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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

#311

Post by quickben »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #263
xaldir wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Then why promote the browser as such?

Remove all "we respect privacy" from the advertisement.

It's misleading.

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

#312

Post by darrmit »

sp332 wrote: post #188
darrmit wrote: post #96

I still use Firefox specifically because of Chrome's privacy concerns and was under the impression after dropping FirefoxOS Mozilla was headed in the right direction. It seems they've convinced themselves that the only way to improve the product is to collect data on their users, rather than continuing to push the idea of privacy - which, in my opinion, if marketed correctly, could win over a lot of users. The browse…

It seems your premise is wrong since Firefox's market share has been steadily declining for years. Privacy apparently doesn't matter to that many people.

I suppose you're right, I just know that privacy has become more of a known issue than it was 10 years ago. I guess users don't back that knowledge up with action by switching browsers.

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

#313

Post by GrayShade »

FlyingLawnmower wrote: post #260

I am surprised that there is such a fundamental misunderstanding of differential privacy on the Hacker News crowd. Meeting the standard of true differential privacy is one of the strongest known unconditional privacy guarantees. It will prevent Mozilla from being able to answer any user specific questions. For example, they might have an accurate count of how many people visit Google.com (say 60% of their user base),…

I only skimmed the RAPPOR paper, but can you discuss the worst-case scenario where an NSA-like adversary is able to each data point when it arrives? Assuming this happens from the start, how much information would she be be able to obtain?

> We can also review the actual code that ships in Firefox, which is a big plus over the Chrome implementation.

Sure, but note that it's been implemented already and will be pushed to the users as an add-on, without going through the full release process. Even this HN post seems to have been prematurely buried.

It would have been possible for this to be deployed without anyone knowing. Post-hoc reviewing of functionality as sensitive as this is not the ideal solution.

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

#314

Post by CaptSpify »

sp332 wrote: post #307
CaptSpify wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My concern is that Mozilla has been on a "Sure, you can provide feedback, but we're gonna do it anyway" streak. Pocket is quite unnecessary, and would be a great candidate for an add-on. I don't know their reasons for bringing it in, but it seems pretty cut and dry that there were a lot of users who didn't want it even after it was cleaned up, and Mozilla ignored them.

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

#315

Post by quickben »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #76
huhtenberg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most users don't care and will simply use whatever the default is These users will be installing Chrome, not Firefox.

I hope not. If that's true, then Firefox is in serious trouble. There aren't nearly enough power users and privacy enthusiasts around to make Firefox a significant player in the browser market all on their own.

Why not?

The switch barrier is non existent. Most of the replies in this thread are ideological. Nobody is arguing CSS rendering speed comparisons and such.

People use Firefox because they like it.

People are irrational but like is huge. Toyota over Hyundai. Vacations at the sea instead of skiing. Firefox over Chrome.

The like is a habit, but if all things are equal and free, a very flexible one.

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

#316

Post by binaryapparatus »

Thanks firefox. Not.

One of the last truly shiny examples of open source is losing the plot. Not only that it requires pulseaudio (alsa?), it is getting harder and harder to use it normally with FreeBSD. Now this.

I've had enough, testing links -g and it works well for most of my browsing needs.

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

#317

Post by Ajedi32 »

quickben wrote: post #310
Ajedi32 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Actually no, it doesn't matter who controls the exit nodes as long as your only concern is keeping your IP private. (Exit nodes can indeed do bad things to unencrypted traffic, but that's irrelevant for this use case.)

Latency also doesn't matter here; this telemetry could take 5 minutes to reach its destination and it wouldn't matter, so long as the data is eventually received.

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

#318

Post by Ajedi32 »

quickben wrote: post #311
Ajedi32 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Then why promote the browser as such? Remove all "we respect privacy" from the advertisement. It's misleading.

Because data collection that is "sufficiently anonymous" _does_ respect privacy. If it's completely impossible to tie the data collected to any one particular user, how does the existence of that data compromise privacy in any way?

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

#319

Post by quickben »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #317
quickben wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Actually no, it doesn't matter who controls the exit nodes as long as your only concern is keeping your IP private. (Exit nodes can indeed do bad things to unencrypted traffic, but that's irrelevant for this use case.) Latency also doesn't matter here; this telemetry could take 5 minutes to reach its destination and it wouldn't matter, so long as the data is eventually received.

Hmm, I've never thought of that. I like your idea.

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

#320

Post by quickben »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #318
quickben wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why promote the browser as such? Remove all "we respect privacy" from the advertisement. It's misleading.

Because data collection that is "sufficiently anonymous" _does_ respect privacy. If it's completely impossible to tie the data collected to any one particular user, how does the existence of that data compromise privacy in any way?

We can go into an amazing yet pointless semantical argument of what "privacy" means. But let's look at this from a different perspective:

I like your faith. However, if this change goes in, and the capability is there, it will get misused. Because, statistically that's how these things go on this planet+capitalism.

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