20 ms·

Firefox Now Available with Enhanced Tracking Protection by Default

1069 points by teddyfrozevelt 7y ago

ziddoap 7y ago
>For new users who install and download Firefox for the first time, Enhanced Tracking Protection will automatically be set on by default as part of the ‘Standard’ setting in the browser and will block known “third-party tracking cookies” according to the Disconnect list. Despite other issues, which there are some, I'm really happy to see FF not only enable more ways for users to protect themselves - but to be rolling it out as a default. A lot of non-technical users I've encountered usually want the extra (usually non-default) protections, but don't know where to begin (or what is even available) so they continue with the default installation. FF setting some of the more mature privacy protection features as a default moving forward is a great sign of commitment to the cause of bringing privacy to everyone. Even those who don't know how to poke around the settings or about:config. >Today, we’re releasing the latest update for Facebook Container which prevents Facebook from tracking you on other sites that have embedded Facebook capabilities such as the Share and Like buttons on their site. This is a much needed change that I'm also really happy to see. Not really containing anything if the embeds still function.
- toper-centage 7y ago
  These Firefox tools are really great. One big issue right now that I have with the strict fingerprint resisting is that it zeroes the timezone to UTC+0. It messes up with websites like slack and others. I had to use an extra addon to set a custom timezone.
- godelski 7y ago
  My parents are completely tech illiterate. But they are also afraid of this tracking and becoming much more aware of this power. So they ask me to set up their browsers to do so. I don't go full in, but basic stuff. There are still little hiccups but even they are happier to have small hiccups than be tracked. They see it as a fair trade-off. I think this attitude is common non-technical users. Tldr: I fully support security by default.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
Sujan 7y ago
The Lockwise addon is interesting - but that they are not using their own addon site is strange.
- abledon 7y ago
  why use lockwise instead of say, bitwarden?
whizzkid 7y ago
It is funny how my browser preferences has changed over last 5 years. 2014 me as a developer had Chrome as number 1 browser for both development and all rest. Firefox once a month just to check cross browser compatibility. And Safari was just installed without me using it. 2019 me uses Safari for everything except development. Excellent power consumption and UX. Firefox for development. And lastly Chrome for all web apps that only work on Chrome. ( Google Meet etc. ) I feel much much better that I am not dependent on chrome.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  Are there Chrome-only webapps you use that don't just work with a User-Agent switcher?
  - shrikant 7y ago
    Most Google apps only just about "work" on Firefox. They're clearly optimised for Chromium and it shows. I use Firefox for all my browsing needs except for Google apps, for which I keep an install of Vivaldi around. I only really fire up Chrome if some stupid internal workplace app refuses to work on anything else. It truly is the new IE.
    - zepearl 7y ago
      > It truly is the new IE Funny, and true at least in the company I'm working for (officially supported browsers are primarily IE11 and optionally Chrome). A colleague told me a few months ago that Firefox was not supported because it did not support some Windows "policies" (Windows or Active Directory? Not sure, no clue about that stuff) but that Firefox was going to support them soon... .
      - shawnz 7y ago
        Likely they did indeed mean Group Policy in the Active Directory sense, although that's been supported in Firefox for over a year now
SamuelAdams 7y ago
I'm an existing Firefox user. Is there a short list of settings to check to make sure this "Enhanced Tracking Protection" is enabled? In short, I'm looking for a list of instructions: go to Options > Privacy and Security > Content Blocking > make sure cookies is set to at least "All third party cookies...".
- riquito 7y ago
  It's explained in the article. > For existing users, we’ll be rolling out Enhanced Tracking Protection by default in the coming months without you having to change a thing. If you can’t wait, you can turn this feature on by clicking on the menu icon marked by three horizontal lines at the top right of your browser, then under Content Blocking. Go to your privacy preferences and click on the Custom gear on the right side. Mark the Cookies checkbox and make sure that “Third-party trackers” is selected. To learn more about our privacy and security settings and get more detail on what each section – Standard, Strict, and Custom – includes, visit here [1]. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  I think you’re just about right - it’s Options > Privacy > Content > Custom > “Block third-party trackers”. (It is not “Block all third-party cookies”, make sure to select the correct one.)
  - toastal 7y ago
    And yet you've sadly got some companies like Alibaba[1] telling users to enable all third-party cookies. This is terrible advice. 1: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/doc-detail/62160.htm https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/doc-detail/62160.htm
- thomasfedb 7y ago
  A good way to get all these settings is to generate a profile with this tool: https://ffprofile.com/ https://ffprofile.com/
temac 7y ago
Ironically, it triggers on blog.mozilla.org :/
- a1369209993 7y ago
  It's worth noting that this isn't actually inconsistent. If your browser does security properly, blog.mozilla.org saying "here, have some malware" doesn't matter because it will be ignored. If it doesn't, one more website serving (functionality-irrelevant) malware makes it that much marginally more painful to keep using a defective browser.
