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Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

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Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#371

Post by DrBazza »

ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

In many parts of the world, data still costs, and it annoys me that if you pay for 10Gb a month, the sites you surf to are a few kb, and then up pop the ads which are Mbs and steal your data allowance. You're actually paying for ads you don't want.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#372

Post by the_jeremy »

ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

Browsers need to own tracking, and it's clear that Firefox and Safari agree.

I don't object to (silent, low resource, banner) ads, even targeted ones, as long as the targeted ads aren't building a comprehensive profile of me.

I think my ideal would be telling my browser a list of a couple interest areas (prosumer tech, sci-fi, dog peripherals) that the website could target on to serve ads. They'd get targeted ads, I'd get privacy, and I'd get ads that actually match things I care about.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#373

Post by smichel17 »

ericholscher wrote: post #245
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as an ethical ad. Advertising is a cynical deployment of our knowledge of crowd wisdom, media manipulation, and statistics to make people part with their money for things they wouldn't think they needed. Our economy can't handle this kind of reckless consumerism anymore. Worse yet, we don't need advertising to bolster our media. Unfortunately, the media execs don't realize this yet. All your me…

If you'd like to suggest another way to make OSS sustainable, I'd be all ears. A bit more color here: https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/aug/31/funding-oss-ma...

I'm working on https://snowdrift.coop for that.

We could use help, particularly from anyone who's good with css.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#374

Post by sunnytimes »

makecheck wrote: post #89
ogre_codes wrote: post #48

These advertising networks are destroying web performance. Most of these "Supercookies" are optimizations to improve performance. By abusing them, advertisers have turned what should be a great performance tool into a liability. I know FF suggests this won't significantly affect most websites performance, but web advertising and trackers are already responsible for a huge chunk of performance issues already. Of cours…

Modern ad networks are essentially the “fax machine flyers” of old: someone you don’t know using your resources and your time, denying you use of your own resources temporarily, to send you something you don’t want. Except now it’s like every “normal” fax page includes 15,000 flyers.

i started working at a place that would get stacks of flyers across the fax machine every day , they would just toss them in the recycling bin all the while wasting tons of paper and ink .. i started calling all the removal numbers and got it down to zero .. they thought the fax machine was broken haha.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#375

Post by sbarre »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #240
ericholscher wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're trying to build an ad network that doesn't track users: https://www.ethicalads.io/ We talked a little bit about how these ads still work, even without tracking you. You might be losing 10-15% of revenue, but if you never had that revenue to start with, you don't miss it: https://www.ethicalads.io/blog/2018/04/ethical-advertising-w... I think the real secret is just to not become dependent on the additive revenu…

There is no such thing as an ethical ad. Advertising is a cynical deployment of our knowledge of crowd wisdom, media manipulation, and statistics to make people part with their money for things they wouldn't think they needed. Our economy can't handle this kind of reckless consumerism anymore. Worse yet, we don't need advertising to bolster our media. Unfortunately, the media execs don't realize this yet. All your me…

I am really confused by this position.

How do you propose that companies should promote their products and services, if not through advertising?

Are you somehow suggesting that they should just sit there and hope that people who have never heard of their product independently decide they happen to want or need that product and seek it out, unprompted?

You say "people part with their money for things they wouldn't think they needed, Our economy can't handle this kind of reckless consumerism anymore": Surely you don't think you speak for everyone?

You certainly don't speak for me.

I am not some blind sheep who is suckered into buying things I don't need. I am a grown adult who can make informed decisions with my money, including sometimes buying frivolous or unnecessary things.

I hate these arguments that assume everyone is stupid except for the person making the argument. It feels like there's some weird savior complex at work.

People have free will and are allowed to spend their money as they wish, and I think YOU are the cynical one if you think otherwise..

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#376

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

ericholscher wrote: post #245
AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as an ethical ad. Advertising is a cynical deployment of our knowledge of crowd wisdom, media manipulation, and statistics to make people part with their money for things they wouldn't think they needed. Our economy can't handle this kind of reckless consumerism anymore. Worse yet, we don't need advertising to bolster our media. Unfortunately, the media execs don't realize this yet. All your me…

If you'd like to suggest another way to make OSS sustainable, I'd be all ears. A bit more color here: https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/aug/31/funding-oss-ma...

