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“Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

bugzilla.mozilla.org

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Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#81

Post by tr33house »

rhelmer wrote: post #32
Fej wrote: post #14

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding). Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don…

There are lots of great web browsers now, which is a huge improvement on the state of the world when Firefox 1.0 was released. All major browsers today do share a huge problem - the web browser needs to be fast (performance and responsiveness are a Really Big Deal to people), and it also needs to be secure (people getting ransomware via the browser is Not OK with them). Privacy is a more nebulous topic, I agree. One…

It still concerns me that privacy is never taken seriously by most users. Sigh

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#82

Post by [deleted] »

rhelmer wrote: post #32
Fej wrote: post #14

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding). Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don…

There are lots of great web browsers now, which is a huge improvement on the state of the world when Firefox 1.0 was released. All major browsers today do share a huge problem - the web browser needs to be fast (performance and responsiveness are a Really Big Deal to people), and it also needs to be secure (people getting ransomware via the browser is Not OK with them). Privacy is a more nebulous topic, I agree. One…

[deleted]

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#83

Post by pessimizer »

justinlardinois wrote: post #66
peteretep wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most people don't care about > their privacy online Apple are betting they will do, and I think that's prescient. Only need a few more Ashley Madisons to see a sea change in this area, and a browser that's been ahead of the curve for a long time has a lot to gain.

I'm not sure Ashley Madison is the best example. When that leak happened, a lot of the public's reaction was along the lines of "they were doing something wrong, so they deserved it."

It would be more accurate to say "a lot of the public reaction" rather than "a lot of the public's reaction." A lot of the private reaction was completely freaking out and considering the web completely unsafe.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#84

Post by lucb1e »

SolarNet wrote: post #75
mtgx wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why couldn't Firefox use Tor in the "private mode"? Wouldn't that be the ultimate private mode? It would also greatly help the Tor community, as it would "mainstream Tor" so it wouldn't have as much stigma as it does today.

Speed for starters (Tor is an order of magnitude slower) and many things, like advanced JavaScript (websockets for example), flash and Java, simply can't traverse it reliably. Also it's not what people expect. Many people expect private mode to make it so their active session's browsing doesn't effect their browsing history or they tracked history, not to anonymize them entirely.

> Tor is an order of magnitude slower

This claim is frequently made but I think I can objectively say (it's not the Tor fan speaking) that it's wrong. Can you back this up with numbers?

Like, real world user's numbers. That means WiFi or 3g, or at best a 100mbps wire to an old WRT54G; not a professional, cabled desktop setup with FTTH or 802.11ac that many of us might use (as professionals or hobbyists). Depending on some luck in the Tor circuit, it should be as good as a good public wifi hotspot. Or in a bad case it might be as bad as an overloaded and far away public hotspot, but circuits rotate now and then anyway.

I'd be genuinely interested to see some user testing in this area, especially if the users know the privacy difference it makes and can toggle it at will.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#85

Post by lucb1e »

peteretep wrote: post #53
Fej wrote: post #14

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding). Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don…

> most people don't care about > their privacy online Apple are betting they will do, and I think that's prescient. Only need a few more Ashley Madisons to see a sea change in this area, and a browser that's been ahead of the curve for a long time has a lot to gain.

No, Apple isn't betting average users care about privacy. They're thinking average users will not mind it, and they can reach a new audience this way.

The people who want open platforms will want usability like everyone else, but they're willing to sacrifice that if they get an open platform. Open platforms can be studied, understood and verified to be secure. Now that Apple products are apparently also safe and private (they're making a big point of it), the remaining reason is fairly abstract and purely ideological. The hackers and professionals no longer have a justifiable reason for their friends not to get an Apple device, and they themselves might think twice too.

It's another step in the erosion of our values that I'm afraid is taking place. Is it really bad or just the next step in what humanity values and cares about? I'm not sure, but I'm also not sure we can tell until it's too late and power over many devices (and thereby people's lives) is in the hands of a very few, so I'm on the "let's not go that path" side.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#86

Post by pessimizer »

discreditable wrote: post #28
cdmckay wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What usability problems did you experience vs Chrome?

Granted, this is non-default config. When blocking third-party cookies, Chrome shows a little icon which you can click to whitelist blocked cookies. There is no such Firefox option that I've found yet. It's also a lot easier to toggle javascript for individual sites in Chrome without extensions.

I can't live without Cookie Monster[1]. It's always at my bottom layer of privacy protection (installed earliest.) I wish one of the other things that I use that also regulates cookies would steal its UI (or FF itself), because once every year or two some interaction problem comes up between it and something else, though not nearly enough for me to give it up. Firefox seems to have adopted the Gnomeish philosophy to intentionally make it more difficult to selectively disable parts of the web as a way of guiding user behavior, so I don't see it happening.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste...

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#87

Post by Drdrdrq »

ak4g wrote: post #69
Sylos wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is arguable in my opinion. Someone who wants to block third-party Cookies or JavaScript shouldn't have any trouble with installing extensions.

Now you've forced me to make at at least two more decisions: to open up addons.mozilla to find a cookie-management extension, and to open up addons.mozilla to find a javascript-permissions-management extension. At each of these interactions, I would be confronted with the worst possible next-actionable-step: a large, seemingly unbounded number of options. Picking any of them then requires an additional interaction to…

What a great summary of extension installation process! I wonder why they never streamlined it and made at least a list of featured (curated / reviewed for security) extensions.

That said, I still prefer Firefox to anything produced by MS, sorry, I mean Google... :)

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#88

Post by cjg_ »

Sylos wrote: post #46
pcr0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It stutters when resizing, at times.

Good news is that this should be fixed with Electrolysis, which is currently being rolled out and will make it to your local Firefox installation somewhen in the next few months.

Also you can opt in now and see if it fixes your problems. I've run it now for a week or so and seems to work well.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#89

Post by Drdrdrq »

dingaling wrote: post #70
eitland wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Know the problem but for me it is infrequent enough and the bandaid (restore last session) is good enough that I don't care. 2. Painful for me as well until I I blocked js in google search and search results. (I often have quite a number of tab trees open and the roots are often google search results and they eat CPU if not restrained. I don't know if this is intentional on googles part but it leadt it shows poor…

The burning of CPU cycles whilst idling on Google's result page is the most infuriating bug in Firefox but doesn't seem to have been accorded any priority. It has persisted for at least three years. https://support.mozilla.org/fr/questions/965360 Unfortunately I usually only remember to close the results tabs when my fan spins-up.

Well, you could always just use startpage.com (uses Google) or duckduckgo.com. It's not like Google is still ages ahead of the competition as it once was. I am not sure where the bug comes from but it would be much easier for Google to fix it, given that their JS is heavily obfuscated. But then again, that's not really in their interest, is it?

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#90

Post by technomancy »

dao- wrote: post #50
confounded wrote: post #48

Note: I believe "un-fork" in this context means the Tor browser being able to use the latest version of Firefox (instead of an old fork), by Mozilla merging-in some of the privacy enhancements made in the Tor Browser, for ordinary clearnet use (likely as default-off options). It does not mean making Firefox into the Tor Browser. It's a great way to make the efforts of both teams available to both groups of users. I'm…

See also this comment further up in the bug: "Mozilla leadership has already decided to help Tor move toward being able to build off a Release Firefox rather than an ESR--it's safer for our users. I don't know if we'll get to the point where they can just ship a re-packaged bundle with some pref flips and add-ons, but the more of their patches we incorporate into mozilla-central the easier it will be for them to appl…

It's worrying to me that they imply ESR is less secure; isn't the whole point that it gets security fixes applied to it? Less churn should make it more secure.
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