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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

#311

Post by sebazzz »

autoexec wrote: post #125
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…

> Regarding analytics, I believe browsers should take user's side and do not cooperate with marketing companies Browsers were supposed to act as agents working for the user. User-agents. These days it's getting harder and harder to find a browser that doesn't work for an ad company at the expense of the user. Chrome's entire reason for existing is data collection. Firefox can, for now at least, be hardened to work fo…

> Firefox can, for now at least, be hardened to work for the user (and prevent a lot of fingerprinting), but Mozilla is an ad-tech company too now.

That still isn’t a great reason to then keep using the even worse option, being Chrome, instead.

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

#312

Post by HappMacDonald »

autoexec wrote: post #126
paulryanrogers wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard that fake data, like from AdNausium, just becomes noise as the advertisers know the patterns to filter them out. Assuming that's true, it seems to waste everyone's time and bits to fake it instead of just not answering or a minimal denial.

> I've heard that fake data, like from AdNausium, just becomes noise as the advertisers know the patterns to filter them out. It's actually much worse. That fake data is dangerous because data brokers don't really care how accurate their data is. Even the fake data AdNausium stuffs into your dossier will be used against you eventually, just like the real data will be. If you get turned down for a job, or your health…

> That fake data is dangerous because data brokers don't really care how accurate their data is.

This makes me think that people could make bank by doing nothing at all but generating 100% fabricated data to sell to brokers then. Why bother even collecting it, just have some GPT clone hallucinate some gigabytes of formatted BS. xD

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

#313

Post by chipdart »

autoexec wrote: post #212
rpastuszak wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Mozilla is an ad-tech company too now. The recent events related to FF are not that much of a shift, considering that Google pays $20B per annum to its (technically non-ad tech) partners, then 85% of Mozilla's total revenue comes from its partnership with Google . That ship had sailed long time ago. https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+C...

Firefox really has been going downhill for a long time. Forcing Pocket into the browser, the ad infested new tab page, telemetry, making user accounts a thing, force installing TV show promotions, etc. What they haven't done before is spend a fortune buying up an ad-tech start up. They barely even bother to maintain a pretense that they care about Firefox users. They basically came right out and said "We know that us…

> Firefox really has been going downhill for a long time. Forcing Pocket into the browser, the ad infested new tab page, telemetry, making user accounts a thing, force installing TV show promotions, etc.

It might be just me, but I find Pocket quite useful and interesting. That, and syncing user accounts across browsers. It's extremely convenient to just stash a link that you can later open while browsing the web on your browser or sitting at home with another laptop.

I guess you can try to make an argument about that being better served with extensions, but that would be missing the forest for the trees. Meaning, extensions are intended to provide third-partied with a convenient way to add custom features and behavior. That is just wasted effort if it's Firefox wanting to add a feature.

Also, you don't need to use any of that if you don't want to. No one forces you to. At most, it takes a couple of clicks to hide the toolbar button. Is that what you call "downhill"?

Frankly, this blend of criticism sounds like grasping at straws. Some people sound like all they want to do is complain about something, and proceed to work backwards to try to find something anything to complain about. This stance is particularly baffling when taking into consideration how god-awful Chrome and Edge are.

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

#314

Post by codedokode »

morjom wrote: post #306
codedokode wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I observed Firefox sending ECH extension in ClientHello, maybe I just enabled it in the settings, so Firefox supports ECH (on by default since version 119). However, virtually no servers support ECH now. Not Google, not Hackernews, not Cloudflare etc. This seems to be a not very good comparison, and it looks like it cherry-picks convenient for a certain browser points and ignores others. Look at "fingerprint protecti…

Fair points. Ill try to educate myself on this more. FWIW the about section says this: "Each privacy test examines whether the browser, on default settings, protects against a specific kind of data leak." The maintainer is a Brave employee and this is a project they were already doing before joining Brave. I'm hoping that they aren't manipulating it in favor of Brave. I sent those three options as a feature request.…

As for fingerprinting, there are more APIs that leak data allowing fingerprinting, what I mentioned were the most known APIs. Also, I looked at Brave Github and they seem to have counter-measures for some of those APIs to randomize results. So adding more tests could also be benefitial to Brave.

> Do you think the site is still useful in some capacity?

Well, it is better than nothing although it would be better if there were more tests regarding fingerprinting.

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

#315

Post by JohnFen »

ddtaylor wrote: post #294
JohnFen wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) the…

> is very much different from serving some kind of metadata to visitors that their browsers interpret.

Absolutely, but I wasn't positing some kind of metadata.

> Also the approval process existing does matter.

It can matter, but it often does not. I don't expect it to matter here because the big web players will not be denied their preferences.

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

#316

Post by pbhjpbhj »

heraldgeezer wrote: post #200
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox already has "vertical tabs" * from the Tree Style Tabs addon. Why not just support that? * side tabs, I would say, the tab is a horizontal extension of the page, so they're horizontal tabs, right?

Vertical tabs addons have been a thing for years yes. But it is clunky and does not work as well as the native implementation. Also the notion that Mozilla should "just support that" lol This is a thing the devs of Firefox should make and implement.

Supporting working open source implementations of software that are already part of your ecosystem, lol, crazy, right. /s

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

#317

Post by Yawrehto »

snowwrestler wrote: post #35
Yawrehto wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? That's odd. The typical zip code has a population of about ~9000. Dates of birth are about evenly distributed, so you'd still get about 24 people/birthday, or around 12 men or women per birthday per zip code.. I might be off by a fair amount in either direction, but I don't think I'd be twelve times off.

Dates of birth are not evenly distributed. To clarify: your date of birth includes the year. It’s more specific than your birthday, which we usually think of as just day & month.

Oh, ok, I didn't realize that the data included the year. Never mind, I don't know the US age distribution well enough to have any idea of how plausible it is; I withdraw my comment.

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

#318

Post by codedokode »

chgs wrote: post #218
dspillett wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the point of DoH is to take control of DNS from ISPs (and related middlemen) and give it back to site/service owners (so their settings are not overridden for whatever reason) and the end-user (so their habits are not as easy to disrupt or track at the ISP level). > but the one that bypasses the OS was forced by adtech monopolist in charge. Assuming by “adtech monopolist in charge” you mean Google, I don't think…

If it was implemented at an OS level and respected standard configuration then fine, DoH, DoT, whatever, I’m happy. However it wasn’t, and it doesn’t defer to the OS or the network. I can’t set a dhcp option on my network to tell my dozens of clients what dns server to use, I have to manually adjust each browser. I additionally get different reaults depending what I use, my browser will contact a different server tha…

> doesn’t defer to the OS or the network

First, you can disable encrypted DNS, second you can set up your own DNS server and setup browser to use it. And your own DNS server will respect DHCP config.

Personally I would like OS to completely ignore DHCP config (like proxy or DNS server address) because those features can be misused for malicious purposes.

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

#319

Post by heraldgeezer »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #316
heraldgeezer wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vertical tabs addons have been a thing for years yes. But it is clunky and does not work as well as the native implementation. Also the notion that Mozilla should "just support that" lol This is a thing the devs of Firefox should make and implement.

Supporting working open source implementations of software that are already part of your ecosystem, lol, crazy, right. /s

When have they supported an addon like that officially?

They are making their own solution for vertical tabs.

You are free to install addons.

What is the issue?

Don't just make these snipe driveby comments.

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

#320

Post by thisislife2 »

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

Look up papers on UPI - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface - it is heavily used for micro-transactions in India.

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