You've obviously thought this out extensively and decided to advertise. Who am I to offer a better solution? You know your business domain, revenue needs, etc better than me or anyone else.

However, that does not mean I have to agree to advertising -- whether it is labeled ethical, green, sustainable, cage-free or whatever. If you're lucky, you won't have a lot of extremists like myself visiting your site; i.e. the advertising will be successful.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#377

Post by agnosticmantis »

minikites wrote: post #57
Teever wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, right? Like if I were to be caught doing this to a random woman it would be appropriately labelled 'stalking' yet when a company does it they potentially have a patentable marketing technique on their hands or something.

It's good when a company does it because they create value in the economy. It's only bad when a person does it because no value is created.

I wonder how many downvoted you because they understood the sarcasm but they agreed with the non-sarcastic interpretation of it.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#378

Post by culopatin »

mstade wrote: post #199
makecheck wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern ad networks are essentially the “fax machine flyers” of old: someone you don’t know using your resources and your time, denying you use of your own resources temporarily, to send you something you don’t want. Except now it’s like every “normal” fax page includes 15,000 flyers.

I wonder how many people reading this comment are thinking, "what's a fax machine?" :o) I like the analogy, but I wonder how effective it is on anyone under the age of what, 35?

I’m in the age group you mention and although I’ve only used a fax twice, I can totally understand the analogy.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#379

Post by danShumway »

floatingatoll wrote: post #322
newscracker wrote: post #91

Use uBlock Origin, Multi Account Containers, Privacy Badger, Decentraleyes and CookieAutoDelete with Firefox. Make sure you aggressively clear cache, cookies, etc., periodically (with CookieAutoDelete). You’ll probably load the web servers more and also add more traffic on your network, but it will help protect your privacy since most websites don’t care about that. When websites are user hostile, you have to take pr…

Doing this will make it trivially easy to fingerprint and track you on the web, as the set of people who use non-defaults like this list is 0.000001% of the total possible user space for their area, and your IP address probably only changes rarely or never A better way to protect yourself is to use a browser with tracking protections on by default, and leave the settings alone. You may see a few more ads but you’ll b…

I don't see how using containers in Firefox or auto-deleting cookies would have any negative effect here.

None of the cache deletion/isolation addons should inject any Javascript into the page or alter headers in any way, so they shouldn't be detectable to sites you visit. So in terms of unique behavior, all that site isolation means is that you're going to hit caches more often and be missing cookies.

I mean, sure, a website can recognize that you don't have any unique cross-site cookies to send them and make some inferences based on that, but the alternative is... having a unique cross-site cookie. So it's not like you're doing any better in that scenario.

I can see an argument against a few of these like DecentralEyes, since they change which resources you fetch at a more micro-level. But uBlock Origin and Multi Account Containers seem like strict privacy/security improvements to me.

UBlock Origin especially -- if you care about privacy, you should have that installed, because outside of very specific scenarios your biggest threat model should be 3rd-party ad-networks, not serverside 1st-party timing attacks/fingerprinting. No one should be running Chrome or Firefox without Ublock Origin installed.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#380

Post by silentsea90 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #326
ericholscher wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're trying to build an ad network that doesn't track users: https://www.ethicalads.io/ We talked a little bit about how these ads still work, even without tracking you. You might be losing 10-15% of revenue, but if you never had that revenue to start with, you don't miss it: https://www.ethicalads.io/blog/2018/04/ethical-advertising-w... I think the real secret is just to not become dependent on the additive revenu…

To me, there is no such thing as an “ethical ad”. You are trying to steal my attention, my time. You don’t get to do that. My time on Earth is limited and you don’t get a millisecond of it if I can help it. If I want to buy something, I seek it out. Anything else is a waste of my time and a waste of the advertisers money. I long ago decided to throw out every piece of physical ad mail I receive without even glancing…

Great morally charged argument, but I am not sure how you expect content creators to monetize.
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