Not quite. We had a couple domains that—when typed into the address bar—would offer a referral-option in the browser UI. If you quickly hit the enter key, you might mistakenly have selected one of those unintentionally. This was a UX bug on our end as the feature wasn't intended to match complete URLs.
The goal was to offer folks a means of supporting the development of a privacy-preserving browser, at no cost to them. We blogged about the feature at https://brave.com/blog/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/, and ultimately disabled it by default. But there was never any "hijacking of links," or "swapping of affiliate codes".
The goal was to offer folks a means of supporting the development of a privacy-preserving browser, at no cost to them. We blogged about the feature at https://brave.com/blog/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/, and ultimately disabled it by default. But there was never any "hijacking of links," or "swapping of affiliate codes".
The truth is less exciting, I know.