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Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

#211

Post by SquareWheel »

rhaksw wrote: post #209
SquareWheel wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you the one that created this bot on reddit? https://www.reddit.com/user/revddit/ Creating a bot to spam your own website is obviously against the site rules. I see most of your posts on Hacker News are similarly promotional.

Promotion through censorship is what I meant to tackle when building the site, so I'm sorry if you feel the bot or citing it on HN is too promotional. Isn't this the place for sharing such work? If not here, where? The bot itself only responds once per user or thread, and I've already blacklisted some subreddits per suggestions [1]. Feel free to pm me at u/rhaksw if you would like to discuss it further. [1] https://w…

Your bot violates multiple rules of bottiquette:

>[Please don't] write bots that reply to comments or send private messages without solicitation.

>[Please don't] have your bot reply to every instance of a common word or phrase

It also violates the site's self-promotion guidelines.

It's a spambot, plain and simple. I have reported it as such.

Re: Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

#212

Post by toyg »

imcoconut wrote: post #156
mraison wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s nice to see a bit of Safari love around here. Some sites occasionally break, but I really like the macOS/iOS integrations. SMS code autofill on desktop Safari (via Mac iPhone communication) is pretty awesome.

I noticed this the other day and was very pleased. Also, if you have touchID then you can use it on safari to autofill login credentials. I just wish safari had an active plugin ecosystem like firefox (or chrome) does.

Apple did their best to kill that ecosystem stone cold. I guess the current situation is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Re: Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

#213

Post by ionised »

ericd wrote: post #179
chii wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As netizens, is there a way to replace Mozilla's dependence on another private company for revenue? Govt grants? Or is merely donations the only way?

idk, but I’ll happily pitch in a monthly donation for what is by far my most used software.

Same.

I depend on and use Firefox enough that I'd happily pay monthly for it.

Re: Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

#215

Post by rhaksw »

SquareWheel wrote: post #211
rhaksw wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Promotion through censorship is what I meant to tackle when building the site, so I'm sorry if you feel the bot or citing it on HN is too promotional. Isn't this the place for sharing such work? If not here, where? The bot itself only responds once per user or thread, and I've already blacklisted some subreddits per suggestions [1]. Feel free to pm me at u/rhaksw if you would like to discuss it further. [1] https://w…

Your bot violates multiple rules of bottiquette: >[Please don't] write bots that reply to comments or send private messages without solicitation. >[Please don't] have your bot reply to every instance of a common word or phrase It also violates the site's self-promotion guidelines. It's a spambot, plain and simple. I have reported it as such.

The site reflects users' own data, and I built it without pay. There are no ads. I am sorry you are upset about it.

Re: Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

#216

Post by ghusbands »

There's a huge political problem with protections that are on by default, and that's that opponents (advertisers) can easily argue that they are not the explicit will of the user and hence feel justified in doing whatever they can to bypass them. So this action increases the justification for browser fingerprinting and other dark tracking patterns.

The same sort of thing undermined do-not-track headers. The instant they passed from being user-enabled to on-by-default, advertisers were presented with a strong excuse to ignore them.

Re: Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

#217

Post by zwaps »

rhaksw wrote: post #205
zwaps wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. The Mozilla dev explained, as you quoted, that the API access sends the reddit cookie to reddit while not being on reddit. That's leaking private data. "In other word, Reddit will be able to see the user's browsing history, as if they had access to the user's computer." You know who owns reddit, right?

> the API access sends the reddit cookie to reddit while not being on reddit. A few things, (1) Why does it matter in this case? Under what scenario can you imagine reddit abusing the knowledge that certain users are reading metadata about reddit accounts off-site? (2) It seems to me Firefox could selectively choose not to send cookies and the referrer header in this case, rather than rendering entire sites broken. I…

I would argue that 99% of sites sending cookies and personal information to social media do so for tracking purposes.

You may be the exception. But its a privacy tradeoff that benefits the majority.

And let me say: if webmasters had shown any respect for privacy in the first place, maybe this would not have occured.

Re: Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

#218

Post by GeneralMaximus »

fouc wrote: post #115
whizzkid wrote: post #4

It is funny how my browser preferences has changed over last 5 years. 2014 me as a developer had Chrome as number 1 browser for both development and all rest. Firefox once a month just to check cross browser compatibility. And Safari was just installed without me using it. 2019 me uses Safari for everything except development. Excellent power consumption and UX. Firefox for development. And lastly Chrome for all web…

It would be nice if right-clicking on links gave an option of opening it in another browser. That would make it easy to stick to a multi-browser setup.

I use Choosy for that. See https://www.choosyosx.com/

One of my favorite apps on macOS.

Re: Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

#219

Post by roca »

rukshn wrote: post #155

Unpopular opinion on HN - Majority regular net users don't care about tracking and the FF focus on privacy will not give them the browser landscape they are losing daily. They should be focused on giving a better smooth UI, make it faster, remove unwanted extensions like pocket, make all the sites work. Let's see how valid this comment is in couple of years.

Blocking tracking scripts (which is not being turned on by default (yet), but can be turned on by users) is an enormous performance boost because they really hurt page loads.

That aside, as commenters everywhere will tell you, Mozilla has made huge performance improvements in Firefox over the last few years and continues to do so. It's not like Mozilla has decided to stop doing everything except privacy.

Re: Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

#220

Post by teddyh »

jacquesm wrote: post #33
zepearl wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for my understanding, any special reason to have 100's of tabs open? Meaning: I basically have a mindset which as a programmer would say: "shall I spend effort trying to optimize my app for users that have 200 tabs open? Naaaa, I don't see a usecase for that to happen."

Yes, sure. I do technical due diligence for a living and when researching a particular company every time I come across another interesting link that hasn't changed color yet I open another tab. Then I just keep reading until there are no more tabs open, and no more interesting notes to take. It's part of my workflow (and one of the reasons why the scrapbook add-on is essential to me, another reason I do my work on t…

> the scrapbook add-on is essential to me

I found the ScrapbookQ plugin, which also is able (with some work, admittedly) to import data from the old Scrapbook plugin:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrapbookq/

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