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Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

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Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#291

Post by matheusmoreira »

muratsu wrote: post #178
thayne wrote: post #174

This is a tough situation. Yes, this can, and will, be abused for tracking users across domains that they don't expect to be related. But there are also legitimate use cases for this. For example, consider the stackexchange family of sites. They are clearly related, have a unified branding, etc. but are on separate domains. On Firefox, which blocks third party cookies, I have to log in to each of those domains separa…

This reminds me how google conveniently made the switch to manifest v3 when there were legitimate use cases like adblockers. Sure, technically speaking v3 is more secure and that may be better for users but your comment just made me think the opposite is in motion here.

Nothing wrong with manifest v3. It's just that ad blocking is so important that it should be an exception to the whole thing. Ad blockers should be literally built into the browsers so that they have full access, only conflicts of interest stops this.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#292

Post by autoexec »

ineptech wrote: post #287
autoexec wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, the problem is that entire premise is deeply offensive. I do not want my browsing history being monitored, collected, sent to third parties, and sold to marketers in any form period. I do not want a browser using my data in any way to support surveillance capitalism. The implementation is just FLoC/Topics API all over again and it's still not compelling. The first kick in the teeth comes right at the star…

You're preaching to the choir, but even preaching needs to be truthful and I don't think calling Mozilla ad-tech or suggesting that it's just as bad as Google is remotely true. This is where "the perfect is the enemy of the good" comes from. I mean, what do we have now? Google and a bunch of middle-man ad techs are hoovering up everything they can get, including a crap-ton of stuff that browsers can't affect at all,…

> You're preaching to the choir, but even preaching needs to be truthful and I don't think calling Mozilla ad-tech or suggesting that it's just as bad as Google is remotely true.

Mozilla is literally an ad-tech company. They bought and now own an actual ad-tech start up, they are partnering with Facebook to develop and implement protocols like DAP, and they are currently working on turning firefox into an ad platform that will deliver reports of people's browsing history to marketers in exchange for money. In what way are they are not an ad-tech company exactly?

I'll admit that they aren't as bad as Google, but they're heading in that direction and they've also only just gotten into the ad-tech game. It took Google a long time to get as evil as they are now.

Rejecting firefox because of Mozilla's new role as an ad-tech company and their insistence on exploiting firefox users isn't the perfect becoming the enemy of the good. Surveillance capitalism isn't good. Maybe standing up for ourselves and our values by saying no to spying from Firefox will cause Mozilla to look to other options. Even if it doesn't, it will keep us from being exploited and tarnished by our participation in their decline.

I've been a firefox user from the very beginning. My first browser of choice was Netscape. I hate that the enshittification of firefox is here, but I won't ignore it any longer. We still have a few alternatives like librewolf that provide the benefits of firefox without the recent corruption, and there's some hope on the horizon with ladybird too. The internet is only in the sorry state it is now because we've conceded too much to advertisers. We need to start holding ourselves and the software/services we use to a higher standard or it's only going to get worse. If Mozilla suddenly wants to be a part of the problem, I'll leave them behind while I look for a new solution.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#293

Post by codedokode »

nine_k wrote: post #110
codedokode wrote: post #85

Have been using Firefox for a long time, no issues, though long ago when I had little memory, Chrome was using less of it. Firefox also has HTTPS-only mode, encrypted DNS without fallbacks, supports SOCKS and Encrypted Client Hello (although almost no website support it). However, it is better to just buy more memory (unless you are lucky to use Apple products). Regarding analytics, I believe browsers should take use…

BTW I don't understand the anti-tracking absolutism. I don't care about being profiled as long as the profile lands me in a group of thousands of people like me. Yes, I live in ${CITY}, identify as ${GEDNER}, am approximately ${AGE_RANGE} years old, run ${BROWSER} under set to ${LOCALE}. This does not allow to easily harm me. If it allows ad networks to target their ads, so be it, uBlock Origin still works well. But…

I don't want any of my data be collected without my permission and without a negotiated monetary compensation and expect that the browser is on my side here.

Also the data about you can be used to charge you a higher price. For example, if a company knows that the user is reading HN, and we know that people using HN (expect for me of course) all are mostly filthy rich Californian software engineers or enterpreneurs so they should have no problem with paying a little more.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#294

Post by ddtaylor »

JohnFen wrote: post #148
jahewson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the website itself does not get to declare this. There’s a master list that they have to submit their site to and go through an approval process. But as the article details, the contents of that preliminary list is already disconcerting. The whole “Google as the arbiter of all things ads” concept is a bust. But the alternative isn’t great either - today’s system of third party cookies allows for far worse. We nee…

> There’s a master list that they have to submit their site to and go through an approval process. How is that not the website declaring it? Approval processes are meaningless. > today’s system of third party cookies allows for far worse. That's why I want zero third party cookies.

> How is that not the website declaring it? Approval processes are meaningless.

Submitting your website to a list controlled by some arbitrary website on the Internet is very much different from serving some kind of metadata to visitors that their browsers interpret.

Also the approval process existing does matter. Under a normal situation when you serve some kind of metadata (like what sites you are "related" to) there is no "approval" process to who gets to serve this kind of metadata and who doesn't.

