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

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#381

Post by murrayn » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:02 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #52

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.

I'm so glad these FF config options exist:

mousewheel.acceleration.start mousewheel.acceleration.factor

I have them set to 1 and 15.

Works with Thunderbird as well!

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#382

Post by matheusmoreira » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:03 AM UTC

sildur wrote: post #338

ignoramous wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been treated with endless Google Captchas with that setting, and they get very difficult with each passing day, never mind the time-sink.

I use buster. It fetchs the audio captcha and sends it back to google for speech recognition: https://github.com/dessant/buster

I tried it but the captcha told me my request looks automated. Any way to circumvent that?

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#383

Post by bradly » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:09 AM UTC

mderazon wrote: post #318

Angeo34 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google captcha works by uniquely identifying you. The easier Google can track you the easier your captcha. That's why it's nearly impossible to solve captcha with resistfingerprint on (ie tor mode)

Wow didn't know that. Do you have a source? How do they decide which captcha is harder ?

I use Firefox with all the privacy stuff turned on. I have to do multiple, difficult recaptchas all day. I've even missed out on Yosemite campsite reservations because of the delay from all the captchas presented to me when trying to book :(

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#384

Post by bradly » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:11 AM UTC

maltalex wrote: post #278

danShumway wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> already includes many of these Make sure you turn them on though! Firefox by default doesn't block canvas fingerprinting, that's a setting you need to enable in `about:config` under the `privacy.resistFingerprinting` section.

Why aren't they on by default? What's the downside?

Besides captchas, I mostly have issues with trying to watch content from tv channel websites. Especially when trying to link a channel with a cable service.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#385

Post by NoodleIncident » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:15 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #264

mancerayder wrote: post #104

I'm happy to see stuff like this. I'd be even happier if the tricks to get video to play were somehow canceled. I have adblocker and video blockers, but somehow, news sites have a video that plays. If I scroll off the page, the video pops out into the lower right hand of the page and resumes playing, even if the big version of the video at the top of the page was stopped /paused (which it is by default), and it needs…

Short version of a long story! A few years ago Google implemented autoplay blocking in Chrome. It was designed to fix problems like this, but was riddled with issues. I wrote about it at https://danshumway.com/blog/chrome-autoplay/ . The spec evolved a little bit since then, so not everything in that post is up to date, but most of the core problems still remain (or did the last time I checked). Firefox was forced to…

> wouldn't try to distinguish between things like GIFs, animated backgrounds, and videos (they're all moving pictures that use data and distract motion-sensitive users, you don't need to treat them differently)

This would cause 95% of users to correctly say that your browser is "broken", regardless of the opinions of motion-sensitive users on tiny data connections. Having a nuclear option for just these people is fine, but you do need to distinguish between the two types of video for everyone else.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#386

Post by stuartd » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:17 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #275

xvector wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox already includes many of these, some of those plugins are redundant or unnecessary.

> already includes many of these Make sure you turn them on though! Firefox by default doesn't block canvas fingerprinting, that's a setting you need to enable in `about:config` under the `privacy.resistFingerprinting` section.

I used privacy.resistFingerprinting until I realized that was the reason websites were displaying times incorrectly, as they receive the default timezone value of UTC - [0] - and I couldn't find a way around it.

[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1330890

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#387

Post by zamadatix » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:18 AM UTC

llarsson wrote: post #233

zamadatix wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 30% of FF users have any add-ons at all. Only about 1/3 of those have adblock plus or unlock origin.

Alternatively, only 1/3 of Firefox users that also do not disable telemetry have any add-ons at all. More than a handful choose that browser for privacy, including keeping stuff private from Mozilla.

Actually this debate came up so often they added a special telemetry coverage extension that ignored telemetry disabled status (to great uproar) on 1% of users and reported back the number of people with telemetry disabled. As expected "more than a handful" actually turned out to be "a vocal handful" out of the 200,000,000 MAU pool.

Also those that disable telemetry after starting Firefox still sent telemetry. Mozilla only promises to delete it after 30 days not that they don't generate a number that says what % new installs in the last month disabled telemetry (though they don't publicly report this to my knowledge).

So that leaves those with whitelist only firewalling or similar measures that I (hope?) we can all agree isn't going to swing these numbers at any interesting digit position.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#388

Post by bradly » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:18 AM UTC

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #329

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-…

Protip #3: when all else fails, they will use your IP address to target you. E.g. I usually use Firefox with NoScript. I frequently exit Firefox; when I do I clear everything using "Clear history when Firefox closes". When I want to visit a site that requires JavaScript I switch to Safari. I'm just as aggressive in Safari in clearing my history. Consequently, about the only ads I do see (in Safari) are clothing ads f…

Protip #4: I use Forget Me Now to whitelist sites I want to save cookies for after closing tabs. You'd be surprised how few websites you actually need to save cookies for. I thought it would be way more hassle than it ended up being.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#389

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:25 AM UTC

bredren wrote: post #309

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.

There are two solutions I’ve used: 1. Content blockers for safari are sold in the App Store. Not bad. 2. A private Pinole instance on a vps. Just set your phone to connect to it. There are turnkey docker installs of this now. Neither are perfect / have quirks. I def recommend pinhole. I thought it would be a pain to set up, it wasn’t and it’s great.

Will #2 block ads in Apps as well as Safari?

Games for my young kids have terrible ads and finding quality, ad free ads (even paid) is very hard to do. I really wish Apple Arcade would release some early-ed games.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#390

Post by rglullis » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 12:28 AM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #375

rglullis wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their advertisement network is only one and the browser gives them some leverage, but there is nothing stopping someone else to create a similar alternative. Brave already has been forked (Dissenter Browser) that remove the BAT side of things. Outside of the potential mooning of the token which would make them rich, I don't really see anything they have that gives them such a dangerous moat. Hell, a competitor could…

>Their advertisement network is only one and that uses the browser, but there is nothing stopping any one else to create a similar alternative. Does Brave support a way for other ad networks to integrate into their BAT system? If not, any competitor would first have to popularise their own web browser.

There is no "their BAT system". It's all on the blockchain.

BAT is just a token like any other on the Ethereum chain. The "easiest" way to acquire at the moment is by using the Browser and setting up the wallet, but if you don't want to that you can just go any exchange and trade it. Or you can have a website and accept it as payment.

I am sorry if I made you on focus on the specifics of Brave when the point of my original post was to say that there are alternatives nowadays for ads. Alternatives that may not be perfect, but that do work and are better than the status quo.

In any case, I think that the best way for you to understand how things work and make sense of what I am saying is if you try it yourself. You can start by using Brave on your phone to replace Chrome or Safari and get a feel of things, see how the rewards system work, etc.