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Firefox 59 to strip path information from referrer values for 3rd parties

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox 59 to strip path information from referrer values for 3rd parties

#132

Or, you could have chosen to not break the RefControl extension, that did this and a lot more.

See https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/smart-referer...

Thanks, but this doesn't appear to offer equivalent features. RefControl allowed a default action overlaid by siste (pattern) specific overrides.

One could block refer(r)er altogether, and then adjust on a site/resource basis as needed.

There is one current web extension compatible extension that purports to do this, but when I tried it, it didn't want to cooperate with my configuration, despite adjustments. Further, it sucked Discus comments into its local configuration dialog/page, something that I find... sucks.

Finally, it wasn't open-source and didn't have a well-known provinance. All this didn't leave me feeling too confident in it.

P.S. uMatrix is supposed to provide layers of referrer control, but I haven't made the effort yet to switch over to it including switching some of my other points of configuration to use it instead.

Re: Firefox 59 to strip path information from referrer values for 3rd parties

#133
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's great from a marketer's point of view. From a consumer's point of view, I don't want you to know where I came from. I don't really care if it's useful to you. It's the difference between pleasing marketers vs pleasing users. Firefox chose wisely

Good marketing does please users by delivering them products tailored to them that they may have never knew even existed.

Then ask the users from which page they came from, I'm sure they'll be happy to do that so that they can know about those great products.

Re: Firefox 59 to strip path information from referrer values for 3rd parties

#136
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/meh/smart-referer Configurable referer behavior, including whitelist.

uMatrix also has a similar feature, among many others (request blocking by type, cookie and cache management, etc...) https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

[deleted]

Re: Firefox 59 to strip path information from referrer values for 3rd parties

#137
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question was for reasons to __not__ remove them.

And those are all answers...?

They want to know reasons why a user would want to keep the referrer, not the asshole that is tracking them.

Re: Firefox 59 to strip path information from referrer values for 3rd parties

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some news websites that blocks private browsing[1]. Private browsing is a method of bypass the paywall, so they they make a private-browsing-wall. 1: https://imgur.com/a/gXEtl

What is the current mechanism for them to know that you are in private browsing mode?

Websites can use IndexedDB to test for PBM. Firefox and Edge don't support IndexedDB in PBM. Chrome supports it using a temporary database.

Re: Firefox 59 to strip path information from referrer values for 3rd parties

#139
post #90

As someone that digs in this data for a living, personally strongly believe this should be on by default for all browsing. The example they give is an insanely bad design for healthcare.gov and I would absolutely not want to find that type of data in my analytics telemetry. It is very useful to know where your traffic is coming from, but that’s usually viewed at a higher level than the querystring params being shown.…

Yes it's great from a marketer's point of view. From a consumer's point of view, I don't want you to know where I came from. I don't really care if it's useful to you. It's the difference between pleasing marketers vs pleasing users. Firefox chose wisely

You seem to be arguing back, but this user was agreeing with you, saying this behavior should be for all browsing, not just "private" browsing.

Re: Firefox 59 to strip path information from referrer values for 3rd parties

#140
post #139
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's great from a marketer's point of view. From a consumer's point of view, I don't want you to know where I came from. I don't really care if it's useful to you. It's the difference between pleasing marketers vs pleasing users. Firefox chose wisely

You seem to be arguing back, but this user was agreeing with you, saying this behavior should be for all browsing, not just "private" browsing.

Thanks for this comment, I initially misread their comment as well. I guess that speaks to how highly I think of people in that industry :P
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