4 ms·

Why are they not letting people decide? If it is not harming anyone's privacy, and they make it clear that it isn't, then what is the problem with letting peopl

Why are they not letting people decide? If it is not harming anyone's privacy, and they make it clear that it isn't, then what is the problem with letting people opt-in to it? Instead, it's telling that they are choosing to force people to opt-out. They know that their users don't want this, but don't care.

Ajedi32 9y ago
Opt-in inevitably results in data being heavily biased in favor of the small minority of users who go out of their way to opt-in. For some stuff that's fine, but for certain types of data you really do need a broad, unbiased sample of users in order for the data to be at all meaningful. (Usually to answer questions like "What percentage of users use x feature?" Or "What level of jank does the average user experience on facebook.com?") They still _are_ planning to let people decide for themselves whether to participate (via opt-out), they're just using a default that's more likely to result in unbiased sample data. Again though, what's your actual concern? Provided this feature doesn't compromise anyone's privacy even _if_ its enabled, what's wrong with having it be opt-out?
- joosters 9y ago
  I have no way of knowing how this may or may not compromise my privacy without a deep understanding of the techniques being used. I am meant to trust Mozilla and hope that they haven't overlooked some weakness in the algorithms used. The obvious security choice is to not add this feature in. The 'Provided this feature doesn't compromise anyone's privacy' is a fantasy, because no-one can be sure of that.
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    But that's true of _any_ new feature that gets added to Firefox. Anytime you change code, there's a chance you could be creating a new vulnerability that compromises users' privacy or security in some way. If, as some commenters here [have suggested][1], this telemetry would help improve Firefox by significantly reducing the amount of time it takes Mozilla to fix bugs and performance issues in the browser, what makes you think that's not worth the risk when other features (such as the performance fixes themselves) are? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072157
    - joosters 9y ago
      It's obviously far, far more likely in code that is designed to send my browsing habits to a 3rd party (in whatever encoding). Do you not see this, or are you just trying to extend out these arguments to some ridiculous extreme for the sake of it?
      - Ajedi32 9y ago
        I don't know what level of risk this implementation carries with it. Probably more than a performance fix to the JavaScript interpreter, yes, but is it really a significant enough risk to make this feature not worth implementing? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't; I honestly don't know. You just seemed to be arguing that _any_ amount of risk would be too much, which in my view is ridiculous since, as I said, all new features carry with them some amount of risk.
        joosters 9y ago
        You just seemed to be arguing that _any_ amount of risk would be too much Unfortunately that's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, extending arguments to ridiculous extremes. I have never said any amount of risk would be too much. In this particular instance, I think the risk and the unknowns are clearly too much.
        Ajedi32 9y ago
        > In this particular instance, I think the risk and the unknowns are clearly too much. But why? I don't claim to know enough about RAPPOR to say for sure that the risk _is_ worth it, but it seems a little presumptuous to claim it isn't without knowing _anything_ about the project or Mozilla's proposed use of it. That's why I assumed you were arguing that _any_ amount of risk would be too much; you didn't include any sort of analysis of the risk/reward in your previous comments, and without knowing the risk the only way to conclude this feature is definitely _not_ worth it would be if you already considered the acceptable level of risk to be zero.
      - tormeh 9y ago
- tomc1985 9y ago
  Software was built for decades without this data and can continue to be built without this data for decades to come.
- syshum 9y ago
  >>Provided this feature doesn't compromise anyone's privacy even _if_ its enabled, what's wrong with having it be opt-out? The only Anonymous Data is data that is never collected. If they collect data it is a violation of privacy.
  - yuhong 9y ago
    Why?
calcifer 9y ago
Because opt-in data is inherently biased and is a terrible indicator for common user behaviour.
- stormbrew 9y ago
  It would, however, be useful data for the common user behaviour of people who opt in to tracking. This doesn't really seem unreasonable to me. Obviously part of the inherent cost if not wanting to be tracked is going to be not having your raw user data included in evaluations of what people want.

Ajedi32 9y ago

Opt-in inevitably results in data being heavily biased in favor of the small minority of users who go out of their way to opt-in. For some stuff that's fine, but for certain types of data you really do need a broad, unbiased sample of users in order for the data to be at all meaningful. (Usually to answer questions like "What percentage of users use x feature?" Or "What level of jank does the average user experience on facebook.com?") They still _are_ planning to let people decide for themselves whether to participate (via opt-out), they're just using a default that's more likely to result in unbiased sample data. Again though, what's your actual concern? Provided this feature doesn't compromise anyone's privacy even _if_ its enabled, what's wrong with having it be opt-out?

joosters 9y ago
I have no way of knowing how this may or may not compromise my privacy without a deep understanding of the techniques being used. I am meant to trust Mozilla and hope that they haven't overlooked some weakness in the algorithms used. The obvious security choice is to not add this feature in. The 'Provided this feature doesn't compromise anyone's privacy' is a fantasy, because no-one can be sure of that.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  But that's true of _any_ new feature that gets added to Firefox. Anytime you change code, there's a chance you could be creating a new vulnerability that compromises users' privacy or security in some way. If, as some commenters here [have suggested][1], this telemetry would help improve Firefox by significantly reducing the amount of time it takes Mozilla to fix bugs and performance issues in the browser, what makes you think that's not worth the risk when other features (such as the performance fixes themselves) are? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072157 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072157
  - joosters 9y ago
    It's obviously far, far more likely in code that is designed to send my browsing habits to a 3rd party (in whatever encoding). Do you not see this, or are you just trying to extend out these arguments to some ridiculous extreme for the sake of it?
    - Ajedi32 9y ago
      I don't know what level of risk this implementation carries with it. Probably more than a performance fix to the JavaScript interpreter, yes, but is it really a significant enough risk to make this feature not worth implementing? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't; I honestly don't know. You just seemed to be arguing that _any_ amount of risk would be too much, which in my view is ridiculous since, as I said, all new features carry with them some amount of risk.
      - joosters 9y ago
        You just seemed to be arguing that _any_ amount of risk would be too much Unfortunately that's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, extending arguments to ridiculous extremes. I have never said any amount of risk would be too much. In this particular instance, I think the risk and the unknowns are clearly too much.
        Ajedi32 9y ago
        > In this particular instance, I think the risk and the unknowns are clearly too much. But why? I don't claim to know enough about RAPPOR to say for sure that the risk _is_ worth it, but it seems a little presumptuous to claim it isn't without knowing _anything_ about the project or Mozilla's proposed use of it. That's why I assumed you were arguing that _any_ amount of risk would be too much; you didn't include any sort of analysis of the risk/reward in your previous comments, and without knowing the risk the only way to conclude this feature is definitely _not_ worth it would be if you already considered the acceptable level of risk to be zero.
    - tormeh 9y ago
tomc1985 9y ago
Software was built for decades without this data and can continue to be built without this data for decades to come.
syshum 9y ago
>>Provided this feature doesn't compromise anyone's privacy even _if_ its enabled, what's wrong with having it be opt-out? The only Anonymous Data is data that is never collected. If they collect data it is a violation of privacy.
- yuhong 9y ago
  Why?

calcifer 9y ago

Because opt-in data is inherently biased and is a terrible indicator for common user behaviour.

stormbrew 9y ago
It would, however, be useful data for the common user behaviour of people who opt in to tracking. This doesn't really seem unreasonable to me. Obviously part of the inherent cost if not wanting to be tracked is going to be not having your raw user data included in evaluations of what people want.