Let's be honest here. In many people's opinion (including my own) firefox has gotten worse since they started all this telemetry stuff. Supporting this, marketshare has also been dropping. So, I don't think they know how to properly interpret the data they are getting. Either that or the data is so messy as to be worse than useless.
Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
371–380 of 450 posts
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
My concern is that Mozilla has been on a "Sure, you can provide feedback, but we're gonna do it anyway" streak. Pocket is quite unnecessary, and would be a great candidate for an add-on. I don't know their reasons for bringing it in, but it seems pretty cut and dry that there were a lot of users who didn't want it even after it was cleaned up, and Mozilla ignored them.
I think you're probably just underestimating how popular it is. Tagging activity tripled from 2012 to 2017. They had 10 million monthly active users in February when Firefox bought them.
Does Mozilla look at any of the other top add-ons and implement them natively in the browser? Why was Pocket so special?
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#373Mozilla: you do not have a need to know for that information.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a couple different reasons crash reports aren't sufficient: 1. Crash reports only report crashes. We need also want to see perf issues like GC and paint jank, etc. 2. Crash reports don't sample the general population, so statistically the information is less useful. If we get a perf issue, it's very important to know whether that issue is suffered by 10% of the users in general pop, or 0.5% of users in gene…
1. Then why not add a "perf reporter" and a "paint jank" reporter? "Hi! It seems that this page is loading unusually slowly, would you mind submitting more details to help Mozilla diagnose the issue? Click `More Details` to see exactly what information is being reported." You even already have a good entry point for one of these - the "unresponsive script" dialog. Personally, I'm far more likely to send you this data…
+1
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#375The single largest advantage of Firefox over other browsers is that despite all odds and occasional missteps they managed to respect users' desire for complete privacy. For Firefox we want to better understand how people use our product to improve their experience. Sure thing. But the fact that they are unhappy that some (many?) people are opting-out from the data collection is merely a sign that they don't want to u…
> No phoning home. No telemetry, no data collection. No "light" version of the same, no "privacy-respecting" what-have-you. No means No. Nada. Zilch. Try and shovel any of that down people's throats and the idea of Firefox as a user's browser will die. https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785 And now this :-( I have been using Firefox since before it was called that. I develop my apps in it, even though…
Even worse, in that discussion, it appears that there's a backdoor built into Firefox so that WebExtension-based ad blockers can't block Google Analytics. Only old-style add-ons can block it.
"It's as if the order to block/redirect the network request was silently ignored by the webRequest API, and this causes webext-based blockers to incorrectly and misleadingly report to users what is really happening internally."[1]
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems your premise is wrong since Firefox's market share has been steadily declining for years. Privacy apparently doesn't matter to that many people.
I'm sure losing the only advantage over technically superior Chrome is going to help their market share!
Losing a major technical disadvantage will probably help.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What do you mean, a URL must not contain PHI? You can't prevent a non-tech minded person from submitting questions about their health to any text field linked to a form with a GET method. You can't, but that can't be part of Mozilla's threat model, and it's not relevant here anyway because Mozilla isn't collecting it . And even if they were, that's not considered PHI legally. You are free to type any information ab…
> This information is not legally considered PHI. Do you have any sources that go into more detail? When I've worked on PII in analytics, even TLDs were treated carefully. (obviously not the same from a legal perspective...)
> Do you have any sources that go into more detail? When I've worked on PII in analytics...
PHI is an incredibly well-defined term legally and is not equivalent to PII. Some things that constitute PHI actually wouldn't qualify as PII.
There are a lot of resources that explain HIPAA in great detail; if you want to know the specifics like here, you have to read the bill and the case law itself.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing is, I think, that the users that opt-in to the collection aren't "a random sample", but rather "a sample of users biased towards certain profiles".
And how did they find that out?
In part, AFAIA (but I've only limited statistical training) this is a well known feature of voluntary datasets. But IIRC they've also done user studies and compared those.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
If user privacy is paramount, then there are multiple ways to lower the privacy incursion that is caused by the data collection. Only collect top-level domains of Alexa rank 1k. That users are using a highway is less sensitive than a specific street where there only exists 5 homes, and it reassures users that private domain names won't be leaked. Send the data through Tor. That way you only get the data about the bro…
> there are multiple ways to lower the privacy incursion that is caused by the data collection The OP actually discusses a very interesting method for doing exactly that using differential privacy techniques. I personally think that's a very good compromise for this use-case.
From the OP, one suggestion is to collect "top-level+1 domains". This don't solve the issue of a person going to "starting_a_union_inside_company_x.com", which would be a top-level domain. Niche domains don't have a large number of users and as such the users can be trivial to deanonymized. It is also rather common that domain name servers have a private and public side. Firefox could easily become a vector of leaking from the private side, possible revealing sensitive information such as unannounced products.
From the OP we can also see that they don't intend to store IP-addresses, but it will always be possible. By using a anonymity network they can reassure the user and at the same time eliminate the risk that a malicious actor in the future will silently manage to start tracking information about which websites users go to. Additional benefits is that Mozilla also won't become a target for governments, a risk that no organization can ever be safe from if they start gather information about users.
It is not enough to strike a reasonable balance between the privacy-for-users and actionable-information-for-developers. You also need to find a balance between risk management and time spent on reducing risks. What I propose primarily is that they spend a bit more time on reducing risks, as that would benefit everyone.
Re: Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
"This is a difficult compromise to make" Then don't make the compromise. As others have expressed here the reason few people opt in to data collection may be because they have chosen to use a Web browser that does not mandate the collection of data. I'm assuming there will always be an opt out which I shall add to my list of things I have to do when installing Firefox.
> I'm assuming there will always be an opt out which I shall add to my list of things I have to do when installing Firefox. There will be. Sorry for the hassle :(
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