Facebook Container for Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#261

Post by noway421 » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:31 AM UTC

HugoDaniel wrote: post #212

narag wrote: post #31

We're going from cold war to all-in. Not just a privacy question. Reddit nags me every time I hit the front page, even returning from a story, asking me to log in. For most sites I need to create ublock filters to prevent pop-ups with useless "we use cookies", subscription requests, ads or social media bars that fills half the screen, etc. etc. etc. Every newspaper I read has decided that autostarting video and strea…

You do know that this is not a "web problem". Just spend 10 minutes with your average 13yr old and see how many times they get bombed in the face with one of those interstitial ads. Also it is easier to root your phone with a malicious app than with a web page. Heck, if you are an app developer why even bother to root phones when you can just do whatever you want, after all if the user does not give you all-in permis…

AFAIK this is against guidelines and the app shouldn't be approved in the App Store. Not sure about Google Play

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#262

Post by ldjb » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:32 AM UTC

mih wrote: post #231

cornholio wrote: post #200

Third party cookies, and any way to fingerprint a specific user starting from high entropy user agents to screen resolution, font fingerprinting or canvas data, should be considered a breach of the browser security model. All sites should run in containers and no advertiser should be able to track you across sessions. When I want 3rd party interaction, I should need to opt in and connect the current site with Faceboo…

Ever encountered Google ReCaptcha when you've turned off third party cookies or while in incognito/private mode? It's a nightmare, even if you're logged into a Google account. You can be shown upto 7-8 challenges, painfully slow loading images and Google's insistence that they encountered malicious traffic from your IP when attempting to use the audio version. What's even worse is they track your mouse movements and…

The optimist in me thinks that if browsers started to disallow third party cookies, ReCaptcha might have to adapt to the change and make it easier to solve if third party cookies are blocked. After all, if they didn't, they'd risk website owners moving away from ReCaptcha because visitors could no longer interact with the site.

The pessimist in me thinks that if a browser were to disallow third party cookies, users might simply switch to a different browser that does allow them.

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#263

Post by janvidar » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:32 AM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #249

simias wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The security model of the internet is whack. Javascript should be opt-in, especially from 3rd party sources. "This website wants/requires javascript for an enhanced viewing experience [allow/deny]". Instead not only will any stock browser gladly run anything thrown at it, it will also accept any cookies and now run WebGL code, trigger DRM engines and various other things. All that because the engineers who wrote the…

Spot on. And most of website should not even need javascript but some simple extension to xhtml to allow interactive websites in a declarative fashion rather than having a Turing-complete language.

CSS is Turing-complete.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300836 (2011) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10734966 (2015)

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#264

Post by ttctciyf » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:35 AM UTC

chmike wrote: post #235

I have a similar need for Google. I have two gmail accounts. One is to preserve my privacy. But I can only open one at the time. That's acceptable since I forward mails. But then, everything I do at Google is tracked and associated with this opened gmail account. Once we are connected to Google, we are kind of logged in Google. They can track everything we do, even searches. The problem I'm facing is that I can't kee…

Why not use different browsers, like chrome and firefox, or, purely within firefox, different browser profiles?

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#265

Post by ChrisSD » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:41 AM UTC

janvidar wrote: post #263

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. And most of website should not even need javascript but some simple extension to xhtml to allow interactive websites in a declarative fashion rather than having a Turing-complete language.

CSS is Turing-complete. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300836 (2011) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10734966 (2015)

Those comment threads dispute that claim.

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#266

Post by peteretep » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:45 AM UTC

LudoA wrote: post #195

newscracker wrote: post #170

If you use Firefox Containers, including the Facebook Container, please also use Cookie AutoDelete [1] to get rid of cookies from closed tabs across containers. Otherwise, in my observation, sites will still be able to track you if you reuse a container (even after closing all tabs of that container) for a specific site. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

But doesn't that mean you need to login again each time you go to a website? Sure, by saving passwords in Firefox it isn't a huge hassle, but a cookie is still more practical...

Explicitly white-list sites you don't think are tracking you across the web.

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#267

Post by TekMol » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:47 AM UTC

Looks like what it does is deleting a bunch of cookies.

If it only was that easy!

The real problem is not cookies.

I can already delete those.

The real problem is fingerprinting.

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#268

Post by pista » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:53 AM UTC

suprfnk wrote: post #172

narag wrote: post #31

We're going from cold war to all-in. Not just a privacy question. Reddit nags me every time I hit the front page, even returning from a story, asking me to log in. For most sites I need to create ublock filters to prevent pop-ups with useless "we use cookies", subscription requests, ads or social media bars that fills half the screen, etc. etc. etc. Every newspaper I read has decided that autostarting video and strea…

> autostarting video and streaming Super annoying. In Firefox in about:config, you can set: media.autoplay.enabled to false. That works well for me.

Some sites are using js tricks to override this setting.

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#269

Post by pista » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:57 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #240

fwn wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I'm not sure I can follow. The browser not being able to distinguish between essential and non-essential cookies does not change the fact that cookies are and were entirely voluntary.

Right, but there's no reason to think the legislators didn't know that, because their goal was not to prevent the use of all cookies.

They thought that sites would stop using tracking cookies. But most sites use google analytics.

Re: Facebook Container for Firefox

#270

Post by amelius » Wed, Apr 18, 2018, 9:59 AM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #220

cornholio wrote: post #200

Third party cookies, and any way to fingerprint a specific user starting from high entropy user agents to screen resolution, font fingerprinting or canvas data, should be considered a breach of the browser security model. All sites should run in containers and no advertiser should be able to track you across sessions. When I want 3rd party interaction, I should need to opt in and connect the current site with Faceboo…

Indeed. Safari blocks 3rd party cookies by default, I see no reason why Firefox can't do the same. The fact that they don't is a direct contradiction to their claims that they care about user privacy. The only explanation I have is that they do not want to anger their long-time money sources Google and other advertisers.

Perhaps they could make "better default-settings" an option :)