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This is ridiculous. I use and recommend Firefox for pure ideological reasons, because frankly, Chrome/Chromium is miles ahead of them. If they start opt-out tr

by embik 9y ago

This is ridiculous. I use and recommend Firefox for pure ideological reasons, because frankly, Chrome/Chromium is miles ahead of them. If they start opt-out tracking using the same approach as Google I do not see any reason to use it nor install it for my friends and family. That's some data for you, Mozilla.

monochromatic 9y ago
How is Chrome miles ahead? Both seem to work just fine for me, neither being noticeably faster or better. I like a couple of minor Firefox features, so that's what I stick with.
- toxican 9y ago
  Firefox -> Chrome is a sidegrade at best. Literally only reason I use it is because I got fed up with weird little CSS quirks I couldn't replicate in IE or FF, but were very present in Chrome.
Yoric 9y ago
As you may have read in the feedback request, Mozilla is proposing to use differential privacy – differential is very different from tracking. For more information, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy for instance.
- embik 9y ago
  My point is not the way you label gathering information from your users but rather that it is about implementing something Google proposed. If the mechanism works, fine, but why should I use Firefox over Chromium then? Opt-out data collection is in violation to my core beliefs and what I believed to be Mozilla's principles. Collecting data without asking the user about it is - to me - in violation to the very definition of privacy and calling some way to anonymise data (who guarantees that the cryptographic approach to this is not obsolete in a few years?) "differential privacy" is at the very least dishonest.
  - veeti 9y ago
    Existing telemetry in Firefox already works on an opt-out basis. This changes nothing.
    - throwaway2048 9y ago
      Existing telemetry dosent collect browsing data
- alexrs95 9y ago
  And here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072276
- falcolas 9y ago
  So, I read that, and already see two problems. One - DP provides privacy by deniability. How does that apply to URLs (or even just domains)? For a domain to show up, I have to have visited it (unless Firefox will report back random domains). Two - DP is only really private over a small data set per individual. If DP were enabled for even two days, you could get a very accurate picture of the sites I visit, since a majority of the domains reported would be necessarily be accurate values.
  - Yoric 9y ago
    One: I'm pretty sure that the idea is to report back random (existing) domains, yes. Two: That's an interesting question. You'd need to ask it to someone with more domain knowledge than me.
    - falcolas 9y ago
      > I'm pretty sure that the idea is to report back random (existing) domains, yes. Here's a concern that comes up from that implementation option: any outliers from the set of existing domains (which would likely simply be implemented as a list of strings) would immediately be able to be called out as a "True" value, while a single reporting of a domain could reliably called out as a "False" value. Unless, of course, you choose a randomization algorithm which exhibits a very strong clustering trait. You could also limit reports to those domains which are in the whitelist, but that would voluntarily neuter the reporting; something they seem less-than-eager to do. Ultimately, it will all come down to the implementation details, which are unlikely to be available until after the opt-in release, and auditable by a remarkably small number of people in the open source community.
      - comex 9y ago
        RAPPOR uses a Bloom filter. It doesn't report the domain itself; it reports (a corrupted version of) a handful of bits of a hash of the domain.
        falcolas 9y ago
binarymax 9y ago
Your stance is paradoxical, because Chrome has been improved based on data mined from users, and not in as nearly a considerate way as Mozilla is proposing. You want Firefox to succeed as a browser, but to be able to better compete it needs better usage data. Wouldn't you prefer for Firefox to be the best browser available, AND also be considerate towards your privacy rights?
- kuschku 9y ago
  Wouldn't you prefer for Firefox to be the best browser available, AND also be considerate towards your privacy rights? I prefer absolute privacy over some minor advantages on irrelevant webpages. How do you even think this system would work in restricted environments such as governments where even the presence of code that could collect data is an absolute no-go?
- embik 9y ago
  If Google does not respect my privacy, why is the proposed way to gather information based on Google's approach? And if the way Mozilla gathers data is much more considerate, what results can I expect from it? Better parallel requests and data fetching, hardware acceleration, etc are all features that are missing for me as a Linux user. They don't need my dataset for that, it's probably all in their bug tracker.
- dagenleg 9y ago
  Company A does bad thing which benefits them massively, allowing them to have a better product. Some people dislike that approach and flock to company B which promises not to do the bad thing. Now company B start doing the same thing 'for better good' but promises to 'keep it moderate'. At this point why would anyone stay with the company B which broke its promise once, just in the hope that it won't break the promise again? It has already lost the trustworthiness and it also has the worse product. Might as well use products from company A.
  - eridius 9y ago
    This is specious reasoning. Company B is not doing "the same thing" at all. Company B is collecting data, but not only is it far more limited (e.g. collecting domains instead of URLs), it's done in a way that protects privacy. You can't just throw up your hands and say "well, they're collecting some data, therefore we may as well just throw away all privacy protections and use the browser by the company whose business model is based on collecting all the personal information they possibly can". Privacy is not a boolean.

by embik 9y ago

monochromatic 9y ago

How is Chrome miles ahead? Both seem to work just fine for me, neither being noticeably faster or better. I like a couple of minor Firefox features, so that's what I stick with.

toxican 9y ago
Firefox -> Chrome is a sidegrade at best. Literally only reason I use it is because I got fed up with weird little CSS quirks I couldn't replicate in IE or FF, but were very present in Chrome.

