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Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

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Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#81

Post by hawkice »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #60
spiderfarmer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. If this is helping users, it should be easy to convince them to turn it on.

That's not how it works. Most users don't care and will simply use whatever the default is; and when it comes to anonymous usage statistics, "most users" is _exactly_ the group of people you want to be collecting them from; otherwise your results will be skewed heavily in favor of a small minority of power users.

Precisely. Most people don't have an explicit preference. And collecting data on every possible human would give better results -- useful even if they don't plan on justifying running any specific test. We should probably use our expertise in computer networks to create universal, unjustified surveillance. As long as there is an opt-out option (hopefully we can use a complex tracking method so people don't understand the implications of not opting out -- oh, wait, RAPPOR already does that! Mozilla really stepped up their game here).

[EDIT: Firefox branding used to use the word privacy a lot. I can't find it on their website much at all anymore.]

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#82

Post by syshum »

chimeracoder wrote: post #70
p49k wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean, a URL must not contain PHI? You can't prevent a non-tech minded person from submitting questions about their health to any text field linked to a form with a GET method. I'd argue that domains are the same- there are tons of domains that clearly indicate what they're about (e.g. stop-drinking.example)

> What do you mean, a URL must not contain PHI? You can't prevent a non-tech minded person from submitting questions about their health to any text field linked to a form with a GET method. You can't, but that can't be part of Mozilla's threat model, and it's not relevant here anyway because Mozilla isn't collecting it . And even if they were, that's not considered PHI legally. You are free to type any information ab…

>>You can't, but that can't be part of Mozilla's threat model,

How normal everyday people actually use their product cant be a part of the threat model... Really?

That is scary...

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#84

Post by kuschku »

claudius wrote: post #38
Vinnl wrote: post #13

Note: "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.

Any submission of data requires the transmission of an IP address, which is personal data and necessitates appropriate protection. I very much hope that the Debian maintainers (and hopefully also the guys preparing Fennec in F-Droid) will disable such data collection mechanisms, either completely or hidden behind an explicit opt-in instead of the opt-out suggested in the e-mail.

> Any submission of data requires the transmission of an IP address, which is personal data and necessitates appropriate protection.

And requires an opt-in under EU law, which makes this entire thing even more ridiculous.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#85

Post by kannanvijayan »

yuhong wrote: post #74
kannanvijayan wrote: post #71

I can do a quick summary of what's being proposed and why. I work in the JS team at Mozilla and deal directly with the problems caused by insufficient data. Please note that I'm speaking for myself here, and not on behalf of Mozilla as a whole. Tracking down regressions, crashes, and perf issues without good telemetry about how often it's happening and in what context. Issues that might have otherwise taken a few day…

Mozilla's crash reporter already has the option of submitting the URL.

There are a couple different reasons crash reports aren't sufficient:

1. Crash reports only report crashes. We need also want to see perf issues like GC and paint jank, etc.

2. Crash reports don't sample the general population, so statistically the information is less useful. If we get a perf issue, it's very important to know whether that issue is suffered by 10% of the users in general pop, or 0.5% of users in general pop. You want to prioritize the stuff that has the greatest impact on the general user population.

Lastly, crash reports are sort of a boolean filter - you only get the people that crash. The things I'd like to know to help in my development are things like "what is the histogram of max GC pause times on docs.google.com". Getting that info requires a good random sampling of the population, not just those who exhibit problems.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#87

Post by alexrs95 »

I work at Mozilla, but I'm speaking for myself here, and not on behalf of Mozilla as a whole.

For those interested in understand more about this project and why we're doing it, here you can find an introduction of Differential Privacy and what we're trying to do. https://twitter.com/Alexrs95/status/896366072240144385

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#88

Post by zaro »

madez wrote: post #40
zaro wrote: post #37

On one hand Mozilla doing something like that is anti privacy. On the other hand how is Mozilla supposed to impprove FF w/o detailed usage data. In theory can be done, but in practice they are competing with Chrome and their team has waaay more data to use. And th is data gives them an edge at least on the decision which parts are worth improving. So they can either start collecting some data and really piss off thei…

Why would FireFox be on a dead spiral for not tracking it's users? If they want browsing data, then can use their own.

English is not my native language so maybe I didn't express myself clearly.

It is not on a death spiral bevause of the missing user tracking. It's on a death spiral because of Google and Chrome. And tracking is a way of catching up. It's much easier to improve when you know what your users do with your software.

Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way

#89

Post by kuschku »

binarymax wrote: post #59
embik wrote: post #14

This is ridiculous. I use and recommend Firefox for pure ideological reasons, because frankly, Chrome/Chromium is miles ahead of them. If they start opt-out tracking using the same approach as Google I do not see any reason to use it nor install it for my friends and family. That's some data for you, Mozilla.

Your stance is paradoxical, because Chrome has been improved based on data mined from users, and not in as nearly a considerate way as Mozilla is proposing. You want Firefox to succeed as a browser, but to be able to better compete it needs better usage data. Wouldn't you prefer for Firefox to be the best browser available, AND also be considerate towards your privacy rights?

Wouldn't you prefer for Firefox to be the best browser available, AND also be considerate towards your privacy rights?

I prefer absolute privacy over some minor advantages on irrelevant webpages.

How do you even think this system would work in restricted environments such as governments where even the presence of code that could collect data is an absolute no-go?

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