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

Post by moosingin3space » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 2:55 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #205

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…

If user privacy is paramount, then there are multiple ways to lower the privacy incursion that is caused by the data collection. Only collect top-level domains of Alexa rank 1k. That users are using a highway is less sensitive than a specific street where there only exists 5 homes, and it reassures users that private domain names won't be leaked. Send the data through Tor. That way you only get the data about the bro…

Post by calcifer » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 2:58 PM UTC

Post by syshum » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 3:00 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #209

syshum wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 F…

It's limiting at the moment because it's not finished yet. And Firefox in particular has far outpaced any third-party or industry-wide standards in adding new APIs. They've been proactive and responsive in getting feedback from addon developers while designing the APIs. I would say security addons are one of the top priorities. For example here's a blog post by the NoScript developer: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/…

Post by pishpash » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 3:03 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #162

huhtenberg wrote: post #43

The single largest advantage of Firefox over other browsers is that despite all odds and occasional missteps they managed to respect users' desire for complete privacy. For Firefox we want to better understand how people use our product to improve their experience. Sure thing. But the fact that they are unhappy that some (many?) people are opting-out from the data collection is merely a sign that they don't want to u…

I'm not really sure what your concern is here. Let's assume for a moment that Firefox's implementation of differential privacy in this scenario is completely correct, and that as a result it's completely impossible (even in an information-theoretic sense) to learn anything about any individual user using this data; only about many users in aggregate. In this scenario, how exactly would Firefox's actions here compromi…

Post by Ajedi32 » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 3:06 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #210

Ajedi32 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opt-in inevitably results in data being heavily biased in favor of the small minority of users who go out of their way to opt-in. For some stuff that's fine, but for certain types of data you really do need a broad, unbiased sample of users in order for the data to be at all meaningful. (Usually to answer questions like "What percentage of users use x feature?" Or "What level of jank does the average user experience…

I have no way of knowing how this may or may not compromise my privacy without a deep understanding of the techniques being used. I am meant to trust Mozilla and hope that they haven't overlooked some weakness in the algorithms used. The obvious security choice is to not add this feature in. The 'Provided this feature doesn't compromise anyone's privacy' is a fantasy, because no-one can be sure of that.