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

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#461

Post by asddubs » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

bradly wrote: post #388

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i use cookie autodelete, and i think i have two sites whitelisted

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#462

Post by tgb » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

irontinkerer wrote: post #272

tgb wrote: post #266

I'm trying to get myself to finally switch to Firefox thanks to this post. But I'm having problems with ctrl +/- changing of font sizes. In Chrome, that setting affects one domain only. Here I'm getting confused because I open a new tab and the font is tiny or huge, even sometimes on sites I've never visited before. Ctrl 0 fixes it but then I seem to reset sites that I do want enlarged (like HN). What's the logic her…

I've had the same experience! Well sort of, I think it's related to the experimental zoom I enabled. Trying to track down how to reproduce so I can open a bug, but it's sporadic for me. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the browser

I've possibly figured it out. If you scroll quickly and while the inertia carries the scrolling onwards hit ctrl+w to close the tab, it'll resize the next tab that gains focus. Presumably that's because ctrl is held down and it's scrolling, even though the scrolling is only from inertia. Obviously scrolling shouldn't carry over to the new tab, so it does look like a bug. Moreover, it also resizes the website of the tab you just closed.

Guess I need to submit a bug report.

Edit: apparently Bugzilla requires passwords longer than 10 characters - wow! At least the that's the error I got (password too short) when I tried to sign up. Seems excessive.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#463

Post by BuckRogers » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 7:43 PM UTC

From reading the comments, it sounds like the only real choice is the Tor Browser if you want to be anonymous, or just accept all of it and use your device's native browser for best performance.

What I'd be interested to know is if all of this anti-tracking technology matters if you just isolate domains by using containers. My guess is that Google and company have so many tracking domains that containers have no impact on that, at least 3rd party. But it seems like part of a real solution.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#464

Post by jimmaswell » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #449

jimmaswell wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll notice the inconvenience when more services get paywalled due to not being able to make enough ad money.

Well, it certainly seems like you care, so which is it? Do you care or not care?

Apathetic to cookies or being tracked, care about free services. Not really complicated.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#465

Post by yelloworangefog » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

gorhill wrote: post #442

yelloworangefog wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to remember reading something about a year ago about uBlock Origin being a security concern (like harvesting user data or something). Am I misremembering?

> Am I misremembering? Yes.

Ah, my bad...

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#466

Post by cpeterso » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #433

cpeterso wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox developers welcome Bugzilla bug reports for slow site performance. Attaching a performance profile from the Firefox Profiler will make the bug more likely to get traction. Instructions for installing the the Firefox Profiler: https://profiler.firefox.com/ Google Docs performance is a long-standing issue, but it sounds like you're seeing an unusual problem. (I usually have 10-20 Google Docs tabs open all day i…

I don't think it makes a lot of sense to submit a bug report for a long-standing issue.

Google Docs can be a little sluggish for me in Firefox, but it doesn't hang for 5-10 seconds every few keystrokes like you describe. It sounds like something unusual is happening.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#467

Post by mderazon » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #331

mderazon wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The parent used wrong phrasing but it's real. The captchas don't become harder to solve but longer. If Google detects you're blocking trackers (or possibly cookies) it will throw at you an huge number of captchas until you give up. Imagine having to click like 12 panels of street lights, cars, bicycles, trucks, buses, etc. sometimes multiple times. This is getting out of control, really. I miss so much the Web 1.0 fr…

It's really sad the situation we have come to.

I think that only two things can defeat this madness

1. Legislation

2. Breaking captcha to the point it's not effective anymore

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#468

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Aug 06, 2020, 10:59 PM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #457

heavyset_go wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is getting rid of, or has already got rid off, OpenSearch integrations[1]. What you're describing is a bookmark substitution search feature that's independent of OpenSearch, and Mozilla calls the feature keyword searches[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSearch#Support [2] http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

My understanding is that Firefox still uses the OpenSearch metadata shallowly as the easiest way to create the "keyword search bookmarks" rather than writing a bookmark by hand (though your second link was what I was looking for on how to do that and it seems quite easy/convenient to do yourself if you had to). I don't believe that shallow auto-bookmark discovery is/will be dropped, they dropped a more complicated ad…

Thanks for taking the time to explain the change, it looks like you're correct.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#469

Post by danShumway » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 1:58 AM UTC

floatingatoll wrote: post #456

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.

If you’re considering resistFingerprinting, you might be better off using Tor Browser, which maximizes fingerprinting protections regardless of breakage to websites. I believe that the Tor folks share patches sometimes that get integrated into the Firefox rF pref, but you would only want to enable rF if you’re looking for the best possible protection regardless of other desires (such as addons or fonts or being able…

You're right, a lot of the resistFingerprinting features are being uplifted (with some modifications) directly from Tor. There are a couple ways of looking at this, and more than one of them are valid.

The first is, like you said, that resistFingerprinting can be kind of a gateway to Tor in general, since Tor will do everything resistFingerprinting does, and better.

The second is that uplifting Tor features to "normal" browsers and allowing "normal" users to enable them makes it harder for website operators to say, "well, I don't need to worry about this because it's just Tor users and they're all criminals." Right now, enabling these features in Firefox will result in some website breakage, but as more people say, "well, this is a mainstream browser thing", maybe more website operators will start to accommodate the protections.

I think there's value in continuing to blur the line between Tor and other browsers, if only to push the idea that the kind of privacy protections Tor offers should be available to everyone across multiple browsers. Not to mention that it's nice to be able to take advantage of a few Tor features while still getting stuff like fast video streaming.

But agreed, there's definitely a continuum here, and it might be valuable for some people to explore farther down it.

Re: Latest Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection 2.0

#470

Post by smichel17 » Fri, Aug 07, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

asddubs wrote: post #459

smichel17 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a nicely written comment, then accidentally deleted it, so here's the super pithy version with examples omitted, since I don't want to retype on my phone. I use uMatrix with strict defaults for privacy. I agree diddling is annoying. I find diddling with sites more annoying.

it does make you appreciate it a lot more when someone has their shit together, if the site works with noscript and doesn't pull in scripts from 20 different hosts

I was super impressed with https://shop.balance.com/ recently (actually the site is run by worldpantry.com) — I made it though the entire checkout flow with no js and no third party resources. An e-commerce site!! They're normally the absolute worst.