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For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

heise.de

271–280 of 523 posts

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

#271

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?

[flagged]

> People can still run them, but why would you

Because there’s always some MBA thinking “Wait! We can charge them AND show them ads too!” They need to be legally barred from doing that.

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

#272
post #34

What do you expect from a company indirectly owned and controlled by Google money? I can't wait for Ladybird to get good, in a decade realistically, swimming against a massive current of Google pushing its unstandardised nonsense on Chrome, and web developers jumping on the bandwagon, making web standards more and more complex by the day so no one ever is able to catch up. You can add to the dead internet theory the…

> I can't wait for Ladybird to get good

I don't see that happening in a decade. What makes you so optimistic?

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

#273

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.

We can, but, as OP noted, the change is only temporary, while political change is harder, but also tends to last longer. I still remember when pihole worked on most things. These days it is just a part of adblocking approach for me.

tldr: Some of us are tired of fiddling with things where were we shouldn't have to.

If market participants can't behave ( and they clearly can't help themselves ), it is the only real answer.

Or.. options for consumers are limited, which affects what they do. In all seriousness, streaming execs seemed to admit the ads simply bring more money for them so they don't care if non-ad version is profitable. It is not enough.

My household dropped Netflix and Prime over their silliness. We currently still have Disney until they get too greedy. And that is just streaming. Regular net is soooo much worse without a way to scrub the ads away.

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I assume it’s the MPC part that would need the Sybil protection?

Also, another assumption, but it’s that doc still builds upon the W3C proposal - would it not be worth raising as an issue in the repo? Seems to still be active.

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

#275
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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…

They introduced quite a bit of privacy aware of measures, quite effective ones, so pretending they are stupid is not really beleivable.

> the ad industry is not going away

But users do. Let them have a great faking love affair with the ad industry.

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

#276
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a (lazy) line of argument related to GDPR, cookie banners, etc. that goes something like this: "That legislation failed, thus any legislation will fail." It was a while since I did proof by induction, but I do believe there is some step missing here.

Personally, I am open to an argument that any legislation is folly. But we need to raise the discourse rather than just bash legislative failures (or merely partial successes) of the past.

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few criticisms of LibreWolf: * There is no legal entity behind the project. Should anything ever happen with the project (it can happen, even if unlikely), there are no legal ramifications. * The binaries aren't signed. Yes, code signing is a bit of a racket, but there is some merit in it. * There is no auto-update mechanism. Might not seem like a big deal, but IMO it is, especially on Windows where you're recommen…

>There is no auto-update mechanism. Might not seem like a big deal, but IMO it is, especially on Windows where you're recommended to rely on 3rd party client to update the browser for you. You've now added a middle man, and since the binaries are not signed... well there's no guarantee you aren't downloading a malicious binary. To me, this seems like a plus. If you want users to update, provide them with something wo…

Also, for some software vendors, frequent/automatic upgrades are a great place to hide silent reconfiguration.

Mozilla has been repeatedly resetting "Always check if Firefox is your default browser" option to "yes" with upgrades. I don't see why "private-attribution submission enabled" wouldn't be reset in future in the same way.

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

#278
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I walk outside I'm bombarded by ads. Almost all websites have been tailored to include ads and hide information. You're tracked on all devices you touch. Vaguely referencing more laws or larger government doesn't mean anything. We're not talking about all problems but a specific one. There is an obvious imbalance between the power and information an individual consumer can use to shield themselves from activities…

Seeing ads outside likely doesn't harm you though, you can ignore them. If your city is plastered with ads to a point at where you can't stand it you can always move, that's just another part of a city that someone may decide they don't like and want something different. > Almost all websites have been tailored to include ads and hide information. You're tracked on all devices you touch. That's really the crux of it…

I honestly do not think it is possible to ignore ads unless you do not see/smell/hear/experience them. Even if you dismiss them, you have received an impression of that ad. Your mind has been affected. It just happens that we normalized it as a normal function of society ( not completely unlike how we normalized cameras everywhere including on doorbell ). I have no interest in dating farmers, but I still remember being exposed to farmers only ad.

edit:

It seems less and less of an option. Amtrak gatekeeps its best prices behind an app. Parking lot wants me to use an app. My workplace now effectively forced me to have phone on me ( even if I come into office.. I can understand the need for it while remote ).

The current societal construct practically requires a smartphone. You could technically go on without it the same way you COULD technically not have a car. It is possible, but very, very limiting. And I would argue that not having a car now is way more forgiving than not having a cell and that is saying something.

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

#279
I wish there was a serious conversation on how a browser can be productivized and make actual profits. I think that model has the best chances of working out over the long-term in guarding user's privacy - at least for those users willing to pay for it.

Most (all?) companies which developed a browser have lax policies on data privacy. At most those are inline with major directives like GDPR. However, it's not in their best interest to protect / not leverage user data. So the real discussion should've been about the set of features that would attract a sufficiently large user base who would pay ~10$ per month subscription in order to make the model sustainable on the long-term.

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

#280

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?

[flagged]

Only €5 a month for being tracked by 'the government'?
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