Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0 • Hacker News Board

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#351

Post by viraptor » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 10:28 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #147

formerly_proven wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even less data if you use uBlock Origin and possibly uMatrix (which is very high maintenance, but also reveals the utter insanity of the web). Without an adblocker the internet is such a slow heap of trash that I'd never go back to not using one. This is also one of the main reasons I use my iPhone so little, since it doesn't really have any way to adblock.

The only downside is that product managers who rely on third-party analytics to decide what platforms are relevant will never see Firefox+uBlock users as relevant. I've had to argue this at multiple companies; fortunately at some places multiple developers used uBlock so it wasn't as hard as making the case alone.

That should be easy to prove with user agents from the web logs - show the analytics vs access log percentage difference.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#352

Post by godelski » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 10:32 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #177

godelski wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it a software company? I can understand the disagreement, but with the state of things it is just atrocious. I'd be fine if things weren't so invasive and were clearly ads. Pop ups, pop unders, dark patterns to cause clicks, flashy images on text pages, malware injection, 10x page load times, etc are all reasons why I personally can't stand it. It just feels like they are trying to trick me into seeing their p…

> I don't think most people minds ads Is that true? I despise ads and the entire advertising industry. I would wear special glasses that would block billboards from my vision if they existed. I pay extra for the ad-free version of Hulu. When I'm at someone's house and they have cable and the TV is on, I find ad breaks incredibly jarring. Am I just an extreme outlier? It would make me sad for humanity if that was the…

To be clear, it is about the type and frequency of ads. I don't live in a place with a bunch of billboards, but whenever I drive through the Bay or LA it is jarring. Same when I watch YouTube on my phone. So it a big part is how they are used and implemented. For example, I don't mind the ads when listening to podcasts (I couldn't care less that rocket mortgage wants to tell me about themselves) or DDG's sponsored links. These do not feel invasive and since I am using a free service I can accept the payment of my time/(half-assed)attention as a means of funding the service. It is this type of advertisement that I do not think the general populous minds (as a form of payment). But I am not comfortable with ads outside this scope (tracking, individualized, etc).

And I do like to pay for services to bypass ads even though I use ad blockers that mitigate them anyways.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#353

Post by fauigerzigerk » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 10:34 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #342

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could Brave not impose content restrictions on publishers just like app stores?

On the publishers? I honestly don't see how they would. As far as I know, they are blind on all transactions and none of their channels that publishers can use to register to receive BAT have any kind of declared ToS. In any case, it seems like you are just looking for a way to rationalize your current behavior. I only mentioned Brave because it is the first strong offering for an alternative to the ad-based economy.…

> In any case, it seems like you are just looking for a way to rationalize your current behavior.

Not in the least. I find ads annoying and I don‘t have any skin in the game when it comes to advertising. But it‘s not a matter of simply trying Brave. I want to understand how it works for users and also for publishers. And I want to understand how it is not a proprietary system with a gatekeeper role as a structural feature.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#354

Post by TacoToni » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

subhro wrote: post #106

onyva wrote: post #105

The only browser we can trust today. Glad to see they’re making privacy online a priority, on top of an already amazing browser I use regularly and exclusively both on Linux and iOS.

Honest question, what's wrong with Safari, that you can not trust it?

I use safari on my Mac and iOS devices, but switched from Chrome to Firefox on my work PC.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#355

Post by b-zee » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

sleavey wrote: post #111

svnpenn wrote: 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...

I find this annoying and noticed this change a year or so ago. Google used to just give you the (as far as I could tell) unadulterated link. In fact, at the time I wondered how/if Google were actually able to track how many people clicked the top link in the results, because it seemed to be the real URL and stayed real even when clicked. I figured they either had so much faith in PageRank that they didn't need to mon…

Good to see someone that observed the same. I remember checking the source anchors and seeing that indeed the links were untracked. I believe my conclusion was they used JavaScript to catch the anchor click and still send you to the tracker URL.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#356

Post by corford » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

surround wrote: post #339

stiray wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protip #2, for what cant be traced using conventional methods, they will use fingerprinting and those add-ons take care about most common methods of fingerprinting - canvas, webgl, fonts and audio: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/canvas-finger... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/webgl-fingerp... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/font-fingerpr... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-…

While these addons may help against help prevent some fingerprinting attempts, they do not adequately reduce the fingerprint to be non-unique. They certainly won’t hurt, though (many websites just take a hash of the canvas). It’s very difficult to have a non-unique fingerprint. Your browser would have to be the exactly the same as a bunch of other people. At the moment (AFAIK), this is only possible with Tor (all Tor…

This is a handy site to get a feel for how unique you are: https://amiunique.org/fp

Some other useful ones for seeing what you're leaking: https://www.bromite.org/detect https://www.doileak.com/ https://www.deviceinfo.me http://fp.virpo.sk/

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#357

Post by gsnedders » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

varenc wrote: post #197

input_sh wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ava…

For Chrome and Safari users, Google doesn’t even need to do link redirection. Chrome supports the “ping” attribute on links which basically tells the browser to make an asynchronous logging request in the background when the user clicks a link. On Firefox, Google has to keep using redirects. https://caniuse.com/#search=Ping The official name for this spec is “hyperlinking auditing”...

For all browsers they could get rid of redirects and just use JS, if they wanted, and that's much harder to block.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#358

Post by dependenttypes » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #198

dependenttypes wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Integrate ublock origin then? Why offer an inferior solution?

uBlock Origin does substantially more than just tracking blocking, which might be picking too much of a fight with very powerful entities.

Such as letting users to use custom filters and set their own rules per site. It depends whether mozilla is interested in being pro-user or not.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#359

Post by rladd » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 11:00 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #293

rladd wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latest Firefox still doesn't protect against browser fingerprinting. This from the EFF Panopticlick: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 303,579 tested in the past 45 days. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 18.21 bits of identifying information.

I strongly suspect Panopticlick to be broke to the point of being utterly useless.

Why's that?

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#360

Post by rladd » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 11:02 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #251

rladd wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latest Firefox still doesn't protect against browser fingerprinting. This from the EFF Panopticlick: Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 303,579 tested in the past 45 days. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 18.21 bits of identifying information.

Two things: 1. Blocking redirect tracking is about more than just fingerprinting users. I'm a huge fan of Panopticlick's work here, but it's not a be-all end-all measure of whether a browser is getting more or less private. There are a lot of different, complicated things we're talking about when we bring up browser privacy. 2. Disable Javascript with something like uMatrix by default, and that number will drop drama…

Javascript is used by such a large percentage of sites that having it disabled is not a viable option for most people.

The point of these by-default protections is that they are supposed to work for most people. Suggesting that someone techie can do extra stuff that most people won't do is not really germane to the conversation.