The tools to do this the right way exist in so many different ways.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#295

Post by ddtaylor »

thayne wrote: post #174

This is a tough situation. Yes, this can, and will, be abused for tracking users across domains that they don't expect to be related. But there are also legitimate use cases for this. For example, consider the stackexchange family of sites. They are clearly related, have a unified branding, etc. but are on separate domains. On Firefox, which blocks third party cookies, I have to log in to each of those domains separa…

> For example, consider the stackexchange family of sites. They are clearly related, have a unified branding, etc. but are on separate domains. On Firefox, which blocks third party cookies, I have to log in to each of those domains separately. I can't log in to stackoverflow.com, then go to superuser.com and already be logged in. That is a problem that First party sets would solve.

Other sites seem to handle this fine with redirects and cross-origin headers. Sure, at some point you land on "signin.foo.com", but from the user experience you were authenticated without having to sign in again.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#296

Post by ineptech »

autoexec wrote: post #292
ineptech wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're preaching to the choir, but even preaching needs to be truthful and I don't think calling Mozilla ad-tech or suggesting that it's just as bad as Google is remotely true. This is where "the perfect is the enemy of the good" comes from. I mean, what do we have now? Google and a bunch of middle-man ad techs are hoovering up everything they can get, including a crap-ton of stuff that browsers can't affect at all,…

> You're preaching to the choir, but even preaching needs to be truthful and I don't think calling Mozilla ad-tech or suggesting that it's just as bad as Google is remotely true. Mozilla is literally an ad-tech company. They bought and now own an actual ad-tech start up, they are partnering with Facebook to develop and implement protocols like DAP, and they are currently working on turning firefox into an ad platform…

What browser do you use?

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#297

Post by Sylamore »

unethical_ban wrote: post #259
autoexec wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which (for people not handing all of their DNS traffic over to google anyway) usually just means that their ISP can see their DNS traffic which is kind of a moot point because your ISP can see the domains you go to even with DoH. If somebody is on your local network capturing packets or they've cracked your wifi you've got bigger problems than your DNS leaking a list of domains. They'll also see the IP of every serve…

ISPs seeing the domains of user traffic is not a given. And DoH is a step toward mitigating that. People were setting their DNS resolver to custom values before DoH. I agree that DoH would ideally be enabled at the OS level, or that the browser flow would default to still checking host file before sending out the query.

Unless you are using an VPN, your ISP can see the IPs you are communicating with regardless of the hostnames associated with them and in turn resolve those back to hostnames or at least netblock owners.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#298

Post by ddtaylor »

thayne wrote: post #254
IMTDb wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can argue that it would be better for those sites to be subdomains of a single unified domain, but when the sites were created there wasn't any compelling reason to need to do that I can also argue that Safari and Firefox have been blocking third party cookies for years now. So stack overflow has had plenty of time to adapt and migrate to the "right" organisation. To me it look like either they care about allow…

Or, they do care, but not enough to spend the significant resources and opportunity costs to do something about it for the minority of users who don't use chrome. Of particular note, changing domains can really hurt SEO.

> for the minority of users who don't use chrome

Replace "Chrome" with "Internet Explorer" and we're back to 1999.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#299

Post by codedokode »

bad_user wrote: post #252
rpastuszak wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And of course they want to cater to advertisers because it is advertising that maintains the open web As someone who worked both on advertiser and publisher sides (incl. content monetisation): advertisers like to say that they support publishers and the open web, but in fact, they are keeping it hostage. We've had the means/tech to support publishers directly for years (I don't mean crypto). It's in the interest of…

> As someone who worked both on advertiser and publisher sides (incl. content monetisation): advertisers like to say that they support publishers and the open web, but in fact, they are keeping it hostage. I know what you're saying, I agree, as I worked (in the past) on advertising platforms as well, but both of those statements can be true at the same time. The open web was built on advertising, but the perverse inc…

> micro-transactions are not possible given the huge banking fees

Cryptocurrencies like Litecoin have low transaction fees (currently less than a cent). Apple somehow manages to sell apps that cost just several bucks.

Also, in Russia, a Fast Payment System allows transfers up to $1000/months without commission, however these terms are available only to personal transfers and not for business. But it shows that low-cost transfers are possible even in traditional banking system.

Re: Chrome is entrenching third-party cookies that will mislead users

#300

Post by autoexec »

ineptech wrote: post #296
autoexec wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're preaching to the choir, but even preaching needs to be truthful and I don't think calling Mozilla ad-tech or suggesting that it's just as bad as Google is remotely true. Mozilla is literally an ad-tech company. They bought and now own an actual ad-tech start up, they are partnering with Facebook to develop and implement protocols like DAP, and they are currently working on turning firefox into an ad platform…

What browser do you use?

Until they pulled this recent spying stuff I was a firefox user, but now I'm testing librewolf, zen browser, and brave. I might give Basilisk a try too. I'm also keeping an eye on ladybird but it looks like it isn't really ready yet.

Ultimately on the desktop I'll need something based on firefox because it can be hardened better than anything else I've seen and my work has me regularly dealing with some nasty websites.

I still have to find some options for mobile though.

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