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For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

heise.de

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

#221

Post by [deleted] »

close04 wrote: post #38
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...

> doing something about [the massive web of surveillance] is a primary reason many of us are at Mozilla > we consider modal consent dialogs to be a user-hostile distraction from better defaults, and do not believe such an experience would have been an improvement here. You know what's user-hostile? Doing things without the user's knowledge or consent. The new tab page of Firefox after an update often advertises featu…

[deleted]

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

#222

Post by hilbert42 »

temporarely wrote: post #162

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?

"ad industry" is a cancer and we need legal protection..."

Absolutely true, but how do you expect that to happen or come about?

Rampant advertising is similar to the copyright law problem. The majority of users may not like what's happening but their opposition and or dislike is but mild so when it comes to political action it collectively amounts to little more than nought.

On the other hand, advertisers, like copyright holders, have strong vested interests thus are highly motivated to ensure politicians act in their favor (one only has to look at the lopsidedness of lobbying interests to see that).

The real enemy is indifference, as a whole the citizenry is not motivated enough for things to change. Simply, we have ourselves to blame.

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

#223

Post by Juliate »

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...

What is really concerning (and enlightening) is that it is the CTO that's posting, and not the CEO.

It shows that the topic is merely now considered as a technical point, rather than a principal-based one.

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

#224

Post by _heimdall »

temporarely wrote: post #162

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?

Anyone bothered enough by advertising can stop using whatever product has been ruined by ads, or find ways to remove the advertising.

More laws and larger governments doesn't have to be the answer to all problems. If consumers care enough they'll change their usage, if they don't change their usage they likely don't care enough.

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

#225

Post by bondarchuk »

berkes wrote: post #194
bondarchuk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't necessarily need the ad industry to work out the practicalities if we simply do away with the whole ad industry. We could quite easily outlaw receiving payments from a third party in exchange for displaying information to your users.

That hardly worked when implemented in the GDPR, where this exchange is most often "free". Why would it work this time?

Sorry, what do you mean ""that" hardly worked"? Making any regulation at all? The GDPR did not do at all what I proposed.

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

#226

Post by sneak »

temporarely wrote: post #162

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?

What is happening today that you don’t want to happen in the future?

What would these political solutions achieve that aren’t achievable instantly today via technical solutions?

Most people don’t care about what the ad industry is doing.

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

#227

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?

Those docs look out of date and appear to be designed for "app" ecosystems. The latest proposal from Mozilla is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QMHkAQ4JiuJkNcyGjAkOikPK...

And I'm now quite sure this system is insecure. Fundamentally, either:

1. There is some magical sybil protection: An attacker can only spend their own privacy budget without affecting the rest of the system.

2. The system can be saturated: An attacker can spend everyone's privacy budget.

3. The system is not private: An attacker can exceed the "safe" privacy budget by combining information from multiple sybils.

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

#228

Post by _heimdall »

alemanek wrote: post #207
berkes wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that legal "protection" work in practice? What would it protect against? Who would it protect? What you say sounds reasonable. And I'm not trying to say "well, it's impossible because of some current status quo", because we could change that. What I'm trying to say is that we need this "industry" to work out the practicalities. Otherwise we are "protected" in a same way the GDPR protects us against 3rd part…

Full liability for secondary harms caused by the leak of data that wasn’t directly required to provide a service to those same end users. Selling of data to third parties doesn’t transfer this liability but expands it to include any leaks or misuse coming from the entities the data is sold to. No statute of limitations. So if company X sells data to company Y and then Y sells to company Z then company X has full liab…

We don't need more laws to solve this if your concern is a more harsh punishment for data leaks, we need to remove existing laws that limit the damages a company can be liable for and we need consumers that care enough to sue when they are harmed.

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

#229

Post by MrAlex94 »

Tarq0n wrote: post #202
MrAlex94 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Safari seems to be the only decent, privacy-focused browser left on the market. Safari has Private Click Measurement: https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-meas... And AFAICT, Mozilla's implementation is technically superior?

Safari also has attestation, as far as I know without user consent.

Does MPC, which PPA uses, use attestation? I'm under the impression it doesn't (at least currently): https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/ipa/issues/22
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