Yoric 9y ago

As you may have read in the feedback request, Mozilla is proposing to use differential privacy – differential is very different from tracking. For more information, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy for instance.

embik 9y ago
My point is not the way you label gathering information from your users but rather that it is about implementing something Google proposed. If the mechanism works, fine, but why should I use Firefox over Chromium then? Opt-out data collection is in violation to my core beliefs and what I believed to be Mozilla's principles. Collecting data without asking the user about it is - to me - in violation to the very definition of privacy and calling some way to anonymise data (who guarantees that the cryptographic approach to this is not obsolete in a few years?) "differential privacy" is at the very least dishonest.
- veeti 9y ago
  Existing telemetry in Firefox already works on an opt-out basis. This changes nothing.
  - throwaway2048 9y ago
    Existing telemetry dosent collect browsing data
alexrs95 9y ago
And here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072276
falcolas 9y ago
So, I read that, and already see two problems. One - DP provides privacy by deniability. How does that apply to URLs (or even just domains)? For a domain to show up, I have to have visited it (unless Firefox will report back random domains). Two - DP is only really private over a small data set per individual. If DP were enabled for even two days, you could get a very accurate picture of the sites I visit, since a majority of the domains reported would be necessarily be accurate values.
- Yoric 9y ago
  One: I'm pretty sure that the idea is to report back random (existing) domains, yes. Two: That's an interesting question. You'd need to ask it to someone with more domain knowledge than me.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    > I'm pretty sure that the idea is to report back random (existing) domains, yes. Here's a concern that comes up from that implementation option: any outliers from the set of existing domains (which would likely simply be implemented as a list of strings) would immediately be able to be called out as a "True" value, while a single reporting of a domain could reliably called out as a "False" value. Unless, of course, you choose a randomization algorithm which exhibits a very strong clustering trait. You could also limit reports to those domains which are in the whitelist, but that would voluntarily neuter the reporting; something they seem less-than-eager to do. Ultimately, it will all come down to the implementation details, which are unlikely to be available until after the opt-in release, and auditable by a remarkably small number of people in the open source community.
    - comex 9y ago
      RAPPOR uses a Bloom filter. It doesn't report the domain itself; it reports (a corrupted version of) a handful of bits of a hash of the domain.
      - falcolas 9y ago

binarymax 9y ago

Your stance is paradoxical, because Chrome has been improved based on data mined from users, and not in as nearly a considerate way as Mozilla is proposing. You want Firefox to succeed as a browser, but to be able to better compete it needs better usage data. Wouldn't you prefer for Firefox to be the best browser available, AND also be considerate towards your privacy rights?

kuschku 9y ago
Wouldn't you prefer for Firefox to be the best browser available, AND also be considerate towards your privacy rights? I prefer absolute privacy over some minor advantages on irrelevant webpages. How do you even think this system would work in restricted environments such as governments where even the presence of code that could collect data is an absolute no-go?
embik 9y ago
If Google does not respect my privacy, why is the proposed way to gather information based on Google's approach? And if the way Mozilla gathers data is much more considerate, what results can I expect from it? Better parallel requests and data fetching, hardware acceleration, etc are all features that are missing for me as a Linux user. They don't need my dataset for that, it's probably all in their bug tracker.
dagenleg 9y ago
Company A does bad thing which benefits them massively, allowing them to have a better product. Some people dislike that approach and flock to company B which promises not to do the bad thing. Now company B start doing the same thing 'for better good' but promises to 'keep it moderate'. At this point why would anyone stay with the company B which broke its promise once, just in the hope that it won't break the promise again? It has already lost the trustworthiness and it also has the worse product. Might as well use products from company A.
- eridius 9y ago
  This is specious reasoning. Company B is not doing "the same thing" at all. Company B is collecting data, but not only is it far more limited (e.g. collecting domains instead of URLs), it's done in a way that protects privacy. You can't just throw up your hands and say "well, they're collecting some data, therefore we may as well just throw away all privacy protections and use the browser by the company whose business model is based on collecting all the personal information they possibly can". Privacy is not a boolean.