>But how does the PPA actually work? There is an aggregation server between the advertising provider and the users or their data, which anonymizes the information from the individual app browsers. Only then does it make the data available to the participating advertising customers.
For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
21–30 of 523 posts
Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
#22The article links to Mozilla’s press release / blog entry about the acquisition of Anonym [0]. It’s pretty dystopian reading. The last three paragraphs and the summary of Anonym are more worrying than anything else I’ve read on this so far:
> This acquisition marks a significant step in addressing the urgent need for privacy-preserving advertising solutions. By combining Mozilla’s scale and trusted reputation with Anonym’s cutting-edge technology, we can enhance user privacy and advertising effectiveness, leveling the playing field for all stakeholders.
I can only interpret this as the urgent need is money, and wants to sell its "scale and trusted reputation". Mozilla has been down this road before. It was not good for them.
> Anonym was founded with two core beliefs: First, that people have a fundamental right to privacy in online interactions and second, that digital advertising is critical for the sustainability of free content, services and experiences. Mozilla and Anonym share the belief that advanced technologies can enable relevant and measurable advertising while still preserving user privacy.
This is some pretty weak wording for a press release. The economics of the situation are that advertising will always trump privacy. Researchers have successfully de-anonymized anonymised data sets, including medical records. Why would these data be any different?
> As we integrate Anonym into the Mozilla family, we are excited about the possibilities this partnership brings. While Anonym will continue to serve its customer base, together, we are poised to lead the industry toward a future where privacy and effective advertising go hand in hand, supporting a free and open internet.
Anonym’s customers are advertisers, right? The same people who for decades poured money into eroding that free and open internet that we had…
> About Anonym: Anonym was founded in 2022 by former Meta executives Brad Smallwood and Graham Mudd. The company was backed by Griffin Gaming Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Heracles Capital as well as a number of strategic individual investors.
Well, it seems Anonym, Smallwood and Mudd had a nice piece about them written in the Wall Street Journal [1]. From the second paragraph:
> Graham Mudd and Brad Smallwood each spent more than a decade building Meta’s advertising system, which allowed the company to offer granular data about how ad campaigns worked with individual users, often by tracking their web and mobile activity.
[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t...
Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
#23So how do we turn it off? Found it. Go to settings, type privacy into the search box. The last item under "Firefox Data Collection and Use" is a check box labelled "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement". It was already unchecked on mine when I looked just now.
Yeah on desktop. On mobile it's a lot harder. It's still turned on and you have to use a workaround to enable about: config because they don't bother to make this option visible in settings.
I can access the about:config page on mobile, but I can't seem to find a relevant option. Maybe it's already disabled for the Fennec app from F-Droid?
Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
#24So how do we turn it off? Found it. Go to settings, type privacy into the search box. The last item under "Firefox Data Collection and Use" is a check box labelled "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement". It was already unchecked on mine when I looked just now.
on firefox mobile:
open chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml, set general.aboutConfig.enable to true
open about:config, set dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled to false
Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
#25[flagged]
Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
#26So how do we turn it off? Found it. Go to settings, type privacy into the search box. The last item under "Firefox Data Collection and Use" is a check box labelled "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement". It was already unchecked on mine when I looked just now.
Yeah on desktop. On mobile it's a lot harder. It's still turned on and you have to use a workaround to enable about: config because they don't bother to make this option visible in settings.
On mobile you probably want to try Fennec and/or Mull, both Firefox forks, compatible with FF addons and available on F-Droid.
Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
#27Says the site that only offers one big button "accept" to its cookies :( :( There's no "Nope". Edit: Weird, some people seem to have received more options than me. For me there was just one option to accept (Zustimmen) and nothing else. Everything was in German but I read German anyway. I was on mobile though, perhaps this is why? I can't see it again because I already pressed it. A practice (pay or accept cookies) w…
> A practice (pay or accept cookies) which was actually ruled in breach with GDPR but many German sites seem to do this somehow. Our Data Protection Agencies ruled it okay. There was a recent court case that called it into question again, so we’ll see how things develop. FWIW, my normal blockers manage to block the heise.de pay-or-track banner, different from, e.g. golem.
But even then, it's a bit hypocritical writing an article slamming firefox for this at least allegedly privacy-sensitive adtracking. While requiring readers to consent to tracking from your however many ad partners :P
Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
#28The CTO of Mozilla just posted on /r/firefox about this: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_abo...
I think this line is very important:
> First, in the absence of alternatives, there are enormous economic incentives for advertisers to try to bypass these countermeasures, leading to a perpetual arms race that we may not win.
It's very likely that this arms race will lead to DRM in web publications and video feeds (which Google is already experimenting with).
Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
#29The CTO of Mozilla just posted on /r/firefox about this: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_abo...
Some might be interested in the discussion about that too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40971247
Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah on desktop. On mobile it's a lot harder. It's still turned on and you have to use a workaround to enable about: config because they don't bother to make this option visible in settings.
chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml source: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/firefox-for-android-abo...
Yeah apparently you can use that to set: general.aboutConfig.enable to true
And then you can go to the normal about:config and set dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled to false
Only then is PPA actually off (apparently, I did not manage to test this yet but someone did confirm the default setting is true). Not cool. Especially because Mozilla provides instructions for the desktop version on their site but doesn't even mention the mobile version at all.