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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

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A couple of the less debilitating yet still somewhat annoying downsides I've found: If you have the "restore previous session" option enabled and have grown accustomed to Firefox remembering all the windows you had open before, you may find it annoying that it no longer remembers the size of your windows; it just puts them to the default size. Although now that I think of it, this might possibly be specific to the X1…

This was infinitely more annoying to me than the endless captchas since due to age and my eyesight getting worse I have different zoom settings for pages I visit.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#422
post #248
post #130

My friend who works in an adtech company: "Protip: Use Firefox instead of Chrome. We get very little data from Firefox users"

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-…

"They will kill fingerprinting and as a proof, " No they don't. But they help a little.

Here are some of mine in my privacy browser:

BP Privacy Block all Font and Glyph Detection

Canvas Blocker

Clear URLS

Cockiebro

Decentraleyes

I don't care about cockies

NoScrupt

Privacy Settings

Privacy Oriented Origin Policy

Startpage

ublock origin

WebTRC Control

HTTPS Everywhere

And as a bonus, not really related: Bypass Paywalls Clean

Also use a host file manager. I use host flash

Most important thing: use many many browser. I have chrome for Facebook, Banking sites and Booking travel tickets (Trust me, you don't wat to do this with you privacy broswer).

I have chromium for gmail

I use firefox with all the plug-ins for webbrowsing

opera with build in VPN for some other stuff (carefull, owned by Chinese)

Vivaldi

There is also blue moon. There are many browser out there. Another option would be to use virtual machines with seperate VPNs.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#423
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.

I have several reasons for not using Firefox: Font rendering looks non-native on most platforms. Scrolling behavior seems non-native on most platforms. The combined location/search bar seems slower, and gives less useful results, than the same feature in other browsers. Inferior developer tools. Mozilla's marketing portraying itself as the white knight of the open web is tiresome and contradicted by past behavior. Po…

> Mozilla's marketing portraying itself as the white knight of the open web is tiresome and contradicted by past behavior. Pocket is still installed by default, and remember the Mr. Robot scandal?

Here, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Firefox is the only Web browser that is not owned by a giant for-profit company with a vested interest in controlling your computing platform.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#424
Another option is to always delete cookies and site data when you close Firefox and set exceptions for the few sites you care about. If you are like me and only start Firefox once or twice a day this prevents too much annoyance while limiting cookie based tracking.

Also, Mozilla should really think about what is wrong with the statement "Since we enabled ETP by default, we’ve blocked 3.4 trillion tracking cookies." I imagine most people who care about tracking would like to not be tracked by anyone, not just anyone other than Mozilla.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#426
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…

> At the moment (AFAIK), this is only possible with Tor (all Tor users have the same browser fingerprint.)

I fail to see how Tor affects your browser fingerprint. Are you talking about a "tor browser" or something?

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 or…

> There is no "their BAT system". It's all on the blockchain. What I mean is Brave‘s specific Browser integration that creates a compensation scheme for publishers. I would only support such a system if it doesn‘t put Brave a privileged gatekeeper position. I’m not sure which other alternatives you‘re talking about specifically, but I have explained many times elsewhere in this debate why I see subscription based ser…

It's an ad network.

There is nothing stopping other browsers to adopt it. There is nothing stopping other companies to create a similar alternative. There is nothing stopping a publisher to get an advertisement deal and place an ad on their website; as long as it does not use third-party cookies or tracks you in any way, it won't be blocked.

> subscription based services (...) loss of privacy (...) there can ever be a widely used general purpose system of anonymous electronic payments.

Look, I am not trying to sell you anything ok? I don't work at Brave and I am not interested in doing shilling for any specific cryptotoken. It's okay if you want to say "I don't want to pay for content that I am now getting for free. It's also okay to say "I don't mind having my data exploited in exchange of a few dollars that can go to content producers and publishers".

The only things that you are saying that are total BS is that (1) ad-tech is less of threat to privacy than a digital economy based on crypto and (2) that no alternative currently exist.

