Brave, BAT & Uphold Issues - Beware!

Brave Browser is a popular browser amongst the crypto community, its not perfect but based on Chromium and with privacy features built in, the ability to opt in to ads to earn BAT is a nice bonus.

I have been using it for over two years across various devices, initially I had to connect to Uphold (terrible exchange) to transfer out my BAT, and the realised I couldn't send from Uphold anywhere so had to swap for XLM then transfer out. Eventually the option to connect to Gemini became available in my region (Australia), and that was better but still not an exchange I would personally choose to use for any other reason.

I recently got a new phone and when I installed Brave I could no longer link to Gemini, and only had Uphold as an option (yay), so I linked back to my old Uphold account, and earnt a few BAT, I then linked a new device, a computer that isn't often used and didn't think much of it until 1 BAT was sent out of my Uphold account to Brave.

After a bit of investigation I discovered that now Auto Contribute is set to ON by default (I don't remember this being an issue previously) and that rather than taking the contribution from your earnings they can take direct from your account, so despite having earnt nothing from this new device I've 'paid' 1 BAT as a contribution, from the BAT I'd earnt on a different device that has auto contribute set to 'off'.

So check your settings, especially if you are setting up a new device, and ideally use an account (Uphold/Gemini) that you don't use for anything else or keep any other funds on.