  - stkdump 7y ago
    Wait, are you saying that blog.mozilla.org serves malware?
    - a1369209993 7y ago
      Well, I'm not, but temac is saying that Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection is saying that blog.mozilla.org serves malware. I'd call that plausible and presumed true for the sake of discussion but unconfirmed.
jacquesm 7y ago
I have two main computers. One has for continuity reasons the old version of Firefox, the other the new one. The old version is so much more usable that I find myself using that computer much more frequently. It is rock solid with 100's of tabs open, all my extensions work and without silly restrictions on what they can and can not do and it uses a lot less memory. It's measurably faster too. I'm all for progress and improvements in software but after a long stretch of being a very ardent FF supporter I really do wonder if they have a future. If a competitor had a dream about what they could do to ruin Firefox they could not have done a better job. Enhanced tracking protection is great but it doesn't matter if you push away your users.
- dralley 7y ago
  Setting aside possible hardware differences between the two, try doing a profile refresh, because that's messed up. I've also got a Firefox 52 installation lying around and the new version is noticably faster.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Interesting. Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a shot. Hardware differences are negligible, in fact the machine where FF is noticeably slower is the faster machine. Especially start-up is super slow, takes a couple of minutes at times.
    - Drdrdrq 7y ago
      That is seriously weird. I don't have the fastest machine possible yet FF starts in a second or two. Bigger problem are the apps that consume too much CPU and memory. Unfortunately there is no nice way to avoid their killing the whole system (Linux here). But other browsers are no better. The browser makers should realize they are delivering a multiuser OS and protect the resources accordingly.
      - sfink 7y ago
        I've used cgroups in the past to handle that problem when I was using stuff that would otherwise bring down my machine. But I don't know that I'd call it a nice way; at least back then, it was a PITA to set up.
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
It sounds like this is similar to what Apple added to Safari two years ago (https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/apple-adds-a-tracker-blocker-to-desktop-safari/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/apple-adds-a-tracker-block...), though I don't know the details. I will be excited for the day when Privacy Badger is an unnecessary extension.
- LamaOfRuin 7y ago
  It seems like that would be today? I'm pretty sure they both work off the same Disconnect maintained list.
  - teddyfrozevelt 7y ago
    Privacy Badger uses heuristics to determine when a domain might be tracking you. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger/faq#How-does-Privacy-Badger-work https://www.eff.org/privacybadger/faq#How-does-Privacy-Badge...
    - LamaOfRuin 7y ago
      Ah, good to know. I'm not sure if they changed that since launch, or I was just conflating them with one of the other extensions. This sounds more like Safari's newer behaviour, which sounds good in theory but in Safari's case where it can't be turned off, it breaks things in practice. This seems like a good solution for people that are aware of what's happening enough to pay attention and disable it when something is not working as expected, but makes a bad default for the typical user.
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  Safari uses a machine-learning classifier algorithm to determine which third-party sites are trackers: https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/ https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention... Disconnect may or may not use M-L classifiers in their selection process, I don’t know.
  - 7y ago
tick_tock_tick 7y ago
Now if only the could fix firefox to not be the slowest and biggest battery draining browser on mac.
- mostlysimilar 7y ago
  I believe this is related to using scaled resolution in macOS. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 I was able to achieve way better performance by changing this to `true` in `about:config`: gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque Another note, performance seems way better when changing the following to `true`: gfx.webrender.all gfx.webrender.enabled If anyone with deeper understanding of these options has any reasons why this is a bad idea I'm all ears. Otherwise it's made my experience way better.
  - floatingatoll 7y ago
    The WebRender team seems to be rolling out very gradually and is, if I remember a recent blog post correctly, restricting based on specific GPUs and specific platforms that are proven to work without e.g. crashing or breaking out various things (like window toolbars). If you set these options, and then later on, you find that your Firefox is super buggy and won't render anything properly and has weird crashes, it could be because you set these options — and it might take hours or days to realize that. (And then reverse them, somehow, assuming that gfx.webrender.all hasn't broken about:config!)
    - chronogram 7y ago
      I did definitely notice much better WebRender performance on Nvidia than on Intel, so I turned off WebRender on the Intel laptop.
      - floatingatoll 7y ago
        I went looking at the WebRender blog and they are apparently still making performance improvements every time they post an update, so make sure to clear your override and let the defaults take effect in a few weeks - either it’ll be better or (I assume) the telemetry data will highlight your OS+GPU+driver pairing as needs-improvement (which it can’t with it force-disabled).
