"Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

https://blog.privacyguides.org/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/

by nechuchelo • 2 years ago

93 50 2 years ago

blog.privacyguides.org

martin_a• 2 years ago

It's really hard to stick with Mozilla/Firefox due to things like these.

I updated my FF yesterday and at this point I make sure to check the settings for suddenly "opted-in" "features" I am not aware of. This one also was a big surprise.

If I want to get screwed and sold to the advertisement industry by my browser vendor, I'd simply use Chrome. So please stop it, Firefox.

out-of-ideas2• 2 years ago

https://librewolf.net/ - only a few tweaks to enable/disable to have sessions persist across quitting and re-opening

but - as with any software updates, us users always suffer in having to re-check over all options to see what things changed on us (if we're lucky and get an option)

zahma• 2 years ago

I recently installed LibreWolf to separate online lives, but I remain ignorant of what actually distinguishes FF and LW.

Also, to which tweaks were you referring?

blibble• 2 years ago

So please stop it, Firefox.

with this acquisition https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t... Mozilla is now an ads company

it's downhill only from here folks

maccard• 2 years ago

It's really hard to stick with Mozilla/Firefox due to things like these.

Even with this, it's still better than chrome.

account42• 2 years ago

I too prefer eating the excrement of a male bovine over other forms of manure.

greatgib2• 2 years ago

So sad to see that the Mozilla corporation completely lost its way.

I'm wondering if they are really surprised to have almost lost all of their market share when they go against their core values so easily...

The tldr that says it all:

   One Mozilla developer claimed that explaining PPA would be too challenging, so they had to opt users in by default.

...

   The way it works is that individual browsers report their behavior to a data aggregation server (operated by Mozilla), then that server reports the aggregated data to an advertiser's server. The "advertising network" only receives aggregated data with differential privacy, but the aggregation server still knows the behavior of individual browsers!

anticensor• 2 years ago

Yeah, why isn't the DP applied at the client side? It's not like a simple Gaussian shuffler is so computationally expensive.

fsflover• 2 years ago

Because the advertisers wouldn't trust that?

imajoredinecon2• 2 years ago

The article’s description of the feature is very inaccurate. The way it works is using secure two-party computation to aggregate data and apply DP server-side without Mozilla or the advertiser being able to see pre-aggregation data.

This has much better utility than applying DP client-side but still has similar privacy guarantees

nubinetwork2• 2 years ago

I'd switch browsers if it weren't for plugin compatibility...

yencabulator• 2 years ago

https://librewolf.net/ welcomes you.

BoredPositron• 2 years ago

Well, bye bye official Firefox. Not gonna lie it's getting rough in the browser space. What a shame.

autoexec5• 2 years ago

Yeah, I can't say I didn't see this day coming, but it's still weird to think I'll be saying goodbye to Firefox after so long. I moved to Firefox from Netscape!

endemic• 2 years ago

Ladybird couldn't have come at a better time.

pleasecalllater• 2 years ago

I hope unchecking the setting really disables the feature. I have hard time trusting Mozilla now... or rather I should write "again".

On the other hand: there is a ticket [1] asking for container-based-extensions, so something like Grammarly (aka the keylogger) could work only inside a container. It's been there for years, nothing changes. Seems like people are not interested in this kind of privacy stuff.

The good news: the CEO salary is really nice...

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1497075

brador• 2 years ago

For anyone wondering the Moz CEO salary is near $7 million.

panja• 2 years ago

Is this actually that high for comparable roles?

autoexec5• 2 years ago

Firefox should have just focused on privacy, security, and customization/personalization. It's a niche that isn't filled by anyone else. That wasn't going to make them rich the way selling out their userbase to advertisers will, but it would have made them loved and successful. Right now, people who want their privacy violated are better off using chrome.

Every time firefox pulls shit like this they piss off and alienate their users. What do they think is going to happen? If I were a Mozilla employee and my goal was to destroy firefox, this is exactly the sort of thing I'd be pushing for. I have no idea what firefox thinks it's doing, or if it's thinking about anything other than how to get more money from advertisers, but it shouldn't be hard see what exploiting users will lead to. Maybe they've already given up and their plan is to sell their users until they don't have any left.

Personally, I'll be exploring alternatives and forks and I'm looking to jump ship as soon as I can.

illiac7863• 2 years ago

They are focussing on privacy. They just didn’t communicate their approach very well.

https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/

JohnFen3• 2 years ago

He's just saying what Mozilla said about it. Perhaps there are people who didn't understand Mozilla's statements, so this is a useful thing.

