Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center • Hacker News Board

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#91

Post by judge2020 » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #29

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

The more I protect my personal data (hi, GDPR!), the more websites are adding recaptacha to all their pages. Blocking trackers makes Google suspicious, so they're adding more and more recaptcha challenges to let me pass their tests, sometimes 5 to 10 in a row. I'm now working for Google's IA for free just to be able to make purchases online, access some services that I already paid for, or filling in support request…

Has been said many times before but the problem is that you look like any other bot that also doesn't save cookies or have any past history. How do you expect recaptcha to identify you from those bots? Or more, how do you expect the websites to identify bots and stop things like credential stuffing attacks (even if recaptcha isn't perfect at stopping those either) without heavily investing in things like the anti-bot systems banks use?

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#92

Post by mfontani » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

For something similar, I use a Firefox docker container whose data settings are saved to the ephemeral disk which disappears once the browser closes. It's just a standard Firefox (or Chrome, or Brave, or..) otherwise.

I use the same mechanism - but with persisting user data - for things like banking etc. in which I only open that one site.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#93

Post by dewey » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

toastal wrote: post #34

akerro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have piwik instead GA 2-5 years ago, according to piwik my website had 23% more visitors than on GA. https://matomo.org/

10 years later and still no PostgreSQL support.

https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo/pulls

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#94

Post by floatboth » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

That particular example is just extremely odd because… well, the business model of the utilities whose bills you pay (nor the bank's) shouldn't be based on advertising?? Maybe it's just a pile of web development fail, using 3rd party cookies for no good reason..

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#95

Post by tjoff » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

svnpenn wrote: post #43

Honestly its getting out of hand. I have everything blocked I can think of [1], and even browsing in private mode, I still sometimes get the "recommended for you" on YouTube. Stop invading my privacy. [1] https://cup.github.io/rosso/youtube

Recommended for you, does that mean anything at all?

Could just be "We don't know anything about you but these things are generally liked"

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#96

Post by uoaei » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

ric2b wrote: post #81

zimbatm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just actively punishing Firefox because blocking tracking is also blocking ads, which is their revenue model. Why spend money optimizing for a browser that doesn't generate revenue? If Firefox becomes the bastion of privacy sensitive people it will become more and more like Tor users, all tainted with the same labels. I mean it's already the case that recaptcha will more likely trigger on Firefox than Chrome, aski…

> because blocking tracking is also blocking ads It's not, the Internet is the only medium where it's assumed that tracking/targeting is necessary for advertising. TV, Magazines, radio, podcasts, cinema don't track users.

Well, they do, but only in aggregate and pretty indirectly: surveys, focus groups, requests for feedback, etc.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#97

Post by floatboth » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #68

chmod775 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-hosted analytics like Matomo for instance. https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo

Which do get blocked since they're still trackers. The protection isn't just against 3rd party trackers. And if you obfuscate your Matomo client script to get around the user's preference for trackers you're not being very ethical.

Seems like Firefox's built-in protection is mostly about 3rd-party trackers? Even the description for "Tracking content" (the not-obviously-3rd-party category) talks about "external ads, videos, and other content with tracking code from other companies. For example, a website may embed a video from a video platform". And this category is not blocked by default, only in strict mode.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#98

Post by Vinnl » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

hospadar wrote: post #89

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

I think helps expose the actual (bidirectional) flow of information - web sites give you stuff because you give them stuff. Usually you give them personal info about what you do on their site so that they can monetize you, in return you get news, messaging, etc. If you're unwilling to give them that stuff, maybe it's OK that they are unwilling to give you their (presumably valuable, because you're requesting it) stuf…

GP's specific situation was paying utility bills, so the stuff they give to those websites is... Actual money?

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#99

Post by Vinnl » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF, pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically deleted. In the past month about 3 of…

Not usable on mobile, but one extension you might be interested in is Trash Panda: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trash-bear/

Whenever I see a link to a website I suspect of siphoning off all my data (usually news websites), I right-click it and select "Open in new Trash Container". Do my thing, then close the tab, and all cookies and such for that site are cleared. It's almost like a Firefox Focus tab, the main difference being that it's not discernable from a regular tab.

Re: Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center

#100

Post by floatboth » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #42

lukebitts wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those technical reasons?

JavaScript engine optimization Devtools Every benchmark: https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/overview?numDays=365 Anecdotally, Firefox uses a lot more CPU, memory, and battery. Makes sense since the JS engine is so much worse. In this era the browser is just a VM for JavaScript.

For CSS, Firefox devtools are far, far ahead of everything else. JS debugging was a bit behind Chrome, but it should be on par now, except maybe in performance tracing.