Although i’m just a casual Brave user, do appreciate what you do to help others here.
There are other underlying issues to this thread tho.
One is the question of having to start over with BATs previously acquired.
Two, not having a stable way, straightforward way of syncing (like other browsers previously mentioned here) just adds to the frustration.
Hence, broken trust in Brave makes me even more worried about anything crypto which it claims to be a viable thing of the future.
Btw, Mozillazine was a popular forum back in the heyday of Firefox’s glory.
Right, but there’s no reason to have to start over typically. If you’re verified with Gemini or Uphold, then all the BAT is there and you lose nothing. In terms of Unverified users,. you just backup your profile typically, which is in \brave-browser folder. That said, it is tougher when it comes to Android.
One thing I will say though is they recently announced that they are moving Rewards into Brave Wallet. They are aiming to release it in Q1. This would allow for syncing of BAT between devices. So it’s not like they haven’t been making steps toward changes.
How so? Syncing is pretty straightforward as far as I can tell. You choose what to sync and set up a sync chain. Then on another device, you choose to sync and put in the phrase or QR code given on the other one.
They did recently try to add a bit of a layer of protection by having a 25th word that changes daily. Can’t say it’s the strongest or best way, but like if you had shared the code or lost it somewhere and someone went to use it, the goal would be that it wouldn’t work. Sync wasn’t intended as a backup and so they didn’t think about trying to make it last.
Well, sorry to hear that. As has been explained, your code works, you just needed to know the 25th word. Big thing there is you didn’t realize it changed. I know a lot of people don’t keep track of that type of thing.
Guess just give it time. You can always feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I think if you dig deeper and learn more of the things they are working on, how stuff works in general, etc you’ll gain a lot more trust in Brave. I just know a lot of people who have doubts are casual users who have expectations based on other products. Coming to something new with that type of expectation can lead to misperceptions. That is something that has to be dealt with both by people in general but also in Brave by trying to do better in how they share information. Right now, help guides aren’t as instructive or easy to find as they should be.
i was thinking of the same thing, this is too risky to put my trust in, but surprisingly after many retries (type sync chain code > confirm > ok) it somehow worked and started syncing smoothly,
as you can see below is error at the beginning when i first entered the sync chain:
you can see in the image, desktop-hi6po1t is my previous desktop (which got bitlocker encrypted btw) that i used to create this sync chain code
i have no idea exactly how it worked and start syncing, but what i do know is before re-type that last time i did some configurations including reconnect/disconnect vpn, created a new profile, rename windows (menu > more tools > name windows…), so maybe retry many times with different configurations to see if it works, good luck.
Honestly. I should have known better. I thought brave was too good to be true, but now I realize that nothing in life is ever this way. Brave was honestly a great browser, I made a full switch from Firefox to Brave thinking that it was my new home. I got all my belongs and gave it to brave for safe keeping. And it just deleted them permanently. Thank Goodness I had some of my stuff on my Firefox account and some of my passwords on my local password manager. But the rest of my stuff is gone. Why is sync even main a feature? For those who have sooo much trouble managing their millions of devices? And why is my info stored on Brave’s servers if it’s only going to last 1 DAY!? Using Brave’s sync is just the same as plugging your phone into your pc with a cable. Im so pissed of it’s unreal. There’s no disclaimer or anything. Most browsers already come with a form cloud storage, why would any new Brave users think otherwise?? I thought Brave was the best Browser I ever found. Privacy and Speed? That’s crazy. But I didnt know it came with such a big cost. I am honestly really tempted to switch back to FireFox. But after I tried, I realized that I really cant deal with the slowness. So I have no choice but to stay, but I will not be storing anything here on Brave. All of my info is either staying on my Flash Drive, or on My FireFox account. This is insane.
What I have to ask is… WHY??? WHY DO YOU ADD A 25TH WORD AT THE END OF MY RECOVERY PHRASE??? WHY IS THAT A THING??? What is the actual point in adding a 25th word? A word that isnt even private and can be viewed by anyone. And, Does Brave really, truly, honestly expect it’s users to know that the Sync feature cant be used as a backup feature? Every browser I know of has a cloud based storage, and if one doesnt, I expect it to at least WARN users of it’s “sync” feature not being a backup feature. The reason why people use a browser’s cloud based storage is to sync across other devices. So having the feature be called “Sync” is not helpful at all. And I’ve mentioned this already, but there’s NO WARNING NOR DISCLAIMER. There is no way for someone to know that the sync isnt cloud storage based, except, it is. But it’s storage time is limited and can be canceled at any moment after your device hasnt connected for at least a day, and in order to access it you need to research a 25th word that you probably dont even know/know about, and the chances of the sync being success is almost random.