Regardless, I won't be participating in this effort. The advertising world has been so incredibly hostile for so long that I simply can't trust anything related to it.

autoexec5• 2 years ago

They are focussing on privacy.

They're literally tracking the ads you see and the websites you go to and sending that data to at least one third party. That's the opposite of privacy. I could not care less if the third party collecting my data is Google, Mozilla, or the ISRG, none of them have any business collecting my personal browsing history just so that they can send reports back to advertisers.

That said, as much as I hate advertising, I also understand that it is fundamental in providing funding for services (such as YouTube, or most news organizations) that enables the free flow of information online. For democracy to function, for humanity to keep getting better, information must be accessible to all, not just to those who have the means to pay for it.

The internet was here before ads came in. The lie here is that for "democracy" and "humanity" we must accept ads and being tracked. It just isn't true. You could make the same argument for putting ads/tracking in linux (operating systems must be accessible, not just for those with the means to pay for them!) but it would still be a terrible argument.

You have to remember that the alternative is NOT the absence of tracking, but invasive personalized tracking done by ad networks

This is another lie. Firstly because currently my browser isn't sending reports of what websites I visit to third parties so that ad companies can collect more data and that's still an option, but also because this will do nothing to stop personalized advertising.

1GZ04• 2 years ago

Legitimate question here: Is there a legit reason to Firefox over Chrome at this point? I mean, its not performance, its not convenience, and now its not even privacy. At this rate, it looks like Firefox is going to end up just like Chrome, but slower and less fully featured.

mogoh• 2 years ago

Manifest V2/V3 is a reason to still use Firefox. There are still a lot of differences between the two browsers and a monoculture is still bad. How ever I see the pull towards Chromium.

sabbaticaldev2• 2 years ago

without PWA and a terrible service worker support, firefox holds the web behind.

1GZ04• 2 years ago

Good point Manifest V3 is scary, but there are chromium forks out keeping it at bay, question is if thats a long terms solution or just a bandaid?

shaan7• 2 years ago

I use Firefox simply because the address bar UX is better. It prioritizes my history over search results, I almost never have more than 3-5 tabs open, so I rely heavily on typing a keyword in the address bar to go to a page in my history. Another thing I rely a lot is Multi-Account containers, which makes it very to keep aspects of life separated.

This ad stuff is very concerning, though :(

subsection1h• 2 years ago

1. Chrome/Chromium's performance only recently became acceptable in 2022 when the Chromium team finally added support for tab discarding, many years after Firefox first had this feature. Tab discarding is essential for users who regularly have hundreds of tabs open. The Chromium team has historically not given a fuck about such users.

2. Firefox is vastly more configurable and extensible than Chrome/Chromium. For example, Tree Style Tab and Sidebery are far better for managing hundreds of open tabs than Tabs Outliner, the closest alternative for Chrome/Chromium. This difference, like the one above, is mostly relevant to power users.

Given that 20 years have passed since Firefox was first released, and 99.99% of web users nowadays are casuals who never have more than a couple tabs open and would sooner kill themselves than learn about the many useful ways Firefox can be configured via about:config, user.js, userChrome.css, userContent.css, etc., the answer to your question is probably no.

copywrong2• 2 years ago

Holy shit okay, I might have to reconsider using firefox. This is hard to argue for.

prime17569• 2 years ago

FYI Safari has been doing this (also enabled by default) for years on all Apple platforms.

To disable it on macOS: Safari > Preferences/Settings > Advanced > Uncheck "Allow privacy-preserving measurement of ad effectiveness"

To disable it on iOS: Settings > Safari > Advanced (scroll all the way down) > Turn off "Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement"

imajoredinecon2• 2 years ago

This article makes a couple highly misleading claims about the privacy properties of the feature and its value - would suggest reading the docs to see how it actually works then forming an opinion

In particular saying you’re sending your activity to Mozilla is not accurate: you’re sending the output of a postcomputation step that makes it cryptographically infeasible for Mozilla to see your activity.

delichon• 2 years ago

That's nice but I also care about being profiled by advertisers. I'd even be OK with an opt-in to that. But an opt-out isn't good enough.

arp242• 2 years ago

Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 - Jul 2024 (80 comments)

"Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 - Jul 2024 (164 comments)

Ad-tech setting 'Privacy-Preserving Attribution' is opt-out in Firefox 128 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 - Jul 2024 (185 comments)

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330

"Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us yet Again

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