Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center • Hacker News Board

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#191

Post by r00fus » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 11:32 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #149

ric2b wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the days (or years) of uBlock Origin seem to be numbered because of the approach proposed by Chrome (called Manifest V3) to prevent extensions from modifying network requests Numbered on Chrome, you mean.

Exactly. The only thing I use Chrome for is Google stuff (GSuite, some YouTube). Everything else: firefox.

GSuite has been getting better in FF. I used to have major issues with GSites (new) but now I can leave FF open for week+ without crashes or spinning if GSites tabs are open.

I use Chrome mostly to edit the GSites or present GSlides in full screen (in FF it still shows the window chrome in fullscreen).

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#192

Post by rubyfan » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 12:00 AM UTC

floatboth wrote: post #94

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

That particular example is just extremely odd because… well, the business model of the utilities whose bills you pay (nor the bank's) shouldn't be based on advertising?? Maybe it's just a pile of web development fail, using 3rd party cookies for no good reason..

What I usually see if just poorly implemented tagging. For example, if Google Analytics javascript breaks then so do the links I want to click. I’ve seen it on my 529 plan website and in other places. I suppose tracking blockers could forge GA and other javascript objects to avoid this but what a battle this becomes.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#193

Post by m463 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:20 AM UTC

nolok wrote: post #152

akerro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have piwik instead GA 2-5 years ago, according to piwik my website had 23% more visitors than on GA. https://matomo.org/

> according to piwik my website had 23% more visitors than on GA A fair share of that is probably because GA is much better at identifying the same user across multiple browsers / devices. If they identify two browsers as the same person on site A, they can know they're the same person on site B, even if site B on its own doesn't have enough to figure it out (so piwik can't know it).

or because GA is a well-known static target for blocking.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#194

Post by m463 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

Gondolin wrote: post #71

It would be nice to know the priority of blocking elements between firefox default anti-tracker list, ublock origin, and privacy badger. When I see a tracker hit ublock origin does it mean that it bypassed firefox anti-tracker blocking, or is it the reverse? Having three anti-trackers installed is also a bit inconvenient when this breaks a site, I have to disable each one successively to try to make it work again...

I use uMatrix (same folks as ublock origin) and I've noticed if you go into reader mode, some things seem to be unblocked.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#195

Post by m463 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

lprd wrote: post #25

This is great! On another note, I'm wondering when I can remove uBlock Origin?

I would switch to uMatrix (more detailed than ublock origin, by the same folks) where you can clearly see what sites are referenced and what kinds of things they are doing.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#196

Post by BurningFrog » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

I don't want to sound naive, but... I wonder how much of this might be innocent bugs because developers just don't test the site on this browser configuration?

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#197

Post by elliekelly » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 2:21 AM UTC

c3534l wrote: post #70

svnpenn wrote: post #43

Honestly its getting out of hand. I have everything blocked I can think of [1], and even browsing in private mode, I still sometimes get the "recommended for you" on YouTube. Stop invading my privacy. [1] https://cup.github.io/rosso/youtube

I looked up some DevOps stuff on reddit through a proxy with adblockers in private mode and all of a sudden my front page was filled with posts about depression, men asking advice about how to talk to women, and advice about getting a job and moving out of your parents house. These were based on sessions cookies, but I was still kinda offended it pegged me as a sad loser just because I wanted to know more about NGINX…

> These were based on sessions cookies, but I was still kinda offended it pegged me as a sad loser just because I wanted to know more about NGINX and Heroku.

The same thing happened to me except I'm a cis woman and my front page was filled with transgender posts/subs. Reddit seemed to conclude that the only reason I could possibly be interested in DevOps is because I'm actually be a man.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#198

Post by johnisgood » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 2:49 AM UTC

daedalus_j wrote: post #110

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is exactly what happens when you use a VPN. Only services like primevideo and Netflix bother to detect VPNs and force you to get off, 99% of the web treats you like a regular user, but with an insane diversity of interests.

That's becoming less and less true. For example, the wiki.debian.org blocks users of (at least) privateinternetaccess VPN. (You get a 403 forbidden. This doesn't happen when I use my personal VPN routed out through a VPS provider, only through PIA.) I have encountered this with various other sites as well, both outright blocks and degraded experience. Frustrating. Although I don't really trust VPN providers, I trust…

Slightly off-topic but I visited Arch Linux's forum with Tor and it says I have been banned with the reason: "Never come back". I wonder if they were referring to Tor users in general.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#199

Post by rasz » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 5:09 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #188

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

Well, rejoice. Now that the set of people for whom this breaks got expanded from "you" to "20% of everybody", they will likely fix the problem.

"20% of everybody" where everybody is somewhere between 4 and 9 percent.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#200

Post by greendude29 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 6:43 AM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

That's really not a good excuse.

Doing the right thing should be a much greater desire than minor inconveniences.

Are there other reasons you don't like FFX or prefer other browsers?