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Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#201

Post by 3xblah »

sequoia wrote: post #196
3xblah wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla has a conflict of interest. It pays its developers indirectly from internet ad revenue through deals with companies that sell ads. More importantly it seeks to compete with a browser controlled by ad sales company. Giving the users commenting negatively the privacy they want would mean that Firefox would not implement the "features" that its developers believe are necessary for a "good browser".1 What "good b…

> The honest response from Mozilla to negative comments would be to acknowledge they do not exist primarily for all users. They exist primarily for the developers who work there, as part of a project to be "competitive" with commercially-driven browsers. I don’t understand- how is trying to offer a competitive, viable product not “for all users”? Are you suggesting that if they focus on a non-competitive product that…

Assuming all users do not want what the commenters giving feedback on HN want, then it would not be better for "all users".

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#202

Post by tyingq »

ziddoap wrote: post #34

I find it really interesting that when a company is making moves in a direction that benefits privacy of consumers, everyone takes the opportunity to shit on them for past mistakes or how it isn't good enough or why isn't it on by default or any other thing they can find to shit on. Yes, every single company has made mistakes. FireFox is no exception. Some of them were pretty egregious. Mistakes are - hopefully - an…

It doesn't help when companies use privacy as a fake veil for what they are actually doing. Google's "manifest V3" changes are a recent example.

This change from Firefox does seem well intentioned.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#203

Post by vidyesh »

securityfreak wrote: post #84

All of this is fantastic. I just hope the day comes, when Google is no longer the default search engine in Firefox. Safari is my default browser, but I use Firefox heavily for “social” media accounts. I love the extensions.

You can change the default to any other search engine you want. Just a few clicks away.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#204

Post by rhaksw »

stockkid wrote: post #125

> Keep in mind that blocking fingerprinting may cause some sites to break. This represents the sad state of Internet we are all living through. I have noticed that when I turn on privacy settings on Firefox, some major websites are broken and rendered unusable. It seems that the Internet is rampant with tracking and privacy violation, and we consumers are passively accepting it, by and large.

> I have noticed that when I turn on privacy settings on Firefox, some major websites are broken

In some cases it is because Firefox's tracking protection is based off of a curated list of websites [1]. This breaks a site I built called reVddit [2].

In my uneducated opinion, this list is weird. I had some discussion about this with Mozilla devs [3]. In that message chain, devs acknowledged reVddit is not doing anything wrong, rather it is reddit who could infringe users' privacy. Yet it is the non-infringing site that is rendered broken.

Further, the devs' suggestions for remedy are not workable. They propose moving requests to the server so that reVddit.com makes the requests to reddit.com. There are multiple problems with this,

* It would hide more code from users

* Reddit rate-limits requests coming from a single source

* Infrastructure becomes expensive on what is supposed to be a low cost website

My conversation with devs was good but needs more. I don't understand their point and they do not seem to understand mine.

[1] https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking-protecti...

[2] https://revddit.com

[3] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.privacy/XO84Ezrw...

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#206

Post by sjwright »

3xblah wrote: post #194
ziddoap wrote: post #34

I find it really interesting that when a company is making moves in a direction that benefits privacy of consumers, everyone takes the opportunity to shit on them for past mistakes or how it isn't good enough or why isn't it on by default or any other thing they can find to shit on. Yes, every single company has made mistakes. FireFox is no exception. Some of them were pretty egregious. Mistakes are - hopefully - an…

Mozilla has a conflict of interest. It pays its developers indirectly from internet ad revenue through deals with companies that sell ads. More importantly it seeks to compete with a browser controlled by ad sales company. Giving the users commenting negatively the privacy they want would mean that Firefox would not implement the "features" that its developers believe are necessary for a "good browser".1 What "good b…

> Mozilla has a conflict of interest.

Irrelevant. Conflicts of interest aren't a problem in and of themselves. Most people and companies have conflicts of interest all over the place—if you're prepared to look hard enough. It could be as simple as the conflict between retaining good employees and turning a profit. Conflicts are everywhere.

The question is whether the conflict is causing the company to make decisions which you think are bad—and whether you can convince others to agree with you that they're bad.

The remainder of your post is an equivocation fallacy between the ability to deeply track individual people and the ability to run advertisements at all. You don't need deep tracking in order for advertising to work well. (...unless perhaps you're relying on a fully automated algorithm to do all the work...)

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#207

Post by rhaksw »

I've had some issues maintaining reVddit.com while keeping Firefox's tracking protection in mind. I'd love some help if there is anyone who can provide insight.

Basically, you can't load reVddit pages on Firefox because reVddit accesses reddit's API, and reddit is listed on Firefox's list of websites that are considered trackers [1].

In my uneducated opinion, this list is weird. I had some discussion about this with Mozilla devs [2]. In that message chain, devs acknowledged reVddit is not doing anything wrong, rather it is reddit who could infringe users' privacy. Yet it is the non-infringing site that breaks.

Further, the devs' suggestions for remedy are not workable. They propose moving requests to the server so that reVddit.com makes the requests to reddit.com. There are multiple problems with this,

* It would hide more code from users

* Reddit rate-limits requests coming from a single source

* Infrastructure becomes expensive on what is supposed to be a low cost website

My conversation with devs was good but needs more. Is there any solution here, or do we just go our separate ways?

[1] https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking-protecti...

[2] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.privacy/XO84Ezrw...

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#208

Post by Justsignedup »

I've used this feature in the past. There are some weirdneses.

You lose your timezone and ALL dates appear in UTC. This is definitely not desirable.

Fingerprinting cannot be allowed for some sites, and thus things like android messages cannot work because it cannot accurately identify the browser.

Hopefully they'll do something about all this.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#209

Post by sfink »

ademup wrote: post #91
ChrisSD wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is they tried diversifying their income. But people don't want their browser to ask for donations (that's nagging). They don't want their new tab page pre-populated with websites on a new install (even if their browsing overwrites them). They don't want "fun" additions to advertise TV shows (even if they're opt-in). But they're happy to pay via google's search and tracking. Mozilla doesn't have a lot of opt…

Firefox has ~250M users as of about 9 months ago and $562M revenue for 2017. I'd honestly pay $2 per month (12 times "my share") for a Firefox that completely disavows the ad model and produces a truly user-centric experience sans ads, fingerprinting, etc. However, given that over 95% of their revenue comes from Royalties, I don't see that turning around any time soon.

How would that be different from what you can already configure Firefox to do by enabling resist fingerprinting options, turning off Pocket's sponsored articles, turning off telemetry, etc.? It seems like you'd be paying $2/month for keeping a set of preferences up to date.

A subscription model of some sort would probably make sense, but I don't think you'd want to gate those kinds of features on it.

Re: Block Fingerprinting with Firefox

#210

Post by sfink »

ChrisSD wrote: post #112
ademup wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has ~250M users as of about 9 months ago and $562M revenue for 2017. I'd honestly pay $2 per month (12 times "my share") for a Firefox that completely disavows the ad model and produces a truly user-centric experience sans ads, fingerprinting, etc. However, given that over 95% of their revenue comes from Royalties, I don't see that turning around any time soon.

Well if HN users do want to try to lessen that percentage here's the donation page: https://donate.mozilla.org/

I believe that money goes to the Mozilla Foundation, which uses it on the initiatives you can see at https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/

Although the Foundation wholly owns the Corporation (we call them MoFo and MoCo internally), money donated to MoFo does not go towards paying MoCo employee salaries as far as I am aware.

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