[gridlocdev]

TLDR: Brave asked USPS to send out a mass physical mail ad to folks in a specific set of US zip codes. The “New User” message is a mishap from the marketing team; Brave themselves did not collect or purchase any user data to serve the advertisement to any specific person(s).

To play devil’s advocate here; while ideologically it’s sort of backwards from a privacy standpoint (utilizing USPS for using non-anonymized user data), I understand how difficult it really is to market a new browser for non-technical users where a similar advertisement of whom it would likely never reach online. To gain and keep the trust of informed users alongside average joes though, I do hope that in the future a more anonymous method is used to acquire eyes on the product than delegating the non-private business to third-party vendors.

Here’s the exact responses from Brave rep on the explainer Reddit thread.

> I want to stress that Brave didn't buy any data. Not even anonymous data. We sent these mailers through the United States Postal Service. They have names and addresses, but none of that makes its way back to Brave (by design; we don't want any user data). We don't even want names printed on the mailers; we've asked (and will stress again) that this not happen.

> This is understandable confusion, likely due to the "New Brave User" message. In reality, these were mailed only to residents living within certain target cities. Brave gives the USPS a zip code, and that's it. The "New Brave User" wording, I'm told, is not uncommon in marketing. Personally, I find it a bit confusion as it seems to imply the recipient is already a Brave user (which we do not know to be the case). I hope this helps to clear up any confusion!