What are everyone’s thoughts on Brave’s collaboration with Unplugged? Do you believe this partnership enhances the phone’s legitimacy?
https://x.com/brave/status/1861091159218454539?s=46
We’re excited that @weare_unplugged will be including the Brave browser on all UP phones and setting Brave Search as the default search engine!
This integration makes it even easier for UP Phone users to protect their privacy and ditch Big Tech.
Also, if anyone believes Unplugged to be a GPL violator, you can report them here:
In general, most GPL violations are unintentional and result from a lack of understanding of the GPL requirements. The goal of organizations like gpl-violations.org and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is to educate violators and help them come into compliance, rather than to punish them. Only in rare cases do lawsuits become necessary to enforce the GPL terms.
Inform us about GPL Violations
We also appreciate any information you might have about potential GPL abuses / misuses. Please be as specific as possible about the particular product, it’s availability, which free software is used, …
Please report any such violations to license-violation@gpl-violations.org
Based upon this comment which was found by @anon35404408 on PrivacyGuides. Unplugged, do seem to be:
Makes me lose trust in Brave, actually.
That was my thought too.
Brave is already on thin ice with my trust, and this certainly doesn’t help.
Same. Pretty disappointing to see that Brave would promote this very shady seeming brand of phone just because the brand promoted them.
But Brave has always felt like a company with one foot in the privacy world and one foot in a weirder space. The privacy benefits of Brave over Chrome (or even Chromium) are real, but Brave’s commitment to privacy as a company has always felt contingent, fragile, and to some degree in conflict with their other focuses and incentives.
I’ve used Brave and followed Brave since it began, but I’ve never felt I could put much faith in the company behind the product over the longterm. I treat Brave somewhat like I treat Apple, I use their products when it practically benefits me, when they provide real demonstrable privacy benefits, but I don’t count on their longterm commitment to privacy if market conditions change, and I don’t have a lot of respect for their corporate ethical compass.
I’ve always distrusted Brave’s leadership because of a certain views they have. Their crypto integration was mediocre at best. And with this news, just want me to stay away from it as much as possible (I haven’t used Brave yet (not for any real reasons, I just haven’t used it), so I don’t think that will change)
What in the actual fuck is going on with all these major browser companies right now? 
I’m curious why you would lose trust in Brave?
Have you considered the possibility that they might have accepted the Unplugged offer because of Unplugged’s code review process?
How can I trust Unplugged?
Unplugged has hired independent auditors to conduct periodic penetration tests on our platform’s security.
If you’re a cyber expert and still have doubts, we invite you to write to us or apply to participate in our White Hat Program, where you’ll get a chance to win prizes if you are able to detect any vulnerabilities in our hardware or software.
We also give qualified professionals the option to visit us at our R&D offices and perform a white room code review, so that you can see for yourself that we have no back doors.
Perhaps the Brave team actually reviewed the code themselves and discovered no issues? Instead of immediately judging, reach out to support and inquire about their reasoning. To get the full picture.
If it’s only the marketing that has you distrusting this phone, I don’t understand why. The MIT article was extremely biased (in ways of focusing on the phone in a political sense) and didn’t actually examine the hardware itself.
While none of the experts I spoke with had yet been able to test the phone or read its code, because the company hasn’t provided access, the evidence available suggests Unplugged will fall wildly short of what’s promised.
It only evaluated the leaked investor marketing that was then used to infer the hardware and its capabilities before the device was even released, Unplugged have since removed the questionable marketing that was raised from that MIT article. Besides one marketing issue, I believe they still or have recently added that should be changed:
“LibertOS stops data breaches, offers fast and precise privacy controls, and includes a quick-access side-button for settings”
Here may be an actual non-bias review:
Leaving the Apple Ecosystem - part 4
If it’s because of the phone itself and the people’s political leanings, has anyone in this community actually used it?
How can you form an opinion on the software and hardware if you don’t use the device and examine it yourself? You don’t need to use it as a daily driver, but at least test it before criticizing a new company. (Unless you have, and I’d love to hear your experience!)