i completely agree with you on this, it’s outrageous that brave sync feature is this terrible, unbelievably ignorant of what users expect how “sync” would normally work; i was like you, intrigued by “speed and security” to eventually hit by a terrible sync mechanism;
i was relieved when i got brave sync worked again on my new desktop but since i read that this 25th word DOES NOT guarantee to work in the future i immediately prepared to switch to a different browser, and my current target is cent browser which also chromium-based like brave, i have used cent browser for a few weeks its very fast and even more efficient in memory consumption compare to brave i would say, i especially love its ability in customizations like hide close button, middle click on tab to close/on tab bar to re-open closed tab, its basically google chrome on steroid, you’ll be amazed when scrolling thru its settings menu;
and most importantly to us now, sync, its google account sync so we will have no worries of this;
btw if youre still having problem with brave sync i would be happy to help u personally in private chat, dm me at https://twitter.com/elvisisvan or https://t.me/elvisvan if u need help bro
I mostly came to Brave because of it’s Security And Speed. If I wanted just speed, I could just look for a fast browser. If cent browser is like Brave but better, I might check it out. Im a little sketched out that they use a Google Account to save info, but I’d understand if it’s a small company trying to get off the ground.
Actually google account is not used anyhow.
Brave sync uses the native chromium browser feature to work. It has nothing to do with google or google account. The data is stored completely encrypted on AWS which neither brave nor AWS has access to.
fyi, im using brave & cent simultaneously with xbrowsersync extension, lastpass password manager, no google sync, but only bookmark that is synced so the catch is browsing history will be divided between 2 browsers.
Hello, just coming here to say that I’ve likely just lost 7-8 years worth of bookmarks, passwords and other data thanks to the devs not leaving anything on the sync page to warn people that a sync code now only lasts one singular day. Last time I tried this was when I had to install a new motherboard a few months ago; used the sync key then since I figured it would be quicker and more painless than digging up the bookmark HTMLs. It was and worked fine, since back then the system had the sensible design choice of a key that didn’t expire. And yet this just got shadow-changed, for what reason? Security? Frequently changing passwords for any reason other than a confirmed breach is a security risk in of itself, not to mention a good way of forgetting passwords and losing data.
And oh yes, where was the tip on the sync page? The brief warning at the confirm button? Or better yet where was the ability for the user to choose for themself when they wanted the key to expire? Why was this decided and implemented without so much as a “Oh hey quick warning, our sync keys only last a day now, so if you need to backup your data for longer than that, please use another method.”
Patchnotes are not good enough (if you even added this to the notes). People don’t read those unless they’re shoved in the user’s face every time a program is updated.
If this is the standard that you people are now using for your browser then I guess I’ll close the door on my way out and switch to Opera, because I am not willing to tolerate this kind of malicious, inconsiderate design. Goodbye.
This change has never been acknowledged to me until I encountered the “code invalid/expired” issue, did a search and headed to this thread.
Maybe you have your concern on privacy protection to release this “feature” without any notification to end users., but a browser to me should be easy to use in the first place.
The thread as well as its “disclaimer” made by @Alexey seems to well explain what where we are, but it somewhat made me feel that Brave is saying to its users: you are not geeky enough to understand our concept and use our product.
@crienniko I would’ve to agree. In the race to be more competitive among established players, Brave is continuously trying to built-in more features and better them but it lags when it comes to better communicating that to users.
Opting-out is definitely your choice but maybe if Brave gets to be on the podium of browsers/super-apps in future, you would get to say that you’ve been Brave’s companion since it’s initial days. In it’s highs and lows, faults and virtues.
It’s only a motivation to stick with Brave. If you don’t connect with it, you can safely ignore. Lol
This behavior of a daily changing sync key pattern, when the pattern how it changes is public, is just kind of crazy (sorry for the wording). I use brave on multiple computers and even on my phone. Now imagine I want to sync all my 4 profiles on my work computer, but all my private computers are always at home. This is just too complicated at all for a simple sync feature.
If you did it for security reasons, ok, but then the pattern would have to be not guessable. Even worse, there is a webpage to guess that 25th word, there is no security at all. → https://alexeybarabash.github.io/25th-brave-sync-word/
If you want to save some data storage, then the hole key would have to expire after a certain amount of time. Then you can delete it and keep just the active ones.
If you want a user-friendly way with no account. Then the key needs to completely static with a possibility to reset it if it got stolen or something.
If you want a user-friendly way with an account, then you could use the same account as for this forum. (but I actually prefer the usage of a static key as it is really simple to use this for multiple profiles!!!)
With my current knowledge, the current state isn’t in any way useful. So my question is. Why you did it?
Dear Brave Developer. Is there something happening in the background, and you’re going to optimize this feature in a future release? As the current state seems to be disliked by the users. Or any other final words?
Hi,
While I like using the windows version of the brave beta browser, I’ve always thought that the sync mechanism could be vastly improved upon so it resembles how other major chromium based browsers are able to sync a users data without having to deal with the 25 word method that the brave browser currently utilizes. Of course this is strictly just one users own opinion.
David