Your argument against usage of cryptocurrency for payments is just concern trolling. You are presenting a very, very unlikely hypothetical (companies might be required to collect user data to accept payments) in order to justify the status quo. Likewise, you are making these near-impossible demands from a company that has a fraction of the market share on a trillion dollar industry while having no qualms with all of the ethical violations from the dominant oligarchy. Again, concern trolling.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no "their BAT system". It's all on the blockchain. What I mean is Brave‘s specific Browser integration that creates a compensation scheme for publishers. I would only support such a system if it doesn‘t put Brave a privileged gatekeeper position. I’m not sure which other alternatives you‘re talking about specifically, but I have explained many times elsewhere in this debate why I see subscription based ser…

It's an ad network. There is nothing stopping other browsers to adopt it. There is nothing stopping other companies to create a similar alternative. There is nothing stopping a publisher to get an advertisement deal and place an ad on their website; as long as it does not use third-party cookies or tracks you in any way, it won't be blocked. > subscription based services (...) loss of privacy (...) there can ever be…

Why don't you stop accusing me of things I never said and never remotely intended to imply?

I'm not accusing you of anything either. I wasn't thinking for a moment that you were trying to sell me something or that you were shilling.

It's a simple disagreement. I'm unconvinced by the case you're making for specific alternatives. That doesn't mean I'm happy with the status quo.

You have said absolutely nothing to show that Brave would not be in a position to impose content restrictions if their system turned out to be successful.

My concerns about cryptocurrencies are anything but hypothetical. The authorities are extremely jumpy about cryptocurrencies. Regulation is already well under way. There have been crackdowns on crypto exchanges all over the world. Banks are suspending accounts left and right. I was personally invited by the local tax authorities to take part in a consultation on the subject.

And have you not noticed what happened when Facebook threatened to introduce a payment system that only so much as mentioned the word cryptocurrency? It was absolutely crushed before it even got off the ground. Granted, a lot of the concerns were related to Facebook's oligopolist status. But there were also huge concerns about the possibility of widespread money laundering, tax evasion and funding of terrorism.

What we need is a system that inherently limits the size of any financial transactions that a single party can initiate. That is very difficult to do while guaranteeing anonymity.

Let's not accuse each other of bad faith when what we're talking about is simply a difficult problem that many have tried to solve with very limited success.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#429
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you use uBlock Origin, add these (some reddit user suggested it, and it works) https://pastebin.com/M6Jah286

This breaks Google Maps.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ad network. There is nothing stopping other browsers to adopt it. There is nothing stopping other companies to create a similar alternative. There is nothing stopping a publisher to get an advertisement deal and place an ad on their website; as long as it does not use third-party cookies or tracks you in any way, it won't be blocked. > subscription based services (...) loss of privacy (...) there can ever be…

Why don't you stop accusing me of things I never said and never remotely intended to imply? I'm not accusing you of anything either. I wasn't thinking for a moment that you were trying to sell me something or that you were shilling. It's a simple disagreement. I'm unconvinced by the case you're making for specific alternatives. That doesn't mean I'm happy with the status quo. You have said absolutely nothing to show…

The only problem is that your default position is to keep accepting the status quo. Looking into any alternative is a free option. It doesn't cost you anything and you can always go back to the default position if it doesn't satisfy you. So, if you are not happy with the status quo, just try the alternative (any alternative!) and see for yourself where its limitations and problems are.

> The authorities are extremely jumpy about cryptocurrencies. Regulation is already well under way.

Regulation already exists. It is due to the regulation, for instance, that Brave requires you to do KYC if you want to get the money out of their wallet and into your own. It is due to regulation that exchanges that do not comply with the law are getting crackdowns.

This is not an argument. This is FUD.

> Let's not accuse each other of bad faith when what we're talking about is simply a difficult problem that many have tried to solve with very limited success.

If the status quo was not harmful for society as it is, I wouldn't be nagging you about it. But this whole thread started with you claiming that accepting ad-tech's destruction of privacy is less of a problem than any alternative proposed so far. This is not a "simple disagreement"; it's plain wrong.

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