If it’s about the co-founder Erik Prince and his ownership of Blackwater (now called Constellis), then it seems you or others are criticizing because of political bias. Mercenaries is more of a difficult topic and one of morality and how you see war. The man was a Navy Seal (don’t know the man personally, so do not know his motives).
Here’s a video that seems to present an unbiased view/interview of Erik Prince. They discuss the pros, and cons of mercenaries. But morally, it’s up to the person watching if they see it simply as:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk-VYm3uVqE
If the issue is a GPL violation, then that’s why I posted that post at the top.
If it’s true, report them to change their ways. After all, if they are, that company can try to influence them to change.
I emailed Uplugged, and they admitted to building their apps on open-source products. However, they may not be aware that they are violating the GPL. As stated here:
In general, most GPL violations are unintentional and result from a lack of understanding of the GPL requirements. The goal of organizations like gpl-violations.org and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is to educate violators and help them come into compliance, rather than to punish them. Only in rare cases do lawsuits become necessary to enforce the GPL terms.
In that email Unplugged also mentioned that they would be open-sourcing their operating system in the near future. However, components like the firmware and chipset cannot be published due to agreements with vendors.
I understand that you and others may be skeptical of the company and its products. However, have you actually read articles that challenge your views and tried the device to form a well-rounded opinion? Or have you simply decided that your criticisms are valid based on your initial assumptions and biases? It’s crucial to approach things with an open mind and strive for a non-biased perspective. The key questions to ask are: does the device perform as well as it claims now, and is the company transparent about its future plans now?
I think the way Unplugged phone is being advertised on the website saying the things they are saying in the way they are saying it would make critical privacy evaluation by privacy enthusiasts here come to the same conclusion of it being a product not worth using.
Would you use Proton if they said they have military grade encryption and all of the other cliched statements bad and sketchy “privacy” companies use to describe their products? I wouldn’t.
It’s stuff like this and without a transparent exposition of their products and claims makes us not trust this product and company and Brave too - for not knowing how to think about it.
Furthermore, if they’re going to open source it later - then we’ll talk about it later. But as it stands, this is bad and doesn’t inspire confidence.
So, all long response you have may be valid but don’t quite apply because it becomes a non starter when such is the case and situation with all that we can resd about Unplugged.
What things are they saying on their website that you disagree with? Quote them and then I will go look at them to see if they are there. As I only found one questionable thing that I took issue with.
All the other stuff from the MIT article is no longer on the website:
Quoted from the MIT article:
When asked about the phrase by MIT Technology Review, Unplugged acknowledged “this messaging doesn’t resonate well with our community” and said they won’t use it moving forward.
The only issue I found in their website was this on their main page:
I have since sent an email asking for a revision as it could appear misinterpreted. They should change it to “LibertOS helps protect the device from physical data breaches from physical tampering”
I don’t know what doesn’t inspire confidence when they literally letting people look at their code:
They also even told people how they protect their supply chain:
https://unplugged.com/blogs/news/unplugged-s-efforts-to-navigate-supply-chain-risk
And show off their leadership:
I’m not sure how much more transparent it can become, except for the promises of open-sourcing that are coming soon.
Yes and Proton are also open source which also helps. The marketing term military grade encryption is to just refer that the government uses it and it is good enough for the average individual. It is for people who don’t understand tech. There is military grade drop protection for phone cases. Which is just a marketing ploy. But for tech it actually means something. Now it doesn’t get into specifics like AES-256 or AES-128. But I am sure you can contact the company and they will let you know. What their VPN app uses from their store.
FYI: Also their website doesn’t mention military-grade encryption anywhere. They removed that term a long time ago or it was never included because of the MIT article’s criticisms of their investor pitches.
Quoted from the MIT article:
When asked about the phrase by MIT Technology Review, Unplugged acknowledged “this messaging doesn’t resonate well with our community” and said they won’t use it moving forward.
Below is some articles about the term military grade encryption:
What is military grade encryption and does your organization need it?.
