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Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

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Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#171

Post by lucaspiller »

Feniks wrote: post #125
marten-de-vries wrote: post #2

Interesting approach. I hope more browser vendors will adopt it. It comes with an additional advantage: if a website still needs to function when tracking domains are delayed a second or so, they likely will function too with said domain completely disabled (e.g. using extensions). Sounds like a win from a user perspective.

I block ads, analytics and 3rd party fonts. Almost every site works just fine.

I do the same (uBlock Origin) and almost every site works, but there are a still a few I need to whitelist because they do weird stuff, like triggering their own scripts to run from analytics callbacks. Airline and banking websites are a couple of common categories of sites I usually need to whitelist to work properly - that's not really an issue though as they don't usually have 3rd party ads.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#172

Post by lucaspiller »

Vinnl wrote: post #167
feelin_googley wrote: post #155

This raises the question: Why delay instead of block? Assumption is that user wants page to load faster but does not object to tracking . What if user wants page to load faster and objects to tracking? Source of Firefox tracking protection is list at disconnect.me? credit: eco https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15964393 Basic gethostbyname()->HOSTS file blocking: #!/bin/sh exec curl https://disconnect.me/trackerpro…

Blocking is already supported: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/tracking-protection#w_how-to-... Mozilla doesn't want to enable it by default because it is the funding model of the web, and no viable alternative funding model for most of the web's content has arrived yet. (At least, that's the public statement. I don't know if e.g. potential lawsuits, etc. also play a role.)

It's also indirectly their funding model. The bulk of Mozilla's revenue comes from search partnerships, who earn the bulk of their revenue from advertising.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#173

Post by ryandrake »

edjw wrote: post #163
youou wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how you do that?

> Can you explain how you do that? Probably Pi-Hole running on. Raspberry Pi. https://pi-hole.net

Yea, not exactly Pi-Hole, but the same concept. dnsmasq running on router, with a big list of ad-serving domains and hosts resolving to 0.0.0.0

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#174

Post by wiz21c »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #47

Isn't it anti-net-neutrality? Is it ok to build it into a major browser? I actually block all the tracking, malware, ads, social networks, fraud, gambling, porn (except a couple of porn sites I like :-)) etc domains I could find information about but this is my personal conscious choice, I have manually installed extensions for this and built the lists. Shouldn't other people do the same themselves too if they choose…

I support this view because many will have justifications to explain : "well, since it's not FF, then well, it's ok, you know, not exactly like the hardware pipes...".

But on the principle, yep, FF shouldn't have a neutral treatment for everything. And that, of course, is impossible to define : what is "neutral" ?

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#175

Post by Yizahi »

codezero wrote: post #68

I work for an analytics company, this will affect my snippet – I don't think it is a big deal, but I'm going to benchmark it on a few sites. From what is described here, it may actually help us. When folks throw tons of tags into their site, we're all competing against each-other as well as the site's own loading – it makes sense to prioritize the site's rendering. I think of this as no more invasive than pre-caching…

> wipe out data per-request

Why would you do that? You are providing a service to the people that is a pure benefit for them and doesn't harm them at all. Why would anyone want to delete such helpful data?

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#176

Post by megaman22 »

dsr_ wrote: post #79
codezero wrote: post #68

I work for an analytics company, this will affect my snippet – I don't think it is a big deal, but I'm going to benchmark it on a few sites. From what is described here, it may actually help us. When folks throw tons of tags into their site, we're all competing against each-other as well as the site's own loading – it makes sense to prioritize the site's rendering. I think of this as no more invasive than pre-caching…

A couple of years ago I went to a conference where one of the speakers outlined his company's web page optimization methods. The big one was to delay executing JS until at least the visible page content was loaded, and all JS that actually implemented customer-useful bits. His example page loaded 94 scripts, which he claimed was representative of many pages.

> His example page loaded 94 scripts, which he claimed was representative of many pages.

I know this is the norm, but can we just agree that this is insane?

Some sites I go to, I just see the block badge on UBlock Origin ticking up like a Bitcoin price tracker.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#177

Post by erk__ »

Yizahi wrote: post #175
codezero wrote: post #68

I work for an analytics company, this will affect my snippet – I don't think it is a big deal, but I'm going to benchmark it on a few sites. From what is described here, it may actually help us. When folks throw tons of tags into their site, we're all competing against each-other as well as the site's own loading – it makes sense to prioritize the site's rendering. I think of this as no more invasive than pre-caching…

> wipe out data per-request Why would you do that? You are providing a service to the people that is a pure benefit for them and doesn't harm them at all. Why would anyone want to delete such helpful data?

If they don't want a € 10 million fine they have to comply with GDPR, even if no one is going to use it.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#178

Post by xaldir »

cabaalis wrote: post #133
Feniks wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I block ads, analytics and 3rd party fonts. Almost every site works just fine.

As I'm sure you're aware, many content creators that you are reading the work of fund their efforts via ads. I think this is a happy medium to attempt to improve performance of these pages without denying them compensation.

Fine. Except figuring out a business model is the content creator responsibility not the user's. Business models that involve hostile 3rd party adds/tracking are bad and if your users are trying to evade those, you need to figure out something better. Blaming the user reaction won't help.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#179

Post by arkh »

codezero wrote: post #147
notyourday wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus. Really? Downvotes? Pretend this person worked for facebook and made some statement regarding what the company does. (a) he would be fired on the spot by the company itself ( as he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company ) (b) he would be laughed out the room because he does not control company decisions The same applies to every single company. Every single one.

Agreed, they make a good point, however, I think the terms of service are binding, and if what we're doing changes, we _must_ update them. This, of course, does not change the fact that we've collected a lot of data and it would suddenly fall under the new terms of service. With that said, I actively delete customer data on request, and a terms of service change like this _might_ (very reasonably) prompt someone to r…

I'll have a wild guess there: all devs and most managers have access to the full data set. Any disgruntled one could ex-filtrate it anywhere with not trace.

That's the kind of things which make me for the vision of data as liability.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#180

Post by XzetaU8 »

notyourday wrote: post #130
acobster wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uMatrix is also great. It does a lot of the same things NoScript does, but at a greater granularity. I still use NoScript for its XSS protection features but have the main JS-blocking feature disabled because it's redundant.

Interesting. I never got around to playing with uMatrix. Is it worth it considering i have a boatload of configs for sites i use with NoScript?

You can convert NoScript configs to uMatrix with [1]uMatrix-Converter.

[1]: https://pro-domo.ddns.net/umatrix-converter

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