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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

#91
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. People making decisions don't care. Firefox usage will be reported as super low, and it won't be tested.

And users who report having issues with Firefox will be told to use Chrome (that is what's already happening)

Not at all unlike back in the IE6 days. Back when the response from geekdom was a loud and resounding, "fuck that!"

Suckiness of the browser situation aside, I fear I'll soon be coming to miss those days.

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

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You send tracking events to your analytics/tracking partner from your backend instead of from the browser and they combine the cookie ids.

> and they combine the cookie ids. And how do they do that? The "advantage" of third-party tracking is that a cookie set by the analytics service on site A gets sent back when the user goes to site B and C and D (etc). Without that, they have to somehow figure out that user 34 on site A is the same as user 95 on site B. That's often possible, but much less reliable.

I assumed the grandparent meant how do "you" track across your own properties..

For the likes of google and co, I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing more ad companies requiring you to send some other PII via the api so they can turn a random tracking ID into an email address or whatever though.

The same user on a.com and b.com get different ID's, but a.com and b.com both send data to tracker.com which maps that ID to an email address and then tracker.com can easily combine 'em. Not sure it's legal to do so, when I was working in this space we were quite forbidden from mixing up tracking information from various properties

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

#93

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.

They should have user-agent info on a per-request basis. That's not the same as tracked browser-to-customer association but will at least help.

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

#94
post #82
post #15

Companies have begun switching tracking tech to first-party cookies (where possible) since Apple's introduction of "Intelligent Tracking Protection," so Mozilla's similar move probably won't have that much of an impact either. Apple has responded with ITP 2.1, though, limiting _all_ (persistent) cookie lifetime to 7 days, although these could probably be accurately re-issued/kept alive in my opinion: https://webkit.o…

I wish DNT was honoured, but it's as good as a "do not commit crime" sign.

If honoring DNT was mandatory, the crime would be much easier to spot, compared to the current (EU) cookie law fiasco.

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

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, and probably many other users, have begun blocking all first-party cookies by default. I only permit it on sites I sign into and want to remember me, which are very few. If Mozilla wants to make a real difference, they'd study uMatrix and figure out how to create UX that would give that degree of flexibility and power to non-technical users.

I don't believe that many users are blocking first-party cookies. Source: I'm a web analyst managing large sites and can see how many visitors block all cookies. It's minimal. Also blocking first-party cookies requires a degree of tech-savviness and it prevents many websites from working properly.

To add with that the parent comment said, I do as well, in two ways:

- IE prompts me if I want to block cookies on a website, so unless I trust it, I block by default.

- I have an extension on Firefox that is "Cookie Autodelete", so I visit a site and unless I whitelist it, all cookies will be deleted when I leave.

I wondering if you are not seeing blocked cookie because of the second one. I'm not blocking it, but as soon as I leave it gets deleted, effectively doing the same thing.

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

#96
My work laptop is a very fast upper end macbook and I can somewhat reliably run Firefox on that. My personal laptop is an older macbook pro retina model and whenever I use firefox on that it gets incredibly slow and from time to time the computer just freezes for 20-40 seconds. So, sadly, I can't use firefox on that.

At one point someone on HN posted a link to the bug report on mozilla's bug tracker about this issue with retina macbooks. Does anyone have that link? I can't find it.

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

#97
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that many users are blocking first-party cookies. Source: I'm a web analyst managing large sites and can see how many visitors block all cookies. It's minimal. Also blocking first-party cookies requires a degree of tech-savviness and it prevents many websites from working properly.

To add with that the parent comment said, I do as well, in two ways: - IE prompts me if I want to block cookies on a website, so unless I trust it, I block by default. - I have an extension on Firefox that is "Cookie Autodelete", so I visit a site and unless I whitelist it, all cookies will be deleted when I leave. I wondering if you are not seeing blocked cookie because of the second one. I'm not blocking it, but as…

Right. I have Firefox configured to delete all cookies when I close it. And it only accepts 3rd-party cookies from sites that I've already visited during a session.

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

#98

My work laptop is a very fast upper end macbook and I can somewhat reliably run Firefox on that. My personal laptop is an older macbook pro retina model and whenever I use firefox on that it gets incredibly slow and from time to time the computer just freezes for 20-40 seconds. So, sadly, I can't use firefox on that. At one point someone on HN posted a link to the bug report on mozilla's bug tracker about this issue…

Is this it? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042

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

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Websites can look at their own usage stats. As with some other aspects of this, people will have to actually do some work in-house.

No, they won't have to; they can simply ignore FF. I fully support this change, but to think FF matters enough to force anyone to do anything seems unfortunately a thing of the past.

Well, then Firefox will need to emulate Chrome, except that it still protects users.

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

#100

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.

The web server's access logs will probably be a good place to look in the future then.
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