Military grade encryption often refers to a specific encryption type, AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard). Currently, the U.S. government has named this algorithm the standard for encryption and most cybersecurity organizations today use this form of military grade encryption. However, other types of encryption are also considered military grade.
Some cybersecurity experts may call this phrase a marketing gimmick. Others may argue that it conveys difficult concepts in an easy-to-understand way. But what does military-grade encryption really mean?
Military-grade encryption refers to AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with 256-bit keys. In 2001, AES was announced as the new standard for information security by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a unit of the US Commerce Department.
Traditionally, military-grade encryption uses a key size equal to or greater than 128 bits. The US government specifies that AES-128 is used for secret (unclassified) information and AES-256 for top secret (classified) information. If an entity handles information on both levels, it usually adopts AES-256 as its standard.
To a person who is not particularly tech-savvy, these letters and numbers won’t mean much. In an attempt to bring encryption to the masses, security companies started to look for a term that describes the highest-level security with less jargon. As AES is used by the US government to secure classified information and by the NSA to protect national security data, the term “military-grade” seemed suitable.
News articles using the term “Military Grade Encryption”:
Lastly just going to put this here at the end to read (not related to military grade encryption):
Don’t like the Google’s ecosystem? Use ours! It’s totally private, 100%!
Just to clarify: My simple statement was just that: a simple statement. It’s not a formal technical analysis of the situation nor does it claim to be. I feel that a partnership like this inherently serves as Brave promoting another service, and from what I’ve read Brave hasn’t really offered many reasons why outside the following quote:
“As more people are becoming aware of the grip of Big Tech, they’re looking for alternatives. It’s great to see Unplugged introducing a new phone to market that’s free from the current phone duopoly, and we are excited that they’re including the Brave browser and Brave Search on the UP phone.” explains Luke Mulks, VP of Business Operations at Brave. “Both Brave and Unplugged are building products that put users first and keep the surveillance economy out of their business.”
I wish Brave offered more of their own technical reasons to partner with Unplugged, and the lack of reasons (again that I can find) makes me lose some trust in them. That is all. We shouldn’t need to be theorizing in this chat if the product is good or not, I feel Brave has some responsibility to try and reassure us that it’s a safe product to purchase & use.
You bring up many good points, but I’m sharing some complaints about the meta situation: which is Brave partnering with a service that frankly has yet to be trusted in the community without reassuring users why they’re a safe & quality service to use. This is very different from let’s say…Brave partnering with the Tor Project - who’s an established named in the space for being trusted & safe.
Did they?
Did they audit the code?
I’m genuinely asking: Has Brave themselves come forward for their reasons? Or are we speculating on why? I fully agree that a proper review/technical assessment should involve getting these answers directly from Brave to get more of their input. Getting formal technical reasons from them on the matter would help reassure myself and I’m sure many others.
Nope
I have seen this discussion happened with unplugged before and it’s not great. Not only they seem to be GPL Violators (which you have rightfully stated how to report) but also I’ve been hearing the guy behind it is a scammer among a litany of accusations including potentially being honeypot, You’ve been called out before for this, While the news is appreciated please do better with your own due diligence.
Here is a topic mentioning potential honeypot:
Here’s a topic where we said we’re skeptical or at worst a bad scam:
I’m sorry with all of these accusations this makes me trust Brave Software Inc. (maybe the founder itself) Less, Not to mention what the founder has been accused off see the clickbaity article: Stop using Brave Browser - by Corbin Davenport for the founder’s accusation among other problems that only a few were resolved.
I don’t know how you always have such balanced responses to everything. It’s a gift. Good for you!
Edit: I could not have retorted any better. And I didn’t/couldn’t albeit I was confident in my original comment before. Sometimes you don’t know how to get back when there are differences in the quality of understanding basic facts.
Thank you for your comment. That’s exactly what I’m looking for—critical thinking.
