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Brave’s Capture of Usage Data
Note: This document is a complement to the referral system described at https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Brave%E2%80%99s-Use-of-Referral-Codes
Usage data is used to guide business decisions, inform product development and support resource allocation.
A usage ping is a HTTP GET request, with data encoded in query parameters, used to count active users. The encoded request is sent to laptop-updates.brave.com either when the browser starts for the first time in a day, or after midnight if the browser is left open. It contains no personal data or personally identifying information.
Note: All fields are described in the table below with example values.
The request is encoded with the following rules:
- The platform, channel, and version strings are retrieved from browser state.
- The daily flag is set to true.
- The weekly flag is set to true if the browser is used for the first time in a calendar week, starting on Monday.
- The monthly flag is set to true if the browser is used for the first time in a calendar month, starting on the 1st of the month.
- The first flag is set to true if this is the first day the browser was installed.
- The woi (week of installation), ref (referral code, not used if default), and dtoi (date of installation) are retrieved from browser state.
- The adsEnabled flag, set to true if ads are enabled in the browser.
- The walletActive flag. Set to 7 for daily, 6 for weekly, 4 for monthly, 0 if wallet never used.
- The arch field, which has the CPU architecture Brave was compiled for. This is sent only if ads are enabled in the browser.
The request is routed to a CDN before it is forwarded to Brave for capture. The CDN performs the following:
- Infers country code from IP address (countries with a small number of users < 1000 are excluded from this inference step).
- Infers region code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2) from IP address.
- Removes IP address from data sent to Brave.
The CDN-modified request is sent to Brave for data capture. Brave performs the following:
- The current date (year_month_day) is added to the request and the usage request is stored.
Once a day Brave aggregates the captured data, storing it for analysis and reporting.
| Field | Description | Values | Source | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| year_month_day | Date of request capture | YYYY-MM-DD encoded date | Brave | 2020-11-19 |
| platform | Platform identifier | Winx64-bc, winia32-bc, linux-bc, osx-bc, android-bc, ios | Browser | winx64-bc |
| channel | Channel identifier | Nightly, dev, developer, beta, release | Browser | release |
| version | Version number | x.x.x semver formatted string | Browser | 1.2.3 |
| daily | Daily flag | true or false | Browser | true |
| weekly | Weekly flag | true or false | Browser | true |
| monthly | Monthly flag | true or false | Browser | false |
| first | First day of installation flag | true or false | Browser | false |
| woi | Week of installation - date of the first Monday before the installation date | YYYY-MM-DD formatted date | Browser | 2020-11-16 |
| ref | Referral code (now limited to a small set of 50 to 100 affiliated referrers if this Brave instance was downloaded via a referral link) | ABC123 formatted string or the value none | Browser | ABC123 |
| country_code | Country Code | 2 digit string containing the country code | CDN | US |
| region | State / Province Code | 2 digit string containing a sub-national region code | CDN | CA |
| dtoi | Date of installation - date of the browser installation (held in browser state for 14 days then removed) | YYYY-MM-DD formatted date | Browser | 2020-11-18 |
| adsEnabled | Ads status flag | true or false | Browser | true |
| walletActive | Brave Wallet Status | 4 possible values for daily user, weekly user, monthly user, never used. | Browser | 7 |
| arch | CPU architecture Brave is compiled for | X86, x86_64, ia64, arm64, ppc64 | Browser | x86_64 |
| Metric | Description | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| DAU | Daily active users | Count of requests for a year_month_day |
| DNU | Daily new users | Count of requests for a year_month_day where daily is true |
| DRU | Daily returning users | Count of requests for a year_month_day where daily is false |
| WAU | Weekly active users | Count of requests for a year_month_day where weekly is true |
| WNU | Weekly new users | Count of requests for a year_month_day where weekly is true and first is true |
| WRU | Weekly returning users | Count of requests for a year_month_day where weekly is false |
| MAU | Monthly active users | Count of requests for a year_month_day where monthly is true |
| MNU | Monthly new users | Count of requests for a year_month_day where monthly is true and first is true |
| MRU | Monthly returning users | Count of requests for a year_month_day where monthly is true and first is false |
| Daily retention | Percentage of installations that use the browser a specific number of days after installation (capped at 14 days) | Count of requests for a year_month_day where dtoi is X, divided by the number of requests on X in which first is true |
| Weekly retention | Percentage of installations that use the browser at least one time in a calendar week compared to the number installed on a target week | Count of requests for year_month_day where woi is X, divided by the number of requests in the week starting on X in which first is true |
The Brave usage counting system is specifically designed to not rely on personally identifying information. The system builds usage counts by aggregating the usage requests sent over the course of a single calendar day.