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Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

mstdn.social

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Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

#81

Post by account42 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #39
mrweasel wrote: post #8

I was looking at this when I upgraded and that setting does not need to be there. If it was off by default, no one would feel the need to locate that check box and enable it. So just turn it off, remove it from settings and yank the code. The language is even rather vague and Mozilla seems to good a long way to avoid explaining that this is the alternative Google has designed for Chrome to replace tracking via third…

It's better for a browser feature the user has some control over to be the implementation point for this than incentivizing site owners to come up with novel tracking strategies.

Except this is not how things work. All you are doing is giving the advertisers another tool to track you, it won't magically make them stop using all the other ones.

Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

#82

Post by lapcat »

doe_eyes wrote: post #30

The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad. The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. Op…

> I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad.

You mean online tracking, not advertising.

Advertising without tracking has existed for as long as commerce has existed. The elimination of tracking is not a threat to advertising. Historically, tracking is a very recent "innovation", an unwelcome one IMO.

Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

#83

Post by UweSchmidt »

PedroBatista wrote: post #69

I've been using Firefox for more than 20 years since the Phoenix days, even when it was cleary slower than Chrome (it still is but the diferences are minimal ) I'm not acting surprised, but I think it's more than time to start looking into a viable alternative. It's "Chromium" (?) still a thing? Do you guys know if there is a browser based on Firefox that doesn't have any of the BS Mozilla is putting into their brows…

Have you considered Brave? It's fresh and a litte different in varous ways.

Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

#84

Post by TekMol »

slightwinder wrote: post #80
TekMol wrote: post #59

More infos about it: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/privacy-preserving-attribution-for-advertising/ https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-experiment https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ppm-dap/ The gist of it is that Mozilla and ISRG now proxy the tracking data and give aggregated reports to advertisers. And that they handle the data in a way so that neither Mozilla nor ISRG alone can acces…

> The gist of it is that Mozilla and ISRG now proxy the tracking data and give aggregated reports to advertisers. So Mozilla becomes the treasure-guard? What prevents them from abusing or leaking the data in the future?

The way I read it is that:

1) The data is encrypted in a way that Mozilla can't encrypt it without the help of ISRG.

2) There is a way for ISRG to help Mozilla create aggregated data from the raw data without either of them being able to see the raw data in this process.

Maybe I'm wrong. Would be interesting to hear how 2 can be accomplished. Would have to be some crypto magic I have not yet heard about.

Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

#85

Post by KevinGlass »

JW_00000 wrote: post #46
michaelt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's be honest, ads and ad tracking is not going anywhere Sure they are - just install ublock origin. Even if you're OK with the snooping and the attention hijacking and the slow pageloads and the pictures of rotting teeth, plenty of malware has been delivered by inept ad networks. Frankly, I find it strange when someone doesn't block ads.

To play the devil's advocate: if everyone did that, there would be almost no more free websites. So much of the internet is paid for through ads.

You have no idea how I LONG for a return to that. I DEEPLY wish every single person would install an ad blocker. If ad supported slop went under that would leave us with just paid and passion projects, and we would be far better off for it.

Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

#86

Post by close04 »

account42 wrote: post #40
doe_eyes wrote: post #30

The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad. The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. Op…

> The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. It is strictly less privacy-preserving than not implementing this "feature" that has zero benefit to the user running the browser. At the very least it pings yet another third party, most likely it effectively leaks much more. > The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. I gues…

The worst part isn't mentioned here. I'm fine with making any tools available to the users. But enabling by default is a very different discussion.

This is not the kind of tool/setting that justifies having it auto-enabled, it's not "we auto-enabled MFA to protect your most critical data". Enabling it was not done for my benefit and it wasn't even made obvious in any way, I had to find out from internet discussions. It's my daily driver on all platforms and have nightly, beta, and stable channel installations. None gave me a hint of this extra enabled setting.

If I'm going to use a browser where shady settings are pushed on me it might as well be one which 99.999% of the internet is built for rather than the one where (too many times) I have to fiddle to get things working. I'll take the fiddling or the lack of control but certainly not both. Mozilla is walking on really thin ice.

Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

#87

Post by account42 »

krelian wrote: post #66

There is a lot fire directed at Mozilla on HN. I'm not saying I support or can make sense of all of their decisions but I'd love for someone in the criticizers camp to explain what steps they would take to make Mozilla and the continued development of Firefox a financially sustainable and independent endeavour.

> There is a lot fire directed at Mozilla on HN.

Gee I wonder why...

Could it be them disregarding users preferences over and over again or claiming to stand for privacy while siphoning your data at every opportunity. Sure will be hard finding an example of that behavior.

Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

#88

Post by no_way »

account42 wrote: post #40
doe_eyes wrote: post #30

The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. The approach allows measurement without disclosing who, specifically, did what with the ad. The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. I guess the fundamental question there is if we prefer to outright shut down online advertising, or give it the tools it needs to be less bad. Op…

> The scare quotes here are uncalled for: it is privacy-preserving. It is strictly less privacy-preserving than not implementing this "feature" that has zero benefit to the user running the browser. At the very least it pings yet another third party, most likely it effectively leaks much more. > The best objection to these proposals isn't privacy, it's that a browser vendor is lifting a finger for advertisers. I gues…

Web needs to make money. Giving tools to advertisers while making sure user privacy is preserved is better than free reign of tracking we have before, no?

I myself do not like ads or tracking, but we need to be realistic and there needs a way to make web sustainable.

How to do that and making sure that monopolies like Google are in check is a valid concern though, but in these conversations is the only point I hear. Ironically Google does not even need these apis because it already has so much data on users, it is primarily for smaller companies.

Re: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default

#89

Post by buildfocus »

shiandow wrote: post #28
ollybee wrote: post #3

There's some good context in the Mozilla kb article on this feature: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attr...

Overall that seems decent as far as privacy is concerned, though there are 2 things I don't like about it. 1. It relies on an 'aggregation service', which you'd better hope is trustworthy because they seemingly get all info about what 'impressions' you had and what 'conversions' you caused. 2. This is the browser acting on behalf of advertisers. It's nice there's a way for people to help companies benchmark their ads…

It uses multiple aggregation services, each of which get only partial data for each event, such that no individual service can track you, even if they wanted to. Initially the two aggregators are run by Mozilla and ISRG - your privacy is at risk only if you think both are malicious and actively sharing all the data between each other to track you.

As the number of aggregators increases this gets better - as long as you trust at least one aggregators involved then your individual data remains untrackable.

Also, in general if you think Mozilla is likely to _actively_ lie to you to steal your data and track you, you're probably using the wrong browser in the first place and the aggregation service makes little difference.

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