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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

#341

Post by st3fan »

veeti wrote: post #161
yborg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You only get the people who crash Uh - these are the most important people. The. Most. Important. The people you just pissed off by taking a header in the middle of whatever it was they are doing. Your performance noodling is irrelevant if you aren't addressing those issues. I'm sorry, but you make the team sound incredibly out of touch with statements like this. To offset the other platforms advantages in marketing…

Yes, Firefox developers can only work on addressing crashes or performance issues, but not both.

Sounds good. I'll just work on making things crash faster then.

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

#342

Post by morganvachon »

staticelf wrote: post #325
morganvachon wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else is there, though, at least for mainstream users? There's Chrome which has been doing this since the beginning for Google, there's Safari but only if you're on a Mac, and there's a smattering of smaller browser projects on Linux that are good in their own right but not mainstream enough to have the features of the big four. On Windows, Microsoft Edge is of course a lean and capable browser, but the OS itself…

Most likely Brave, Edge, Opera or Vivaldi. I haven't really dug into if they do telemetry but some quick google searches tells me that at least Vivaldi does not. Brave is also a browser all about privacy so it would be weird if they do spy on their users. But you are correct, if Firefox falls as the last bastion in the web browser world to protect users privacy there is little choice left of really nice browsers. If…

Brave sounded interesting until I saw this at the bottom of the landing page:

"Brave makes money by taking 5% of any donations and -- after it is fully implemented -- a small cut of advertising that is placed. Brave even shares some revenue with you -- at least as much as we receive."

Then there's this:

https://brave.com/about-ad-replacement/

If they are planning to inject ads into the browser and somehow pay their users a kickback, how do they expect to maintain a reputation as a privacy focused project? Even if they offer to pay in cryptocurrency, they are still tying browsing habits and targeted advertisements to a trackable user. No thanks.

I had switched from Chromium back to Firefox after Google was caught injecting binary blobs into Chromium at build time[1], and so last year when I decided to drop all Google products from my life, I already had a great (if slow) browser making it less of a hurdle. Now, though, I think I'll stick with Safari on my phone and Mac, and find a way to sync bookmarks from Safari to Midori on my other systems.

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=786909

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

#343

Post by syshum »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #207
joosters wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they not letting people decide? If it is not harming anyone's privacy, and they make it clear that it isn't, then what is the problem with letting people opt-in to it? Instead, it's telling that they are choosing to force people to opt-out. They know that their users don't want this, but don't care.

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…

>>Provided this feature doesn't compromise anyone's privacy even _if_ its enabled, what's wrong with having it be opt-out?

The only Anonymous Data is data that is never collected. If they collect data it is a violation of privacy.

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

#344

Post by eridius »

dagenleg wrote: post #97
binarymax wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your stance is paradoxical, because Chrome has been improved based on data mined from users, and not in as nearly a considerate way as Mozilla is proposing. You want Firefox to succeed as a browser, but to be able to better compete it needs better usage data. Wouldn't you prefer for Firefox to be the best browser available, AND also be considerate towards your privacy rights?

Company A does bad thing which benefits them massively, allowing them to have a better product. Some people dislike that approach and flock to company B which promises not to do the bad thing. Now company B start doing the same thing 'for better good' but promises to 'keep it moderate'. At this point why would anyone stay with the company B which broke its promise once, just in the hope that it won't break the promis…

This is specious reasoning. Company B is not doing "the same thing" at all. Company B is collecting data, but not only is it far more limited (e.g. collecting domains instead of URLs), it's done in a way that protects privacy. You can't just throw up your hands and say "well, they're collecting some data, therefore we may as well just throw away all privacy protections and use the browser by the company whose business model is based on collecting all the personal information they possibly can".

Privacy is not a boolean.

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

#345

Post by gorhill »

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…

> Don't collect URLs, but only top-level+1 domains (e.g. images.google.com), and associate information with that.

Using "images.google.com" as an example is too convenient.

That would be great if you could also add whatever TLD+1 most people would rather keep private as another example right after "images.google.com".

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

#346

Post by kuschku »

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?

It’s a question of consent.

Imagine I came to your house, and photocopied all your documents.

Don’t worry, I blanked out the name, so it’s completely anonymous, and everything is where it used to be.

Would you be okay with that?

I certainly wouldn’t.

Making this opt-in or opt-out is a question of consent, and choosing opt-out shows that you don’t give a flying fuck about me, and only want your own benefit.

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

#347

Post by kuschku »

eridius wrote: post #344
dagenleg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company A does bad thing which benefits them massively, allowing them to have a better product. Some people dislike that approach and flock to company B which promises not to do the bad thing. Now company B start doing the same thing 'for better good' but promises to 'keep it moderate'. At this point why would anyone stay with the company B which broke its promise once, just in the hope that it won't break the promis…

This is specious reasoning. Company B is not doing "the same thing" at all. Company B is collecting data, but not only is it far more limited (e.g. collecting domains instead of URLs), it's done in a way that protects privacy. You can't just throw up your hands and say "well, they're collecting some data, therefore we may as well just throw away all privacy protections and use the browser by the company whose busines…

Opt-Out vs Opt-In is a question of consent. Do you value your own benefits more than my own right to determine my own life?

If yes (and that’s what you get when you choose opt-out), then we’re done. There is no gradual change there, it’s a binary question if you value the user or your own benefit more.

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

#348

Post by eridius »

suby wrote: post #17

I've been using Firefox as my only browser for at least 12 years. If they go through with this, I'll switch to something else. I don't know how they could think that this is acceptable.

"If Mozilla starts reading a tiny bit of user data using well-researched techniques for preserving user privacy and anonymity, I'm going to ditch my browser of 12 years and switch to the competition, which is perfectly happy to grab as much personal information as they possibly can from me in order to monetize me."

(well, unless you're going to switch to Safari, since Apple also cares about privacy, though, spoiler alert, Safari's also using Differential Privacy to collect data).

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

#349

Post by kuschku »

tormeh wrote: post #247
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?

Well, the alternative is not a Firefox without telemetry, it's Chrome. If Firefox can't do what it needs to do to stay relevant it's going to die. Developers are already treating Firefox as a second class browser, so this is not an abstract threat.

If I want a browser with telemetry, I can just as well use Chrome.

It’s Firefox without telemetry, or no Firefox at all.

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

#350

Post by SilasX »

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…

>This is a proposed compromise that is being floated. Don't collect URLs, but only top-level+1 domains (e.g. images.google.com), and associate information with that.

Until sites start programmatically generating a unique subdomain for each [Firefox] user.

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