How many people here use website/app analytics to improve products they work on?
Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
21–30 of 450 posts
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#22Note: "planning" means "reaching out for feedback about". Also interesting: the method they plan on using for anonymising this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy#Principle... If that is not sufficiently anonymous, then please submit the reasoning why to Mozilla.
I think the burden here is backwards? URLs may contain Protected Health and other Identifying Information. If this data leaks SSL and could be sent to a 3rd party, then it makes Firefox an unsuitable client for a great many applications. EDIT: OK. It's boolean flags (like use of flash) plus an eTLD+1 (example.org; not myname.example.org?). Even so, I believe this tracking should be opt-in with a disclosure screen tha…
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#23Note: "planning" means "reaching out for feedback about". Also interesting: the method they plan on using for anonymising this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy#Principle... If that is not sufficiently anonymous, then please submit the reasoning why to Mozilla.
I think the burden here is backwards? URLs may contain Protected Health and other Identifying Information. If this data leaks SSL and could be sent to a 3rd party, then it makes Firefox an unsuitable client for a great many applications. EDIT: OK. It's boolean flags (like use of flash) plus an eTLD+1 (example.org; not myname.example.org?). Even so, I believe this tracking should be opt-in with a disclosure screen tha…
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#24I say it over and over. You can not completely anonymize data with any reliability. Please note the qualifier, many systems work for many vectors, but any sufficiently large dataset can be used to graph habits and correlate them. Maybe there is a safe way, but I put the onus of proving it on the person implementing it.
Well... there's actually a field for that. I forgot what they call that field because of how niche it is but my friend at google is doing just that.
He said there are math theorem to prove that it's sufficiently anonymize.
He gave an example of how Netflix competition with the data they gave researchers were able to deanonymize it. And his job was to prevent that at google.
I can see why if you're trying to sell users data while maintaining privacy.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#25Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#26Note: "planning" means "reaching out for feedback about". Also interesting: the method they plan on using for anonymising this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy#Principle... If that is not sufficiently anonymous, then please submit the reasoning why to Mozilla.
I think the burden here is backwards? URLs may contain Protected Health and other Identifying Information. If this data leaks SSL and could be sent to a 3rd party, then it makes Firefox an unsuitable client for a great many applications. EDIT: OK. It's boolean flags (like use of flash) plus an eTLD+1 (example.org; not myname.example.org?). Even so, I believe this tracking should be opt-in with a disclosure screen tha…
A URL must not contain PHI. If it does, a breach has already occurred.
And Firefox is only collecting the domain names, it looks like.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#27I've removed all URLs from about:config and replaced them with localhost (search for "http"). This should help with privacy-related issues as long as no API endpoint is hardcoded.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#28I would say that is none of the browser vendors business.
Please stay away with your opt-out stuff - it bothers me. Make it opt-in, always and forever.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#29I say it over and over. You can not completely anonymize data with any reliability. Please note the qualifier, many systems work for many vectors, but any sufficiently large dataset can be used to graph habits and correlate them. Maybe there is a safe way, but I put the onus of proving it on the person implementing it.
> You can not completely anonymize data with any reliability. Well... there's actually a field for that. I forgot what they call that field because of how niche it is but my friend at google is doing just that. He said there are math theorem to prove that it's sufficiently anonymize. He gave an example of how Netflix competition with the data they gave researchers were able to deanonymize it. And his job was to preve…
Which, according to Google’s FAQ, https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en, just blanks out the last byte of the IP.
Which is useless, because it still includes enough personalized data as to be completely and utterly reversible.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#30What I have not seen here is a discussion of how, exactly, collecting browsing behavior will help Mozilla improve Firefox.
> One recurring ask from the Firefox product teams is the ability to collect more sensitive data, like how features perform on specific sites.
> [for example]: "Which sites does a user see heavy Jank on?"