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Firefox privacy issue

Wudang

BOFH
Wudang
Joined
Jun 30, 2003
Messages
19,049
Location
People's Republic of South Yorkshire
Via Jeff Martin https://mastodon.social/@cuchaz@gladtech.social

Yup, it's true. Firefox 128 includes new adtech features that are turned on by default and announced with very little fanfare, so most people might not even know they're there. :blobcatverysad:

Well, this is me telling you they're there. You might want to go ahead and take a minute to opt out.

Here's the little helpful explainer from Mozilla about how it all works:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution

My read seems to be: Mozilla says website surveillance is generally bad and should be defended against. Cool. No notes. Firefox actually has a lot of nice anti-tracking and privacy features there and that's the main reason why I like Firefox.

But, and I swear I'm not even joking a little bit here, Mozilla goes on to say that advertisers might be happier if Firefox itself just tracked you directly and sent activity reports back to them.

Doesn't that sound great?

Now, to Mozilla's credit, they claim to anonymize the activity reports. And you can still meaningfully opt out of the whole system.

But WTF, mate?! I use Firefox *because* it fights against adtech. Or at least it used to. Now, Mozilla just lets adtech right in the front door and hopes you won't notice? :blobcat_thisisfine:

Well, we noticed. Mozilla is damage and we need to route around it.

UPDATE: The about:config setting for this is `dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled`. It's a bool. Set it to false to turn it off.
Click to expand...
 
From your link:

To opt out, do the following:

Click the menu button and select Settings.
In the Privacy & Security panel, find the Website Advertising Preferences section.
Uncheck the box labeled Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

Should not have been enabled by default. :eek:
 
I have no problem in principle, with anonymized usage data. But none of the major players seem to be forthcoming about what exactly they do anonymize me.

It seems obvious that our current information ecosystem depends pretty heavily on a web of symbiotic/parasitic/co-dependent relationships. Advertisers - people with products to sell - clearly play an important part in this ecosystem. They need to be fed, too. So it really depends on exactly what info Firefox is sending, to understand who's exploiting who. Who's the parasite and who's the host?
 
The beauty of the boys at Mozilla is that they do a great job at not having us see ads at all. So even if they are giving anonymous data, it will surely result in some form.of targeted advertising?
 
Shenanigans from Chrome
https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/9/hangout_servicesthunkjs/
It turns out Google Chrome (via Chromium) includes a default extension which makes extra services available to code running on the *.google.com domains
....<snip>...
It looks like it's a way to let Google Hangouts ... get additional information from the browser, including the current load on the user's CPU
Click to expand...

OK maybe not massive as it stands but it does make you wonder what else maybe out there.
 
Wudang said:
One of many reasons I follow Charles Stross on Mastodon.

Yeah I'm suspicious of anonymised data after reading how much Google is still able to pull from other search engines that use it behind the scenes.
Click to expand...

The Laundry series author?

Also, thanks fr the ehads up, Wudang. checking my settings now
 
I'm shocked people here are shocked. Nothing is free. If you're using something that is free it's because you are the product. I thought that was common knowledge.
 
One sharp eyed person has noted this on a recent commit to Firefox source code. The section asking if my data is secure has gone. Speculation is it's either preparing to sell our data or harvest it for AI training.
Screenshot 2025-02-28 at 07.47.40.pngScreenshot 2025-02-28 at 07.47.40.png

github.com

Tos copy updates (fix #16016) (#16018) · mozilla/bedrock@d459add

* ToS copy updates (fix #16016) * Apply suggestions from code review - copy change Co-authored-by: maureenlholland <maureen@silverorange.com> --------- Co-authored-by: maureenlholland &lt...
github.com github.com
 
Wudang said:
Oh hi Safari, welcome to the party.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy...When you are in an,Pay enabled on that device
Click to expand...
If we assume Apple and Mozilla are telling the truth, I'm not sure what the problem is. All the advertiser gets is a notification that an ad they put up had a bit of success. None of your personal data goes anywhere.

Given that nobody wants to pay for anything on the Internet and advertising is about the only business model that works for that, of course they are going to try to optimise the delivery. There's a lot at stake.

I'm also not sure why you have highlighted the bit about Apple Pay. Apple Pay is my preferred method for paying for goods and services on the Internet and I want the option to be able to use it when I buy stuff.
 
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