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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

#301

Post by ThePhysicist »

joegosse wrote: post #249
ThePhysicist wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 allo…

>Within the new European GDPR framework, IP addresses are to be considered as personally identifiable information,... My understanding is that many of these details are yet to be settled with GDPR. The case referenced above was not interpreted under GDPR, which has yet to take effect. The definitions of personally identifiable data data rather vague, and precedent has not been set. A quick search showed conflicting o…

The GDPR does not provide a list of data types that are considered personal or not personal, instead it uses a definition which states what criteria need to be met for data to be personal and gives a list of relevant categories, which explicitly includes "online identifiers":

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/

Now, you could of course argue that often it's not possible to infer the identity of a person given an IP address (e.g. because it is a dynamically allocated IP address by an ISP or an IP address of a proxy server through which many users connect to the Internet) and therefore store it, it would be very hard to impossible though (IMHO) to ascertain that none of the IP addresses which you store could be used to identify a specific person (what e.g. if there are 5 % static IPs in your data?). This in turn would make treating all of your IPs as non-personal data a risky business to say the least, as there will almost certainly be a way to identify at least some of your users from their IP addresses. The fact that you don't know about a particular way of doing this identification is not relevant for this.

My advice: If you do not use a very robust method for making sure that all the IPs you store are non-identifiable I would recommend not storing them at all (or at least truncating them to 24 bits, which does also not always eliminate deanonymization risk though).

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

#302

Post by quickben »

veeti wrote: post #229
gbuk2013 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No phoning home. No telemetry, no data collection. No "light" version of the same, no "privacy-respecting" what-have-you. No means No. Nada. Zilch. Try and shovel any of that down people's throats and the idea of Firefox as a user's browser will die. https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785 And now this :-( I have been using Firefox since before it was called that. I develop my apps in it, even though…

> 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…

That's different. Netflix is optional. The AdSense and the telemetry discussed aren't.

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

#303

Post by marcosdumay »

gvx wrote: post #252
throwaway2048 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly those users that dont choose to opt in are wrong, and mozilla needs to make this choice for them... This trend towards parentalism in software, especially software that is supposed to be user driven is frankly a steaming pile of garbage. If you have any shred of pretense of being pro-privacy and pro-user dont do this mozilla.

It's more that a lot of people really don't care one way or another, and will neither go out of their way to opt-in or opt-out. Additionally, it's not that Mozilla just disregards user privacy here: differential privacy being used would mean that no user has to reveal their private information, but looking at all the data in aggregate would still allow Mozilla to gain useful information on how to make Firefox better.

The people that don't care one way or another are mostly using Chrome.

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

#304

Post by marcosdumay »

acdha wrote: post #137
claudius wrote: post #38

Earlier 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…

What's up with calling obvious stuff by "broad assertion"?

Are you saying that people can not be identified by their IP address?

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

#305

Post by CaptSpify »

sp332 wrote: post #278
CaptSpify wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The code in the browser is a stub. No data gets collected let alone sent anywhere until the user adds a Pocket account. Pocket updated their privacy policy, and they open-sourced the browser integration code. https://venturebeat.com/2015/06/09/mozilla-responds-to-firef...

But based on the article, it wasn't addressed until users raised a stink about it. And it wasn't just privacy, it was also closed-source, unnecessary features that should be an addon, etc.

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

#306

Post by quickben »

gvx wrote: post #252
throwaway2048 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly those users that dont choose to opt in are wrong, and mozilla needs to make this choice for them... This trend towards parentalism in software, especially software that is supposed to be user driven is frankly a steaming pile of garbage. If you have any shred of pretense of being pro-privacy and pro-user dont do this mozilla.

It's more that a lot of people really don't care one way or another, and will neither go out of their way to opt-in or opt-out. Additionally, it's not that Mozilla just disregards user privacy here: differential privacy being used would mean that no user has to reveal their private information, but looking at all the data in aggregate would still allow Mozilla to gain useful information on how to make Firefox better.

So, let me see if I can follow your argument.

Because most people don't care, it was decided to implement a feature that is flat out contrary to people caring.

Management decisions like this don't exactly inspire confidence about the future of the browser.

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

#307

Post by sp332 »

CaptSpify wrote: post #305
sp332 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The code in the browser is a stub. No data gets collected let alone sent anywhere until the user adds a Pocket account. Pocket updated their privacy policy, and they open-sourced the browser integration code. https://venturebeat.com/2015/06/09/mozilla-responds-to-firef...

But based on the article, it wasn't addressed until users raised a stink about it. And it wasn't just privacy, it was also closed-source, unnecessary features that should be an addon, etc.

Why would it be addressed before anyone complained? And it was planned as part of the Readability feature, which is very popular and not considered "unnecessary". But FF devs were having a hard time making a good read-it-later UI and decided to use Pocket instead of reinventing the wheel.

Edit: To be clear, I think the browser code was always a stub, and the privacy policy was modified before the feature launched as part of Firefox.

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

#308

Post by quickben »

p49k wrote: post #52
chimeracoder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> URLs may contain Protected Health and other Identifying Information A URL must not contain PHI. If it does, a breach has already occurred. And Firefox is only collecting the domain names, it looks like.

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)

You can argue it all you want. Whoever is storing that is responsible under the Canadian laws criminally. It's probably the same if not worse in other countries (Germany, etc).

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

#309

Post by gbuk2013 »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #297
gbuk2013 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy that argument, sorry. Because it requires something as anti-freedom as DRM to exist in the first place.

You would outlaw locks for the front doors of houses too?

No, because physical goods and 0's and 1's are not the same.

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

#310

Post by quickben »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #166
claudius wrote: post #38

Earlier 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 Not true. Tor has demonstrated that it's entirely possible to transmit data over the internet without revealing your IP address to the party you're transmitting to.

At a heavy latency cost, and under dubious asumption that regular people control all exit nodes.
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