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HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

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Re: HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

#21

Post by ClassicFarris »

chimeracoder wrote: post #6

I have to say, I don't really care much for this, and I'm surprised to see it coming from Mozilla. "Prefer:Safe" is rather vague-sounding. I was expecting something about incorporating something like "HTTPS Everywhere" into Firefox. I understand the appeal of something to prevent kids from stumbling across porn or violence online, but let's not muddy words like "trust" (which mean something very different when talkin…

I agree… If this is only done when, Parental Controls, are enable from the OS level. Then a:

"parental-control:enabled" header would make more sense, right?

Re: HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

#22

Post by indeyets »

rurounijones wrote: post #19
indeyets wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand. This is a feature for 5-6yo, not for 11-12yo

[Citation Needed] Spec makes no mention of age groups this is supposed to be used for aside from "children".

It is a matter of common sense. You can't reasonably control internet usage of teenager (and probably shouldn't). While 5yo is an avid user YouTube and google and it is a good idea to filter things they can get to

Re: HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

#23

Post by rurounijones »

indeyets wrote: post #22
rurounijones wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Citation Needed] Spec makes no mention of age groups this is supposed to be used for aside from "children".

It is a matter of common sense. You can't reasonably control internet usage of teenager (and probably shouldn't). While 5yo is an avid user YouTube and google and it is a good idea to filter things they can get to

You cannot try and refute an argument based on something that is not in the spec and is "common sense" since "common sense" is not a defined value for a spec that has global implications.

Re: HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

#24

Post by indeyets »

rurounijones wrote: post #23
indeyets wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a matter of common sense. You can't reasonably control internet usage of teenager (and probably shouldn't). While 5yo is an avid user YouTube and google and it is a good idea to filter things they can get to

You cannot try and refute an argument based on something that is not in the spec and is "common sense" since "common sense" is not a defined value for a spec that has global implications.

Spec shouldn't define what's good and what's not for your children. That's something for parent to decide. Spec defines a "tool" which can be used by parent who thinks it makes sense for them

Re: HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

#25

Post by darklajid »

Soooo.. This is sending "Hey, this is a kid on a restricted machine" to all servers now?

I mean I fail to understand the original idea, obviously. It makes no sense to me. But I question the value of the above - basically now the server can _just as easily_ do crap with that information. You can now identify minors (using that feature). Beautiful.

The server operators cannot decide what 'parental control' would mean for parents, they cannot decide what is ~okay~ or what isn't. Referencing a random US regulation/law (COPPA?) in a discussion about international traffic, international browser products seems crazy.

If you want to prevent your kids from accessing 'stuff', make sure that 'stuff' is filtered on their machine or better on the edge of your network. Don't believe that random guys on the net will correctly guess what you find questionable content for kids and hide it, because .. your kid's browser sent a friendly "My parents didn't allow me to see unspecified things" header.

Edit: I reread that thing over and over again. Something else that utterly blows my mind is this:

Users won’t find any UI in Firefox to enable or disable Prefer:Safe, which becomes one less thing for kids to try to circumvent to disable this control.

Newsflash: That includes the parents. Unless that is utterly misleading (or my English as a second language parser fails) this means that I, as a parent [1], can NOT

- activate parental control features that are somehow detected by Fx

- opt out of that idiotic header that announces decisions from my private household to each and every server, starting with Google for example

1: Hypothetical example. While I've got two kids, but both are too young to operate a computer yet and I probably won't buy into standard 'parental control' solutions anyway.

Re: HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

#26

Post by theon144 »

mperham wrote: post #7

"Won't someone think of the children?" comes to the HTTP standard. Seriously though, this seems totally reasonable although "safe" does seem like an odd word choice. Maybe "modest" instead?

I'm thinking it's in the same category as "Safe For Work" and "Not Safe For Work".

But yeah, I expected a HTTP header that would, say, redirect to an encrypted version of the webpage, sort of like HTTPS Everywhere, but on the browser-server level.

Re: HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

#27

Post by leni536 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #17

Just wtf is this. Mozilla now jumping on the "omigod teh childr0n" bandwagon, too? Any reasonably educated child can easily disable all of these "safety features" (e.g. boot the machine at night from USB stick...). These "features" are nothing but placebos for parents too incompetent to educate their children.

>(e.g. boot the machine at night from USB stick...) Well it does not work, if I use a transparent proxy at home which injects "Prefer: Safe" in every HTTP request header.

Re: HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

#28

Post by icebraining »

narsil wrote: post #16

It's up to content providers to honor the header. I can't expect that to happen very easily when explicit content is involved, although the avenues to find that content (such as Google) might be amenable.

I can't expect that to happen very easily when explicit content is involved

Why not? Porn sites aren't interested in appearing to kids, which are unlikely to pay for their stay.

Re: HTTP "Prefer:Safe" – Making Online Safety Simpler in Firefox

#30

Post by icebraining »

mschuster91 wrote: post #17

Just wtf is this. Mozilla now jumping on the "omigod teh childr0n" bandwagon, too? Any reasonably educated child can easily disable all of these "safety features" (e.g. boot the machine at night from USB stick...). These "features" are nothing but placebos for parents too incompetent to educate their children.

So parents can sleep easily and kids learn how to boot machines from live USB distros? Sounds like a win-win to me.
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