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Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

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Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#51

Post by tinus_hn »

wbxrs wrote: post #24
happyvalley wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a bad idea. Even though I personally block 3rd party trackers by default, breaking the web by default will cause problems. How is this “breaking the web”? Honest question, I would not subscribe to that sentiment, but am interested in other points of view.

By default, unless the user has changed his settings, if a website tells a browser to load something, the browser should do so.

Yeah, you lost that ‘right’ at the time when popup ads were popular.

Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#52

Post by Simon_says »

fimdomeio wrote: post #11

One thing mentioned on the responses that might be really concerning is the fact that this will mean that for a lot of analytics it will look like firefox usage is close to zero. No usage data, devs caring less about firefox, users having more problems when using firefox, less users using firefox, less users having 3rd party trackers blocked, chrome monopoly growing.

Who cares? Devs should be building to the spec, not vagaries of some privileged implementations.

And it's nobody's business what I do with the bits after it comes down the pipe anyways.

Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#53

Post by kirjavascript »

wbxrs wrote: post #32
zaarn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the website told the browser to load malware? Browsers in the modern web need to defend the user, not execute arbitrary instructions from random websites that nobody cares about.

A website cannot tell a browser to "load malware", unless we're talking about a exploit, which should be patched. (Please don't say "if I send you a malformed png file you have to execute the exploit, otherwise your argument breaks down".)

sure they can, unrequested crypto miners running in the background are malware

Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#54

Post by salawat »

anc84 wrote: post #10

What is a "tracker" here? How will Firefox determine that?

A tracker is a script included as part of a webpage's content, often utilizing some combination of tracking pixels (an http request for a 1x1 image file from the tracking script's providers domain), a persistent cookie, and increasingly some form of browser/device fingerprint which is used to identify a particular machine.

The user's machine presents back to the tracking network the cookie and a bunch of http params to the tracking provider whilst interacting with pages that support the script, which the tracker stores in a database to sell access to.

It gives developers/businesses a way to collect metrics while offloading the trouble of keeping track of and maintaining the infrastructure to do so to someone else.

Firefox will probably be enforcing a cross-origin isolation constraint, requiring that all material be hosted by the domain you're requesting from in the first place, which doesn't really fix the problem since people will probably just try to build ways around the limitation.

Until the industry breaks itself free of it's current fetish for wholesale data collection, it's just going to be an arms race.

Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#55

Post by discreditable »

fimdomeio wrote: post #11

One thing mentioned on the responses that might be really concerning is the fact that this will mean that for a lot of analytics it will look like firefox usage is close to zero. No usage data, devs caring less about firefox, users having more problems when using firefox, less users using firefox, less users having 3rd party trackers blocked, chrome monopoly growing.

I run into a similar issue at work. I deploy ad-blockers on all student and staff machines. This makes our users invisible in Google Analytics. Supposedly our top browser is Mobile Safari.

Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#56

Post by fxfan »

stunt wrote: post #40
fxfan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Containers have some great add-ons built around them, have you taken a look? I agree with your point completely though- needs to be a front and center feature. I'd like to add something else- firefox should ship a 'power user' edition. Comes pre-installed with uBlock origin/uMatrix/temporary containers/sidebar tabs/greasemonkey/Tridactyl (sorry emacs users ;)

> firefox should ship a 'power user' edition If you have Firefox-Sync enabled. You will get all your extensions anyway. so it is a one time setup for all those extensions that you need. First time hearing Tridactyl! I'm using Vimium. Does it have any advantage over Vimium?

Sorry never used it but one advantage of tridactyl is that the creator lurks here and is extremely responsive and kind.

I will tell you what 3-fin can and can't do-

Can:

Js, key bindings, can show alpha and numeric hints. In numeric mode, behaves like vimp- type char of link text. ;; for link info. ; for hover. C-d/C-f et al work. H, L navigate history. Edit in vim. C-i

Cannot: Self limitation -

No way to stop page load I think. Very painful :)

No shortcut for search. No readline bindings in text editing regions.

Webext limitation- takes a while to load.

That's all I use right now.

Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#57

Post by stordoff »

wbxrs wrote: post #24
happyvalley wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a bad idea. Even though I personally block 3rd party trackers by default, breaking the web by default will cause problems. How is this “breaking the web”? Honest question, I would not subscribe to that sentiment, but am interested in other points of view.

By default, unless the user has changed his settings, if a website tells a browser to load something, the browser should do so.

A browser is a user agent - it exists to serve the user. Its defaults should be chosen to best serve the interests of the user.

Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#58

Post by gnud »

salawat wrote: post #54
anc84 wrote: post #10

What is a "tracker" here? How will Firefox determine that?

A tracker is a script included as part of a webpage's content, often utilizing some combination of tracking pixels (an http request for a 1x1 image file from the tracking script's providers domain), a persistent cookie, and increasingly some form of browser/device fingerprint which is used to identify a particular machine. The user's machine presents back to the tracking network the cookie and a bunch of http params…

Moving everything to first-party tracking could potentially solve a lot of the problems.

It could reduce the across-the-entire-web tracking, categorizing and labeling of users, and instead limit analytics to useful things like "what percentage of my users are on mobile".

Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#59

Post by bovine3dom »

fxfan wrote: post #56
stunt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> firefox should ship a 'power user' edition If you have Firefox-Sync enabled. You will get all your extensions anyway. so it is a one time setup for all those extensions that you need. First time hearing Tridactyl! I'm using Vimium. Does it have any advantage over Vimium?

Sorry never used it but one advantage of tridactyl is that the creator lurks here and is extremely responsive and kind. I will tell you what 3-fin can and can't do- Can: Js, key bindings, can show alpha and numeric hints. In numeric mode, behaves like vimp- type char of link text. ;; for link info. ; for hover. C-d/C-f et al work. H, L navigate history. Edit in vim. C-i Cannot: Self limitation - No way to stop page l…

You can stop page load with `stop`, bound to x, provided that the page has loaded enough for Tridactyl to be running.

Search - we actually have our own find mode now. Instructions on how to set it up are on the changelog. The default Firefox one has find next / previous bound to Ctrl-G / Ctrl-Shift-G.

You can add readline binds to text regions if you want. It's mentioned and linked to on the help page somewhere near the top.

Re: Firefox to Block All 3rd Party Trackers by Default

#60

Post by stordoff »

wbxrs wrote: post #32
zaarn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the website told the browser to load malware? Browsers in the modern web need to defend the user, not execute arbitrary instructions from random websites that nobody cares about.

A website cannot tell a browser to "load malware", unless we're talking about a exploit, which should be patched. (Please don't say "if I send you a malformed png file you have to execute the exploit, otherwise your argument breaks down".)

How are you drawing a principled distinction between "if a website tells a browser to load something, the browser should do so" and "a website cannot load malware [except via an exploit]"? Clearly, asking the browser to load an EXE, or run this JavaScript that attacks website X, could be considered malware, so the line is fuzzier than 'if a website asks, a browser should load it'.

'We should patch exploits' and 'all things we would like to not load are considered exploits' seems to be rather begging the question. There is a class of things that use legitimate browser features, but we would prefer to not load by default.

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