am not super familiar with how to do this stuff.

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I believe I’m now in the same boat as everyone else–flagged with no explanation–but I, too, am getting notification ads. I understand new tab page ads and Brave News ads are different, but just seconds ago I got a notification pop up ad. How can this be the case if my account is flagged?
brave ad

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first time I haven’t received the payment. Got an email saying they are checking the issue. But there are a lot of people that are being flagged with no reason. I have not violated anything. I’m using my browser the same way I’ve been doing in the last couple of years. No system is 100% perfect. There must be something that is giving falses positives and we, legit users, are being screwed.

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Just made a topic that is not completely helpful, but might provide more insight. Feel free to check it out at PSA: Current Rewards Issues

As stated before, just try to be patient. I know Support is looking into things and doing the best to get to all tickets.

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Brave is gonna be losing a lot of users if they don’t straighten this situation out and give users some more information. The rewards is the only reason to use this browser over any other browser.

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Sure will, how can we trust them if they are not transparent to us to see what is really going on. It’s not a few users with this issue. I might say there is a lot.

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Yeah this is pretty messed up. I dont even know how to abuse the system and haven’t done anything fraudulent or wrong. I’ve used brave for years and I am Very disappointed.

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I had the same experience. Just move on from Brave. Uninstalled after many years of use. Will definitely not recommend to anyone I meet.

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Can someone please look at my ticket about being flagged. @202432

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I disagree with that. Many of us use the browser because of its privacy and security features. In fact when I started in 2019 I didn’t bother with ads, I only got into rewards later on in the game. I’ve seen three of us (who all submitted support tickets as requested by Brave) successfully get our rewards profiles unflagged and rewards reinstated in the last 24 hours. Even if they refused to remove the flag, there are several of us in her that have already said we still won’t leave Brave. If you haven’t already, try submitting ticket so that your case can be investigated too. If you don’t submit a ticket, you’re not going to even stand a chance of a fix.

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I submitted a ticket and got flagged. Why?? I will never know. If Brave is all bout privacy and security, but how about transparency with its users? I had used Brave for 3 years now using the same way, but I got flagged and this really tells a lot to us users without giving notice of what you’re doing wrong. I know and read dozens of time that the won’t tell because people with circunvent that and try to bypass, but it is because of it that the system will learn and get better, but not like this.