Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 450 posts

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

#421

Post by dang »

kuschku wrote: post #346
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?

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.

If you continue to post uncivil comments to HN we are going to ban you. You've had many more warnings than usual.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#422

Post by ace_of_spades »

stewbrew wrote: post #235
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…

> Tracking down regressions, crashes, and perf issues without good telemetry about how often it's happening and in what context. If that's what you're aiming at. Collect the data but keep it local. Install some sort of responsiveness/"problem" monitoring. Ask the user to send data relevant to the problem if a problem occurs. IMHO there is no need to systematically collect user data for that. Or get the data from a ra…

Awesome idea... why not introduce a "reproduce bug" mode which basically monitors all things in detail. If people are annoyed enough to send bug reports there is a good chance they will use it if properly presented. If people are not filing bug reports you don't really have a business there... If you generally need more of this telemetry advertise it and use it yourself...

That sounds way more reasonable to me.

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

#423

Post by Sir_Substance »

cgio wrote: post #399
Sir_Substance wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with differential privacy is I have to trust the person aggregating the data to actually do it.

Do you? Excuse my ignorance, but I thought there was a way to locally mangle the data before submitting. Is that not what apple is doing?

>Is that not what apple is doing?

I don't know, is it? How would I check, if I consider apple an untrusted actor?

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

#424

Post by xaldir »

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?

And I don't get the mentality where I should justify why I don't want my tools to report what I am doing.

I'm ok with testing things and sending feedback, but when I switch to a production environment, I just want my tools to behave like my tools, not the testing farm for somebody else.

Why should I prove to you that it would harm me? I just do not want it, it should be enough.

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

#425

Post by kasabali »

GrayShade wrote: post #255

I tried to be unbiased in the submission title and it's probably late enough that this will be buried, but here are some my thoughts: > They don't plan on collecting URLs, just (eTLD+1). This is true as of right now, but can change at any time in the future. From the post: > What we plan to do now is run an opt-out SHIELD study [6] to validate our implementation of RAPPOR. This study will collect the value for users’…

Comment threads are a useful way of organizing the discussion, why did you choose to not use it?

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

#426

Post by huhtenberg »

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…

> I'm not really sure what your concern is here.

You must be kidding me.

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

#427

Post by GrayShade »

kasabali wrote: post #425
GrayShade wrote: post #255

I tried to be unbiased in the submission title and it's probably late enough that this will be buried, but here are some my thoughts: > They don't plan on collecting URLs, just (eTLD+1). This is true as of right now, but can change at any time in the future. From the post: > What we plan to do now is run an opt-out SHIELD study [6] to validate our implementation of RAPPOR. This study will collect the value for users’…

Comment threads are a useful way of organizing the discussion, why did you choose to not use it?

Indeed, that might have been better. The thing was that many arguments ideas I took issue with were repeated by different people and I didn't want to spam all those comment threads.

My reasoning is that people might search for my comment (I sometimes do when others post), but by the time I wrote the it the first comment page was full and it ended up on the second one.

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

#428

Post by madez »

froydnj wrote: post #152
madez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would FireFox be on a dead spiral for not tracking it's users? If they want browsing data, then can use their own.

(Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla) The problem with our own browsing data--by which I'm assuming you mean the browsing habits of our ~1000 employees--is that it's wildly non-representative of the broader population. For instance, people here routinely have browser sessions with 10, 100, or even 1000+ tabs. These numbers also indicate that the browser is an application you start, and then you just leave up for a while,…

Then I realize Firefox is not a browser made for me. I don't care about the marketshare of my browser. I want it to to make my browsing easier and faster, while never compromising on security and privacy. _Any_ outgoing connection without my action is not OK. Not even Googles Safe browsing. If have to decide between having both Javascript and Google Safe Browsing, or neither, I would take the latter.

I value the expertise at Mozilla. Could you point to a browser that might fit me?

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

#429

Post by staticelf »

morganvachon wrote: post #342
staticelf wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

Yeah that makes me also not want to run it. But still, there are a few options even if neither is very good. I will probably just start running Edge or something since I already use Windows.

But I much rather just continue to use Firefox.

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

#430

Post by lucideer »

From a technical perspective, I'm not quite so bothered by what data Mozilla collects about me, how often, &c. I'm happy to opt-in to Telemetry and don't mind if it's extremely "comprehensive" in what it measures.

The real issue here is with ethos and perspective. I use Firefox because the ethos of the company and its employees, and their general "take" on issues like this allows (or has allowed) me a general sense of trust in them.

Even the very existence of this discussion erodes that trust. This says to me "the people making this browser don't understand the importance of consent, and have a vastly different perspective on the value of privacy to mine".

If your developers need more data from Telemetry, get consent and collect more data. Establish trust in users in what you do with that data.

Post reply on HN