When I post something, I get well Unplugged is not good because of this or that, but there’s no concrete evidence. People claim it’s unsafe, but no article can provide any proof. Of said any wrong doing. There is also not much on the company to begin with. I was looking for people who had experience and played around with the phone in my first post. As, it seems Unplugged is trying to be transparent from what they post on their website like code auditing and how they navigate supply chain risks. https://unplugged.com/blogs/news/unplugged-s-efforts-to-navigate-supply-chain-risk
Also how Unplugged told me through email that they are going to open source their code in the future. “Still to be seen”
If people simply advised me to proceed with caution, I wouldn’t be trying to understand everyone’s position. It seems more like an attack on the product for its values and some mistakes it’s made. That was more towards marketing to their investors and not the consumer. Which was what the MIT article was about.
I agree that Brave should explain its choices and reasoning.
However, people simply calling the product a scam is not constructive. There’s no solid evidence to support that claim. Could they be? Yes. But that has yet to be determined.
That’s why I’m asking. I’d like to know if brave did or not.
This post explains what Unplugged still needs to do on X very well:
https://x.com/ianonymous3000/status/1861449327765254375?s=46
At least Unplugged phones have a great browser and search engine now.
We need comprehensive, independent public security audit reports to believe UP claims. Open-sourcing all their code is also helpful in building trust.
I am going to send a message to Brave support on X.
This is what I am going to say down below and hopefully they respond:
If anyone has anything else they would like added, just let me know and I’ll incorporate it. I will not send this message for an hour. To let everyone respond:
Hi
I have a question regarding your recent promotion with Unplugged.
Many people are concerned about this promotion and would like answers to why you support the phone.
There’s a lot of controversy surrounding Unplugged, and it’s unclear whether it’s a legitimate company or a scam. Regardless, many people consider it a privacy risk.
Could you reassure us of your commitment to privacy and our safety?
Here are some specific questions I have:
1.) How did you come to this promotion?
2.) What steps did you take to verify that Unplugged is a legitimate company and actually committed to privacy?
3.) Why does Brave believe this phone is good for privacy?
I appreciate your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing back from you.
Why are you trying to defend a phone shipping a MediaTek Dimensity 1200 (from 2021) 
The firmware is likely end of life or almost end of life, completely unacceptable for a new phone costing like 989 Dollars! (Maybe it’s because I’m from a third-world country, but I have no idea why anyone would buy a phone with a very mediocre spec (and potential security issues in the firmware) for 989 Dollars!)
Again, keep in mind that MediaTek also have extremely horrible reputation among Custom OSes people due to how hard it is to work with.
Also I personally find GrapheneOS kinda obnoxious sometimes, but check out this thread: https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1808159435245646046#m
There’s so much damn “secure”, “private”, “open” phones running MediaTek, and they’re none of those. Let’s name it off, there’s the Murena phone, Brax phone, Furilabs, The (now dead) simple phone, and Punkt MC02 (not to be confused with the dumbphone that runs Signal). They all run a half-rate mediocre (and in Unplugged’s case proprietary as well!) operating systems, running on an SoC that’s very unpopular in the custom operating system scene. What if the company went bankrupt and can’t even support the basic ASB patches each month? what are you going to do then? Remember: You spend 989 Dollars on this device, a money that could easily feed an entire family (at least where I live) for 171 days! (that money convert to baht is 34223.98688. A meal here is around 50 baht, let’s assume a family of 4)
Please spend your money responsibly on brands that have been assured to deliver security updates!
About their supply chain mitigation, yeah sure they might have been manufactured in Indonesia. The MediaTek chips are largely produced in China! (To be fair, they are planning to at least move some of the chip production to Vietnam MediaTek collaborates on "Make in Vietnam" chips )
But if that’s the case, if you’re really concerned about Chinese tampered supply chain issues then why don’t you consider Apple? No joke, Apple is moving their production to Vietnam: Apple’s Production Strategy in Vietnam
The Rise of Apple’s Manufacturing in Vietnam - Viettonkin
(and before you start saying bullshit about how Vietnam is “just like China”. Vietnam these days allign closely with the US especially economically. Also the spratly island issue, Vietnam does not like China)
What values may that be? In the last post you mentioned that “the audience Unplugged is attempting to appeal to is conservative.”. I am personally conservative, I’m straight, monogamous, and Christian (tbf my country isn’t a Christian majority country) and I gotta say, I don’t see any of this as an attack on Conservatism at all. Maybe the phone’s just bad?
