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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

#121

Post by noir_lord »

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…

No compromise, I switched to FF on Android to avoid this crap from Chrome and now you'll do it as well.

I look forwards to the fork.

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

#122

Post by throwaway2048 »

veeti wrote: post #98
embik wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is not the way you label gathering information from your users but rather that it is about implementing something Google proposed. If the mechanism works, fine, but why should I use Firefox over Chromium then? Opt-out data collection is in violation to my core beliefs and what I believed to be Mozilla's principles. Collecting data without asking the user about it is - to me - in violation to the very definit…

Existing telemetry in Firefox already works on an opt-out basis. This changes nothing.

Existing telemetry dosent collect browsing data

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

#123

Post by kuschku »

yuhong wrote: post #108
kuschku wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, it’s simple. Just comply with EU law, and it’s all okay. That includes: 1. You can not collect anything without explicit opt-in 2. You can not transmit any data to a third party 3. If a user requests it, you have to provide all data stored about them, and have to provide a way for them to delete all of that. (And you have to provide this at least once every 12 months via letter, fax or email for free) (compare §3…

I wonder which kind of data it actually applies to though.

All and any.

That includes IP addresses (just connecting to a socket without a user explicitly starting that action), names, emails, hashed IPs, it includes usernames, CC data, messages, interactions with webpages.

Anything that in any way is connected to a person is covered by this.

This directive is also the origin of the cookie disclaimers, which require opt-in before collecting statistics or loading any third party tracking solution.

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

#124

Post by drtillberg »

Yoric wrote: post #48
drtillberg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Mozilla's boldness in stating the plan to systematically leak user information, is a tipping point. Will increase usage of Opera, Midori, Chromium. As for Tor integration with Firefox, that really is a shame, I hope Tor integrates with something else.

It's not "stating the plan", it's calling for feedback. If you disagree, provide feedback :)

Ok, boldness in "seeking feedback" on systematically leaking private information. Same concern.

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

#125

Post by kannanvijayan »

syshum wrote: post #95
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…

>>This is a difficult compromise to make, Sorry I do not accept this compromise. Mozilla seems to have lost its way of late. Sad to see a company that was at the fore front of Privacy, and Security abandon that in name of market share and performance. I would rather sacrifice performance for privacy, not the other way around. From EME, to the adoption of Browser Extensions as the only customization option, now this..…

I think the core disagreement here is not ideological per se, but on premises. I agree with the motivation of not collecting any data.

That said, I don't feel that we have a choice but to compromise. If we don't build a better browser, then the other browsers will win by default, which means you lose all those privacy and security motivations anyway.

This is not some gleeful romp down the yellow brick road of data collection. It's a hard-searched, difficult compromise to a question that there are no good answers to, and LOTS of disagreement about.

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

#126

Post by unethical_ban »

drtillberg wrote: post #41
suby wrote: post #17

I've been using Firefox as my only browser for at least 12 years. If they go through with this, I'll switch to something else. I don't know how they could think that this is acceptable.

I think Mozilla's boldness in stating the plan to systematically leak user information, is a tipping point. Will increase usage of Opera, Midori, Chromium. As for Tor integration with Firefox, that really is a shame, I hope Tor integrates with something else.

You cannot legitimately suggest using Opera as a privacy-respecting alternative to this possible new Firefox.

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

#127

Post by tjoff »

eli wrote: post #79
tjoff wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty plain to see how such aggregate usage data would lead to a better product for everyone. No, it is not. Especially not for something such as a browser which is mostly transparent to the content.

Browser performance is very closely tied to specifics of the content. That's why optimizing for e.g. JS benchmarks doesn't always result in a browser that feels any faster.

I can't think of a statement more vague than that.

Or why any external data would be needed at all, let alone why the opt-in data would not be sufficient?

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

#128

Post by flyinghamster »

kuschku wrote: post #29
digitalzombie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Mozilla currently uses Google Analytics for tracking, with "IP Anonymization" enabled. 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.

Not to mention, if we're talking about IPv6 addresses, they often get allocated as /64 (or even /60 or /56) blocks. Such "anonymization" becomes useless at that point.

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

#129

Post by yuhong »

kuschku wrote: post #123
yuhong wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder which kind of data it actually applies to though.

All and any. That includes IP addresses (just connecting to a socket without a user explicitly starting that action), names, emails, hashed IPs, it includes usernames, CC data, messages, interactions with webpages. Anything that in any way is connected to a person is covered by this. This directive is also the origin of the cookie disclaimers, which require opt-in before collecting statistics or loading any third par…

Does it only require permission if the IP address is being stored?

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

#130

Post by Ajedi32 »

kuschku wrote: post #104
codefined wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't send the correct source IP address, with simple statistics gathering like this I hardly expect they require a response. It would mean there would be no personal data whatsoever.

How would you do that, though? The browser has to open a socket to something to do this, after all. And that already is a violation.

You'd just send a UDP packet with a spoofed source address and forget about it. There's no need to open any sort of 2-way connection for data that's only being transmitted in one direction (from browser to metrics server).
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