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Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#71
post #23

I keep encouraging people to use Firefox over the others. My efforts keep failing. Mozilla’s focus on privacy is important and should be to others. People have been burned in the past and are willing to give up privacy for something that just works. The irony.

FF’s UX around things not related to browsing is slightly worse on all platforms. It’s most obvious on iOS where some of the styles for your “library” just don’t work correctly on iPhone 10’s. I also think their model for managing non-browsing stuff is too complex comparatively.

To access many things like history and bookmarks, you need to use the dropdown menu on the right, which has like 30 different options in it, some of which seem similar but are actually different. Those options are sometimes also available from different locations, so it can be confusing how to access what you’re looking for.

Other browsers are a lot more polished in this area, like Brave, Chrome, and even the new MS Edge. None are perfect, but I find their UX and UK slightly easier to use and generally less clunky. If FF fixed that, I’d be completely sold on it. But as is, I keep going back to the drawing board.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#72

Off topic, but every time I see an article like this I load up Firefox and try it out to see how it has progressed. I inevitably stop using it, and this time I decided to introspect and see why. It turns out that it's mouse wheel scrolling doesn't feel as snappy as other browsers, and for some reason it bothers me a lot. I'm going to try changing the scroll wheel settings and see if I can stick with it.

> It turns out that it's mouse wheel scrolling doesn't feel as snappy as other browsers

are you sure it's not because you have smooth-scroll enabled?

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#73
post #68

Hopefully this will make affiliate-link based sites like Wirecutter change their ways. I dont mind them earning affiliate money but I can’t even click a link at Wirecutter anymore since their bounce redirect to Amazon or wherever is totally blocked by my DNS settings originally via AdGuard now via nextdns.io

Can you add an exception for the site? It seems like a slightly inconsistent position that you don't mind them earning affiliate money yet you're actively blocking them from doing so.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#74
post #55

> Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0; blocking redirect trackers by default Isnt that what is used with Google Search? For example if you go here: https://www.google.com/search?q=sunday the first result appears to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday but its really: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

It seems like the feature here is 'blocking' the trackers by deleting cookies from sites you haven't interacted with. It's not preventing the redirect as far as I understand.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#75
post #24

This is fantastic. I never liked the cookies sticking around forever, and managing them manually was a massive pain if you wanted to keep some of them. Not to mention Firefox is usually brought to its knees when trying to delete large segments of History/Cookies at once.

> This is fantastic. I never liked the cookies sticking around forever, and managing them manually was a massive pain if you wanted to keep some of them. You might like the CookieAutoDelete plugin[1]. It's a recommended plugin which allows you to set a list of domains and domain patterns which retain their cookies while others are deleted. I've been using it for a couple of months now, and I love it. [1] https://addo…

CookieAutoDelete has some fatal flaws. It doesn't delete indexeddb, for instance. Also, if you're a tab hoarder it simply doesn't work for the common sites you visit. Temporary containers[1] is a much better option, as it uses firefox's container tabs to provide much tighter isolation.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#76

This is fantastic. I never liked the cookies sticking around forever, and managing them manually was a massive pain if you wanted to keep some of them. Not to mention Firefox is usually brought to its knees when trying to delete large segments of History/Cookies at once.

You might want to try uMatrix. It lets you choose which sites are allowed to use cookies.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#77
post #55

> Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0; blocking redirect trackers by default Isnt that what is used with Google Search? For example if you go here: https://www.google.com/search?q=sunday the first result appears to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday but its really: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

More details here[0], but in short, they'll "block them" by deleting cookies and site data of redirect trackers every 24h, preventing long term profile building, while not breaking the redirects.

There's also a "Google search link fix" recommended extension that fixes those URLs (replaces https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday in your example). Also available for Chrome and Opera.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Pri...

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#78
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the default should be to block tracking. We just shouldn't allow it. Imagine someone telling you a popup blocker (something even IE8 had standard) should be acquire separately.

I agree with parent though, Firefox should just ship with uBlock Origin installed. I think putting privacy features in the hands of a third-party prevents some poor choices being made due to several conflicts of interest browser vendors have.

Even besides the money they get from Google, Mozilla aims to support the web, much of which is ad supported. Blocking tracking by default says "we think websites can survive with context-based advertising without obnoxious tracking". Blocking ads by default says "we think the ad supported business model is not worth supporting". That's a much bigger step.
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