This is great. A principled well-considered approach to collecting useful information in a way that respects people's privacy. Go Mozilla!
Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
191–200 of 450 posts
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Do you have a citation for that broad assertion? My understanding is that this is highly variable across legal jurisdictions and even in Europe, which typically leads the way in privacy, it's not that simple. See e.g. https://www.whitecase.com/publications/alert/court-confirms-... discu…
Within the new European GDPR framework, IP addresses are to be considered as personally identifiable information, so the concern is warranted. What's decisive when characterizing an information as identifiable or not is not the fact of being actually able to perform the de-anonymization of the information (e.g. via the ISP in case of an IP address), but the mere possibility of it.
Legally though Firefox would be allowed to collect this anonymous data from the user by having him/her send the data e.g. to an API endpoint they provide via IP-based communication, they would just not be allowed to associate the data with the IP address of the user submitting the data. In the end, it comes down to trusting the party that collects the data, at least if they don't perform anonymization of the IP address via other means, e.g. by passing the information through a third party proxy server.
BTW, GDPR does forbid to turn on such data collection by default (privacy by default), so they would be required to get the explicit opt-in from the user for that.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 co…
Why is the choice between opt-in vs opt-out of automatic behavior? If Mozilla wants perf data, collect it and then prompt the user "crash reporting" style. I would totally opt-in to prompts. Give it a threshold and ask, "This page seems to frequently perform less well on your computer, would you like to send us a report?"
exactly. I don't get why the need to take away choice of privacy from the user, in hunt of better performance.
I'll gladly send an error report or something similar you mentioned, but please give me right to choose. it might seem a small difference to you, but it means the world to me.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#194Just want to add a little volume to the general opinion here that collecting user data, no matter how anonymous, is a terrible idea for a product whose only appealing quality is that it respects its users privacy.
Data is both highly alluring and addictive as evinced here by Mozilla potentially willing to shoot itself in the foot to get some. What's to keep this from becoming a frog in a boiling water kind of situation? How can I trust that Mozilla is going to adhere to their own stated standards? The easiest answer is that I won't have to because I can just use something else. Personally, the only reason I use Firefox is because it's slightly less convenient to set up a secruity-patched version of Chromium.
Other people in this thread have made the excellent points of the fact that not enough people opting in to data collection is in itself a critical piece of data. Moreover, things such as "Which top sites are users visiting?" can be answered by looking at data from page ranking services and then they can go to those sites on their own testing equipment to answer their other questions. A little investment in acquiring this data by not spying and maybe getting a wider array of testing equipment is probably less costly than the potential for loss in market share that they're already struggling to hold.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#195I 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…
If it's so harmless, let users opt-in. Adding data collection via an opt-out is shameful, it shows that you know people would not want this and yet you'd prefer to get more data anyway.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#196I 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…
> Don't collect URLs, but only top-level+1 domains (e.g. images.google.com) Do you consider images.google.com to be eTLD+1? The eTLD would be .com; so, eTLD+1 would be google.com; and hence, images.google.com would be eTLD+2? eTLD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Suffix_List
Yeah, you're right. Thanks for the correction. It's eTLD+1, I just erroneously used images.google.com as an example.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#197"One recurring ask from the Firefox product teams is the ability to collect more sensitive data, like top sites users visit and how features perform on specific sites." I 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.
Even opt-in is a problem. There's no way to be 100% sure the checkbox in the UI is and always will be respected. It maybe something as innocent as logic woopsie or something as nefarious as intentionally and quietly changing it to opt-out during an update. A better option, keep the data sharing code out of Firefox; opt-in to log locally; if they user decides they want to share something with Mozilla, give them instructions on how to email or upload the files.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#198If they do this, I will uninstall Firefox and start recommending some other browser. Mozilla has really sunk in my eyes the last couple of years but this is the final spike in the coffin for me.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does an IP address actually require an opt-in? And if it does, does it only apply if it is being stored?
Yes[1], no[2]. An IP address is "personal relationships" data and collecting, processing or using such data is prohibited unless allowed by law or the concerned person gives consent. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesdatenschutzgesetz#Types_... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesdatenschutzgesetz#Overvi...
The way I interpret this, if you don't collect, process or use the IP address beyond it being incidentally involved in the transmission of anonymized data, it shouldn't require explicit consent.
Otherwise literally everything that connects to the internet in some way would have to treated in that way, and that's not how the law is currently enforced.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>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 guess this is offtopic, but what do browser extensions have to do with openness, security, or privacy?
It is a factor in openness, the Browser Extension API as being developed by FF, MS, and W3c is very very limiting far more limiting than the old XUL based model
It can be a factor in security both positive and negative as XUL was very powerful and could be abused, but it also was used by some projects to enhance the security of FF or provide other security related functionality that is now no longer possible unless FF allows or builds it into the browser directly. Same for Privacy.