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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

#261

Post by thanksgiving »

veeti wrote: post #258
thanksgiving wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. PLEASE do not go down this road. Look where "optimizing" video card drivers has led the…

Making optimizations based on telemetry from real world sites doesn't mean you're optimizing for that one site only, like a video driver including hacks for a specific game. For example, shifting an array in Firefox used to be O(n) vs. O(1) in the competition [1]. Improving these sort of code paths benefits the entire web, even if the performance issue is discovered and profiled on docs.google.com. [1] https://bugzil…

> Making optimizations based on telemetry from real world sites doesn't mean you're optimizing for that one site only, like a video driver including hacks for a specific game. For example, shifting an array in Firefox used to be O(n) vs. O(1) in the competition [1]. Improving these sort of code paths benefits the entire web, even if the performance issue is discovered and profiled on docs.google.com.

Again, the question should be if something "benefits the entire web", how can we discover it without an opt-out anti-feature? If the answer is we can't, then we don't want it. It is as simple as that.

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

#262

Post by tunap »

Ygg2 wrote: post #61
madez wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask for it. Don't just collect the data. Ffs, what has the team behind FireFox become? I need a new browser.

They did and too few people said yes. On the other hand, everyone complains Firefox is slow. So,few pay, few opt in, and everyone complains.

"They did and too few people said yes."

There's the answer. And the response? "Tough shit", we'll take away that choice granularly. For our own good, apparently.

Moz has been giving tough shit with caveats for more than a few years now. Perhaps that is why market share is falling?

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

#263

Post by Ajedi32 »

xaldir wrote: post #216
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.

The point is not whether this method is "sufficiently anonymous", the point is: I don't want my browser to collect any kind of data.

Why?

No, seriously; why? I don't get this mentality at all.

Let's ignore the exact implementation here for a moment, and assume that Firefox is somehow magically doing this data collection in such a way that it is guaranteed the data collected cannot be traced back to you as an individual. (E.g. "sufficiently anonymous".)

What problem do you have with that, specifically? How does this harm you in any way?

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

#264

Post by 0134340 »

gbuk2013 wrote: post #238
veeti wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DRM Mozilla fought DRM until the very end and lost . If Firefox is to have any chance at remaining a mainstream browser it needs to support Netflix and the likes. You can't seriously blame them for this, because they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. EME is implemented as unintrusively, securely and privately in Firefox as possible. No DRM is downloaded or run on your computer until you specifically c…

> Mozilla fought DRM until the very end and lost. If Firefox is to have any chance at remaining a mainstream browser it needs to support Netflix and the likes. You can't seriously blame them for this, because they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Yes I can, and I will, because they sold out. They sold out their principles for the sake of market share. (And looking at their marked share, fat lot of good…

I'd suggest you research the topic of negative and positive liberty. I'm all for a free and open source experience but what about the liberties of content creators? What about my right to as a user to be offered content with the knowledge that I won't and don't want to know its inner workings as long as it's passive non-malicious code?

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

#265

Post by disconnected »

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…

Ok, I get your point. You need the extra debugging information.

Now, here's my concern. I DO NOT want compromises. I DO NOT want to balance anything. I DO NOT want this telemetry crud on my browser spewing out my browsing history to anyone, no matter how anonymous you people claim it will be.

I just want a decent web browser.

What are my options? "Mozilla's way or the highway"? Redirect evil.telemetry.things.mozilla.org to /dev/null? Go back to elinks?

Or will there be a "disable this piece of crap utterly and completely" button somewhere not hidden under an URL? Or even better, a compile flag?

Edit: spelling...

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

#266

Post by gbuk2013 »

0134340 wrote: post #264
gbuk2013 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mozilla fought DRM until the very end and lost. If Firefox is to have any chance at remaining a mainstream browser it needs to support Netflix and the likes. You can't seriously blame them for this, because they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Yes I can, and I will, because they sold out. They sold out their principles for the sake of market share. (And looking at their marked share, fat lot of good…

I'd suggest you research the topic of negative and positive liberty. I'm all for a free and open source experience but what about the liberties of content creators? What about my right to as a user to be offered content with the knowledge that I won't and don't want to know its inner workings as long as it's passive non-malicious code?

I will be happy to do so, once consumers and content creators (and specifically the companies they sell rights to) are on a level playing field in terms of legal protections and lobbying powers.

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

#267

Post by [deleted] »

thanksgiving wrote: post #139
kannanvijayan wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gene…

> 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. PLEASE do not go down this road. Look where "optimizing" video card drivers has led the…

[deleted]

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

#268

Post by joosters »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #243
joosters wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously far, far more likely in code that is designed to send my browsing habits to a 3rd party (in whatever encoding). Do you not see this, or are you just trying to extend out these arguments to some ridiculous extreme for the sake of it?

I don't know what level of risk this implementation carries with it. Probably more than a performance fix to the JavaScript interpreter, yes, but is it really a significant enough risk to make this feature not worth implementing? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't; I honestly don't know. You just seemed to be arguing that _any_ amount of risk would be too much, which in my view is ridiculous since, as I said, all new featur…

You just seemed to be arguing that _any_ amount of risk would be too much

Unfortunately that's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, extending arguments to ridiculous extremes.

I have never said any amount of risk would be too much. In this particular instance, I think the risk and the unknowns are clearly too much.

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

#269

Post by Ygg2 »

gbuk2013 wrote: post #238
veeti wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DRM Mozilla fought DRM until the very end and lost . If Firefox is to have any chance at remaining a mainstream browser it needs to support Netflix and the likes. You can't seriously blame them for this, because they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. EME is implemented as unintrusively, securely and privately in Firefox as possible. No DRM is downloaded or run on your computer until you specifically c…

> Mozilla fought DRM until the very end and lost. If Firefox is to have any chance at remaining a mainstream browser it needs to support Netflix and the likes. You can't seriously blame them for this, because they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Yes I can, and I will, because they sold out. They sold out their principles for the sake of market share. (And looking at their marked share, fat lot of good…

> Yes I can, and I will, because they sold out

Excuse me, but did you support Mozilla with time/money?

> They sold out their principles for the sake of market share.

12% is still better than 1%, and the thing that mostly changed the landscape was the fact that mobile Internet heavily disfavors Mozilla (e.g. Android ships with Chrome, iPhone with Safari), and Google has a heavy advantage when it comes to advertising and engineering.

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

#270

Post by CaptSpify »

sp332 wrote: post #184
GhotiFish wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People universally stated their feedback about pocket and it's still there. Why participate in a no-op?

Because the Pocket feedback I remember was about privacy concerns, and those were addressed.

> those were addressed.

source? I never saw anything addressed other than "don't worry about it, it's for your own good"

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