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Firefox search update

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Re: Firefox search update

#81

Post by autoexec »

unethical_ban wrote: post #55
SllX wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy first is just not collecting the data. Everything else is just a compromise and an excuse.

Do you believe there is no utility in knowledge? Do you believe absolutism is the only philosophy for privacy? I think telemetry and the data software collects can help with usability, design, and product enhancement and that it's very likely this can be done to some extent without harming privacy.

> I think telemetry and the data software collects can help with usability, design, and product enhancement

It can, but that's too often little more than a justification to take as much data as possible much of which is misused. In this case, what a person searches for on the internet isn't helping one bit with "usability, design, and product enhancement"

Re: Firefox search update

#82

Post by salawat »

stevenicr wrote: post #69
dylan604 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a problem if the server side is tracking metrics on what queries are being made. When it becomes a problem is trying to associate the queries based on a single user regardless on anonymization attempts. Of course there's no money in that.

Wasn't like 15? years ago with the AOL search data anonymized release that people found multiple ways to connect dots to whittle it down to just one person or a small subset of people? Wasn't this also shown with anonymized taxi-cab data (released in NY?) many moons ago? Would it not be possible with knowing that you are tracking this data to funnel people into doing searches in a way that would reveal things? Direct…

Anonymization is effectively not achievable. Limited anonymoty may be possible within the scope of a particular dataset, but all it yakes is one enrichment pipeline to strip that all away. If you don't think that's what places like insurers do on a regular basis, you're a fool.

Re: Firefox search update

#83

Post by fifteen1506 »

beretguy wrote: post #68

I’d rather they make Firefox subscription based. I’d rather pay $5 a month and have no ads or tracking of any kind. They can even run a separate fork of Firefox or something for this purpose. If Firefox goes down Google will lock internet behind a DRM and we gonna need another rms or Torvalds to deliver us from this hell. Can you imagine a world without Linux, with Windows and Mac pretty much the only mainstream alte…

No subscription for me tyvm.

I do donate on average €2/month for various projects, though.

Re: Firefox search update

#84

Post by lagniappe »

mrob wrote: post #78

I don't even want my browser to support searching from the browser UI. If I want to send information to Google I'll visit their web page directly. I don't want to do it by a misclick. It's surprisingly difficult to disable searching from the browser UI in Firefox. Firefox insists you have at least one search engine enabled at all times. The best option I know of is to set the undocumented setting "browser.urlbar.upda…

>You can then add a fake search engine on localhost that will always fail, and set this to be the only enabled search engine.

YES! My friend, you have found my holy grail, thank you

Re: Firefox search update

#85

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #13

> We’re ramping up our efforts to enhance search experience by developing new features like Firefox Suggest, which provides recommended online content that corresponds to queries. So, they need to collect data about my search habits so they can show me relevant ads in Firefox Suggest? At this point why do I even bother using Firefox? I seriously might as well just use Chromium.

You can trivially opt out of both the telemetry and the suggestions.

Re: Firefox search update

#86

Post by SoftTalker »

mtmail wrote: post #4

"list of categories we’re using: animals, arts, autos, business, career, education, fashion, finance, food, government, health, hobbies, home, inconclusive, news, real estate, society, sports, tech and travel." "This helps us [...] providing a browsing experience that is more tailored to your needs" How would my browsing experience be different in any of the categories? Unless it's about showing me ads yet again.

It's about showing you ads.

Re: Firefox search update

#87

Post by salawat »

unethical_ban wrote: post #55
SllX wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy first is just not collecting the data. Everything else is just a compromise and an excuse.

Do you believe there is no utility in knowledge? Do you believe absolutism is the only philosophy for privacy? I think telemetry and the data software collects can help with usability, design, and product enhancement and that it's very likely this can be done to some extent without harming privacy.

You know what? That's fine and good. Ask users to opt-in, and respect the wishes of those who opt-out.

Anything short of that is you ignoring the concept of consent entirely, and doing whatever mental gymnastics you can to feel fine with doing so.

Re: Firefox search update

#89

Post by autoexec »

MattGaiser wrote: post #44
CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #10

> Innovation and privacy go hand in hand here at Mozilla [...] Rest assured, the way we gather these insights will always put user privacy first [...] Remember, you can always opt out of sending any technical or usage data to Firefox Wouldn't actually putting "user privacy first" lead to the conclusion that gathering insights like this shouldn't be done on a opt-out basis and instead be opt-in, at the very least? Per…

> Personally, I'd see "privacy first" as not needing to sell any user data at all, in the first place, but we're clearly beyond that already. That requires users paying, something often suggested, but I have not heard of working commercially for anything where a competitor can supply a user as the product alternate. Privacy just isn't that valuable.

> That requires users paying

That's clearly not a solution either since expensive products and services with subscriptions still routinely collect every scrap of data they can get their hands on. Companies will always make more money by violating your privacy while also charging you as much as they possibly can so that's exactly what they do.

Re: Firefox search update

#90

Post by ziddoap »

stevenicr wrote: post #69
dylan604 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a problem if the server side is tracking metrics on what queries are being made. When it becomes a problem is trying to associate the queries based on a single user regardless on anonymization attempts. Of course there's no money in that.

Wasn't like 15? years ago with the AOL search data anonymized release that people found multiple ways to connect dots to whittle it down to just one person or a small subset of people? Wasn't this also shown with anonymized taxi-cab data (released in NY?) many moons ago? Would it not be possible with knowing that you are tracking this data to funnel people into doing searches in a way that would reveal things? Direct…

Yes, this is a process called (fittingly) data re-identification.

There are many papers on the topic. One of the more popular examples is "Robust De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets" using the Netflix Prize Dataset.

>We apply our de-anonymization methodology to the Netflix Prize dataset, which contains anonymous movie ratings of 500,000 subscribers of Netflix, the world’s largest online movie rental service. We demonstrate that an adversary who knows only a little bit about an individual subscriber can easily identify this subscriber’s record in the dataset. Using the Internet Movie Database as the source of background knowledge, we successfully identified the Netflix records of known users, uncovering their apparent political preferences and other potentially sensitive information.

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak08netflix.pdf

This paper speaks about AOL in 2006, which I think you are referring to: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

However, it should be noted that the AOL dataset had a bunch of stuff that was identifiable by its nature (e.g. people searching for their full names or address), and the dataset wasn't scrubbed of those searches. So the controversy wasn't just re-identification of data, but also just a bunch of already-identifiable data.

>Anonymized data is not always anonymous

More importantly, in my opinion, is that data that is anonymous now is just one other dataset away from not being anonymous anymore.

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