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"Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

blog.privacyguides.org

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Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#3

Post by martin_a »

It's really hard to stick with Mozilla/Firefox due to things like these.

I updated my FF yesterday and at this point I make sure to check the settings for suddenly "opted-in" "features" I am not aware of. This one also was a big surprise.

If I want to get screwed and sold to the advertisement industry by my browser vendor, I'd simply use Chrome. So please stop it, Firefox.

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#4

Post by greatgib »

So sad to see that the Mozilla corporation completely lost its way.

I'm wondering if they are really surprised to have almost lost all of their market share when they go against their core values so easily...

The tldr that says it all:

   One Mozilla developer claimed that explaining PPA would be too challenging, so they had to opt users in by default.
...

   The way it works is that individual browsers report their behavior to a data aggregation server (operated by Mozilla), then that server reports the aggregated data to an advertiser's server. The "advertising network" only receives aggregated data with differential privacy, but the aggregation server still knows the behavior of individual browsers!

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#6

Post by out-of-ideas »

martin_a wrote: post #3

It's really hard to stick with Mozilla/Firefox due to things like these. I updated my FF yesterday and at this point I make sure to check the settings for suddenly "opted-in" "features" I am not aware of. This one also was a big surprise. If I want to get screwed and sold to the advertisement industry by my browser vendor, I'd simply use Chrome. So please stop it, Firefox.

https://librewolf.net/ - only a few tweaks to enable/disable to have sessions persist across quitting and re-opening

but - as with any software updates, us users always suffer in having to re-check over all options to see what things changed on us (if we're lucky and get an option)

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#8

Post by zahma »

out-of-ideas wrote: post #6
martin_a wrote: post #3

It's really hard to stick with Mozilla/Firefox due to things like these. I updated my FF yesterday and at this point I make sure to check the settings for suddenly "opted-in" "features" I am not aware of. This one also was a big surprise. If I want to get screwed and sold to the advertisement industry by my browser vendor, I'd simply use Chrome. So please stop it, Firefox.

https://librewolf.net/ - only a few tweaks to enable/disable to have sessions persist across quitting and re-opening but - as with any software updates, us users always suffer in having to re-check over all options to see what things changed on us (if we're lucky and get an option)

I recently installed LibreWolf to separate online lives, but I remain ignorant of what actually distinguishes FF and LW.

Also, to which tweaks were you referring?

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#9

Post by anticensor »

greatgib wrote: post #4

So sad to see that the Mozilla corporation completely lost its way. I'm wondering if they are really surprised to have almost lost all of their market share when they go against their core values so easily... The tldr that says it all: One Mozilla developer claimed that explaining PPA would be too challenging, so they had to opt users in by default. ... The way it works is that individual browsers report their behavi…

Yeah, why isn't the DP applied at the client side? It's not like a simple Gaussian shuffler is so computationally expensive.

Re: "Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

#10

Post by pleasecalllater »

I hope unchecking the setting really disables the feature. I have hard time trusting Mozilla now... or rather I should write "again".

On the other hand: there is a ticket [1] asking for container-based-extensions, so something like Grammarly (aka the keylogger) could work only inside a container. It's been there for years, nothing changes. Seems like people are not interested in this kind of privacy stuff.

The good news: the CEO salary is really nice...

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1497075

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