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For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

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Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#161

Post by pdpi »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #116
Klonoar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that no one with decision power at Mozilla saw it coming is worrying: either they have zero understanding of people’s concerns for privacy or they don’t care. Or the third option: they feel the tradeoff of HN & co's criticism style is not a big deal in the end. Criticism of Mozilla in general is very warranted right now, but the way(s) in which everyone is doing so just feels very out of touch with the act…

[flagged]

If this were, say, Adobe, I’d agree with you. HN as a community doesn’t have much clout in the design or video space.

This is Mozilla we’re talking about, though. HN is exactly the sort of audience they need on their side. That bunch of nerds is the same group they relied upon to evangelise for them during the IE era.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#162

Post by temporarely »

Enough of this waiting for virtuous entities to address legitimate concerns of the public.

The "ad industry" is a cancer and we need legal protection against this "industry". The solution is political not technical and definitely can not be left to "the market".

Haven't you had enough?

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#163

Post by prox »

Sammi wrote: post #159
prox wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really need to start adding windows as a build target at some near point in the future. As a webdev, that’s the only way I can convince the public to switch.

They want to be able to run more websites well before they invite the unwashed masses from windows XD

I don’t disagree :)

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#164

Post by stebalien »

MrAlex94 wrote: post #122
stebalien wrote: post #99

This works by adding noise. Can't an attacker bypass it by boosting the signal? Assuming the attacker can create sybil advertisers/browsers, this should be totally doable: 1. Define some baseline set of M impressions with various ad identifiers and from various sybil advertisers. 2. For each target user, define some set of M marker impressions, also with various ad identifiers and from various and sybil advertisers.…

Technical docs are here: https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/ipa/blob/main/IPA... Might be worth opening an issue if you believe there's merit to the attack?

I can try. But I'm pretty sure what they're trying to do is fundamentally impossible without some kind of sybil protection.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#165

Post by 3l3ktr4 »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #134

What's dumb is that Firefox is not the freedom browser people think it is. Mozilla is a crappy organization. Firefox has extension signing, it's as restrictive as installing apps on iOS where only approved apps can be installed, without a setting to easily disable it. Mozilla can also remotely install extensions by default (opt out) called "experiments" or something. Their anti-tracking is purposefully weak because o…

>And Mozilla leadership is associated with radical left politics, just as an extra.

Do you have proof for this? I'd be curious. I also fail to see how is that related to the collecting data by default thing. Is that a leftist thing now?

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#166

Post by bawolff »

latexr wrote: post #87
eco wrote: post #17

The CTO of Mozilla just posted on /r/firefox about this: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_abo...

> It’s clear in retrospect that we should have communicated more on this one What isn’t clear, in retrospect or otherwise, is why companies/apps/services need to keep learning this lesson. The user outcry was utterly predictable from even before the first web article was out. The fact that no one with decision power at Mozilla saw it coming is worrying: either they have zero understanding of people’s concerns for pri…

Honestly, having worked at companies that made unpopular product decisions (nothing like this, but still every company puts its foot in its mouth sometimes), it can be surprisingly non-obvious what gets people bothered and what doesn't.

We always see the decisions that blow up, but we dont notice the thousands of decisions nobody cares about. Sometimes it really does look like just another minor feature request at coding time.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#167

Post by jay_kyburz »

leshenka wrote: post #141
quaintdev wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's time to move away from whole html/css/js, http and browsers? Let's build something that is Ad resistant from the start. Something that uses native technologies. Edit: We need something that does not need backing of large corporations or huge funding to access the web. Internet was always simple. We have become over dependent on browsers and http stack.

have you got any suggestions?

HTML only (with forms). Client side css only. No JavaScript. No cookies.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#168

Post by bionsystem »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #134

What's dumb is that Firefox is not the freedom browser people think it is. Mozilla is a crappy organization. Firefox has extension signing, it's as restrictive as installing apps on iOS where only approved apps can be installed, without a setting to easily disable it. Mozilla can also remotely install extensions by default (opt out) called "experiments" or something. Their anti-tracking is purposefully weak because o…

I daily drive Vivaldi, for about 2 years now. I was a bit concerned with the closed source part but the experience is great, it's fast and with plenty of features. I don't know how good they are with regards to privacy but on the other hand I do not need to install any plugin as everything is integrated so at least my data is contained with them.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#170

Post by 3l3ktr4 »

I wonder why they claim they need this... Tor seems to be doing fine as an organization without collecting user data? Why maintaining Firefox is much more expensive? I guess the codebase for Firefox is much larger and in the end Tor is a fork of Firefox, right? So maybe they do need much more resources? Not to say I'm not disappointed with Mozilla once again.
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