I was about to refrain from commenting on this matter, but here we go.
There has been no concrete evidence presented to prove that they are a scam, and at best, everything else is merely speculation.
On the other hand, the GPL violation appears to be a genuine issue that could potentially lead to legal action. If proven true, it would constitute actual evidence of wrongdoing. But at the moment that is just an accusation with no action taken.
I want evidence not just opinions on what people believe it could be. Or just accusations with no actions taken.
Unplugged is saying they are offering transparency. Now, if that is true, cool. Then, if it turns out they were being genuine all along, now there is another good privacy company, which is a good thing.
Not saying you need to trust the phone. But the baseless claims of it being a scam need to stop.
As we just don’t know for sure if it is.
Edit:
The reason I mentioned conservative was it seemed the MIT article wanted to really emphasize a lot about the fact in the marketing for investors that the phone was initially toward a conservative audience as it was called the “Red Pill” when they were presenting it to investors. Even though it then said that Erik Prince said he wanted it to appeal to both sides:
It’s initially surprising, then, to see Prince pitch investors on the idea that the phone will appeal to “right wing and left wing alike.” But this offers a clue as to why Unplugged dropped the RedPill name.
The issue I had with this article is that it had nothing to do with the hardware or software. But naturally, politics had to be discussed. If it had any connection to the fact that this would enhance my understanding of the hardware, I would be okay with the article focusing on that.
However, it provided me with no additional information except that this phone is conservative in nature. They then use it to speculate on the hardware/software (which they haven’t seen code for or tested), which is still not providing any facts. Yes, it may give you some background information, but it lacks substance and evidence.
This is the sole reason I mentioned “conservative” as that is the article’s primary focus and wants you to understand.
As they mentioned it under the title:
MIT Technology Review obtained Prince’s investor presentation for the “RedPill Phone,” which promises more than it could possibly deliver.
And then
Had to state at the very beginning:
The American billionaire—best known for founding the notorious private military firm Blackwater, which became globally infamous for killing Iraqi civilians and threatening US government investigators—was pushing Unplugged, a smartphone startup promising “free speech, privacy, and security” untethered from dominant tech giants like Apple and Google.
Now, this is true. However, there might need to be more context provided. Since the topic isn’t particularly that simple and people need to definitely go research more than the two links they provided, it just doesn’t directly relate to the hardware. Therefore, it doesn’t provide any useful information. The only motivation behind this is to influence my political beliefs and emotions, to try to make me disinterested in phone at the very beginning…
Now, the reason I posted this review below multiple times and believe it to be unbiased is that it had nothing to do with the founder or the political party Unplugged previously intended to market to in their investors’ pitch. It was purely an analysis of the hardware and software. No emotions to be manipulated.
Leaving the Apple Ecosystem - part 4
Now, with all that being said, the MIT article did still contain some crucial facts that were much needed, and some of the criticisms directed towards the marketing were valid. But the way they did it is in a very bias way. Which is not helpful at all if you want people to look at a product objectively.
It may not be a scam, but it’s still an overpriced phone with a mediocre MediaTek processor from 2021, like that should just be enough to say “oh yeah I don’t want anything to do with this”, If they make a claim that they’re a secure phone and their SoC is about to stop getting firmware updates from MediaTek, then they cannot guarantee that secureness, what do you call a product that cannot guarantee what it advertises? Some may call scam, some may call false advertising, the bottom line is: It’s not the word that counts, it’s the product and it’s terrible
But how do we know they could have made a private deal with the vendors for a special modified chip? We just have no way of knowing there’s nothing concrete out on the internet about this phone. That is Unplugged fault. For all the issues it is facing.
Plus no one is even trying to test it. As they are afraid or skeptical about it. That in turn is not going to give us answers.
