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Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

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Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#61

Post by vosper »

moxie wrote: post #45
chewxy wrote: post #6

I don't really like this. I work in the advertising industry and retargeting is honestly one of the most exciting things to come out. Sure there are ways of cookieless retargeting, but it is a hassle. I mean, everyone's heard of Samy's Evercookie right? Then there are TCP stack signatures, and other companies like a few European DSPs that use cookieless tracking to track a person (IMO it's quite easy to use a GET pix…

I'm interested in the culture implications of your willingness to comment on a story like this and openly admit that you work in this area of the advertising (surveillance?) industry. Certainly, I don't think anyone would feel comfortable commenting on a story about SPAM mitigation techniques (without using a throwaway account) with text like "This sucks, I'm a spammer, and I'm really excited about it. Don't like SPA…

The company I work for allows targeting of advertisements based on the video content on a page. We do track users by dropping a cookie (so that we can calculate GRPs) but make no attempt to identify or behaviourally target users - we don't believe either are very effective for brand-building, which is our target market; it's about having your brand associated with certain content, not patterns of browsing.

A lot of people at work use AdBlock - even the operations people who spend a lot of their time looking at (and for) ad-laden pages will often have one browser with and another without, or will browse in Incognito mode when they need to see ads.

I've long found it a bit ironic...

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#62

Post by zxtang »

melvinram wrote: post #12
_delirium wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an internet user , retargeting is honestly one of my #1 targets. I find it super-creepy that some websites show me things based on other websites I visit, and I want a way to stop it.

Would you rather see ads for things that are completely irrelevant? Relevance requires data. Edit: I do believe the user should have more control over what companies are allowed to retarget with an easy opt out mechanism implemented by every ad network as well as a way to limit the frequency. I've experience companies going WAY overboard on their retargeting and it feels stalker-ish.

Many ad networks[1] do already provide an opt out mechanism. You look for a blue icon[2] in the corner of the ad, which if you click it should take you to an opt out page.

I dug a bit further, and also found this: http://www.aboutads.info/choices/ which purports to allow you to opt out from any or all of the participating companies from that page.

[1]: http://www.aboutads.info/participating [2]: http://www.aboutads.info/sites/default/files/page_img/icon_e...

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#63

Post by Encosia »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #48

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3488893&cid=4299... Uh oh. Any site that you visit even once can give you a cookie and suddenly become immune to third-party blocking.

That's actually a pretty elegant solution to the issues that most of Firefox's userbase would encounter if all third-party cookies were blocked (e.g. not being able to log in with or share via their Twitter and Facebooks accounts). How often do real users, particularly the ones who are unaware that cross-site tracking is even going on, visit domains like doubleclick.net or googleads.g.doubleclick.net?

For comparison, I block third-party cookies in Chrome and doubt that most users would be able to navigate the process of understanding when that breaks features on sites and then resolving the issue by selectively allowing the impacted domains. So, I think that's a positive feature in Firefox's (soon-to-be) implementation.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#64

Post by splicer »

melvinram wrote: post #12
_delirium wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an internet user , retargeting is honestly one of my #1 targets. I find it super-creepy that some websites show me things based on other websites I visit, and I want a way to stop it.

Would you rather see ads for things that are completely irrelevant? Relevance requires data. Edit: I do believe the user should have more control over what companies are allowed to retarget with an easy opt out mechanism implemented by every ad network as well as a way to limit the frequency. I've experience companies going WAY overboard on their retargeting and it feels stalker-ish.

> Would you rather see ads for things that are completely irrelevant?

Yes. For instance, I don't mind seeing pizza commercials because I don't like cheese.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#66

Post by Flenser »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

I blocked third party cookies in Chrome for awhile and finally gave up. It broke a surprising number of things, particularly Disqus embeds. Also the Instapaper bookmarklet although I admit that's a nerdy special case. Hopefully Firefox will have a way to let the user enable the few places where third party cookies are desired. That's a hard user interaction to get right. (Disqus apparently now works without third par…

Hopefully Firefox will have a way to let the user enable the few places where third party cookies are desired

They do. The title of the bug is "Block cookies from sites I haven't visited" and the blog post[1] explains that any site with 1st party cookies can set 3rd party cookies on other sites. Apparently this is how Safari works too.

[1]http://webpolicy.org/2013/02/22/the-new-firefox-cookie-polic...

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#67

Post by RobAtticus »

melvinram wrote: post #46
alan_cx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short, yes. It never bothered me that TV didnt target me. Same on the web.

It may not bother you but it does bother most of America. They use DVRs and skips ads whenever possible.

Or, people prefer to see no ads at all because they are more interested in the show they are watching than any ad, relevant or not.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#68

Post by Kylekramer »

cpeterso wrote: post #50
cft wrote: post #34

I cannot fully rationalize it, but I intuitively feel that this "holier than thee" Mozialla's approach will ultimately contribute to Firefox's demise.

Safari already uses this cookie policy.

While I don't agree that this is indictive of Firefox's demise, saying "fourth place browser does it" is hardly a compelling counterpoint.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#69

Post by Encosia »

chrisblackwell wrote: post #57
NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

I blocked third party cookies in Chrome for awhile and finally gave up. It broke a surprising number of things, particularly Disqus embeds. Also the Instapaper bookmarklet although I admit that's a nerdy special case. Hopefully Firefox will have a way to let the user enable the few places where third party cookies are desired. That's a hard user interaction to get right. (Disqus apparently now works without third par…

To get sites like Disqus working while blocking third party cookies, just set an exception. I set exceptions for sites like google.com, disqus.com and evernote.com

Same here. I've been blocking third-party cookies in Chrome since the option was available, and have built up a list of exceptions that I'm comfortable with. I don't think it's reasonable that your average user would be able to figure that out though. Usually, it's not obvious at all that third-party cookie blocking is even responsible for feature breakage in the first place.

Re: Firefox Will Soon Block Third-Party Cookies

#70

Post by DanielN »

jacquesm wrote: post #2

Excellent. Now we need to block third party javascript and then we have a chance at a more secure web. After all, any third party javascript could be done by an underwater call between the server and the provider of the service.

There is plenty of third party javascript that is not at all predatory. Pretty much all analytics services, Olark and other similar customer outreach services, A/B testing suites. There is far more of a push to create new more secure avenues for third party js (namely cors and websockets) to exist than there are efforts to eliminate it.

I'm curious how this change will effect services like optimizely that rely on third party cookies to prevent tests being run on the same users multiple times.

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