PatrolX 7y ago
I've dumped Chrome altogether since FF 67 was released. My only gripe is they still aren't blocking ALL ads, but regardless it's a way better user experience now than it ever was. Firefox 67 feels like a whole new beast compared to their older versions. If you haven't tried FF for a while I recommend doing so and I suggest trying it across multiple devices. The tab management, syncing, pinning and sending etc. across multiple devices is awesome.
- pault 7y ago
  I'll second the multi device functionality. I use Firefox on desktop and iOS and all of my history, autocomplete, and tabs follow me and everywhere. It's incredibly convenient.
  - Klonoar 7y ago
    For Mac users, this is... not great. Firefox on Mac continues to be an oddball in comparison to how it runs on Windows/Linux. I'll keep using Safari, which also gives me that wonderful cross-device syncing.
    - EugeneOZ 7y ago
      It is great for Mac users. Firefox 67+ is faster than Chrome and works flawlessly on MBP 2014. Some "Mac users" also use dev tools, and Firefox is better than Safari in this aspect.
      - Klonoar 7y ago
        This is not my experience, and certainly not the majority experience given how often the topic of Firefox on Mac comes up in every single thread on this site. When you parrot this around, you stop Mozilla from feeling the pressure necessary to build a compelling product on Mac.
- Jonanin 7y ago
  They can't and likely won't ever block ALL ads because they are funded through a search contract with Google. The whole point of that contract is to drive ad revenue.
arendtio 7y ago
Does anybody have experience setting up and running a custom FF Account/Sync server? https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-fxa.html https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run...
- paulryanrogers 7y ago
  I tried Weave back in the day and it was not trivial. The newer Firefox Sync has a FOSS server though it's not as TNO if I recall correctly, likely to allow selective sync and sharing.
- jeena 7y ago
  I set it up 2015 https://jeena.net/firefox-sync-15 https://jeena.net/firefox-sync-15 and it's running on my server ever since mostly without problems. I think it hang one time so I needed to restart it but otherwise great software, even though the documentation on how to install it was kind of non existent back then. But now that also improved a lot in addition that it's now easy to use on Android too.
Mikeb85 7y ago
I like all the work Firefox is putting in. Even though I'm not personally against Chrome, I've been using FF lately and it's very good.
frenchman99 7y ago
The article starts with: "It’s been several weeks since I was promoted to Senior Vice President of Firefox, responsible for overall Firefox product and web platform development." How is this relevant? Did Dave Camp's SVP appointment trigger these changes? Honest question, because this is the first sentence of the article and I'm having a hard time understanding why. Tracking protection is great though. I hope Firefox gains market share again, I love the direction it's taking.
- jammygit 7y ago
  A local struggling theatre company has a new president and the theatre is thriving under him. He told us in private that everything about his public appearance is curated in order to give the theatre a face, and that its an important part of saving struggling theatres - to attach a face to it. Maybe it’s the same thing?
- ludston 7y ago
  He's probably feeling pretty chuffed about it and just wants to share :)
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
  Maybe his hiring was part of the same process? Products reflect the organizations that produce them.
- fabrice_d 7y ago
  The dev for these features started a long time ago, notably by Monica Chew as Roc reminds us (https://twitter.com/rocallahan/status/1136041917404160000 https://twitter.com/rocallahan/status/1136041917404160000). More recently Ehsan Akhgari has been instrumental in pushing to the shipping line. Kudos to all!
hartator 7y ago
> It’s been several weeks since I was promoted to Senior Vice President of Firefox Awesome for you?
eikenberry 7y ago
Starting to look forward to July when the next ESR will be out. Really tempted to just go ahead and upgrade to FF67 now but have grown fond of the stability of the ESR releases.
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  I've been on the Beta channel for the last few years. I can't remember the last time it crashed. It's just not a thing with Firefox these days. But then, they do push out new betas every few days so I end up restarting the browser quite often. Either way, stability is fine even with the Betas. I'm pretty sure there are quite many beta users so by the time a release comes out of beta, it has already survived many weeks of testing in the field by gazillions of real users abusing it on all kinds of platform and hardware combinations. So, stable should be perfectly fine for day to day use if you feel less adventurous. It's basically the release intended for world+dog. The only people actually using ESR probably are enterprises that for whatever reason actually care about which version of Firefox they are using and third party software integrators that just don't want to deal with major changes every minor release. Tor browser is a good example. I'll click the update button after clicking reply. It seems I missed a few updates. Zero issues that I noticed with this one: 68.0b4.
  - eikenberry 7y ago
    Thanks. I switched to Chromium way back when FF first started their fast release cycle and kept breaking all my plugins. I finally switched back about a year or so ago and stuck with the ESR releases to be sure to avoid that. But now that they seem to have a stable plugin API I was considering switching to the standard stable releases as it doesn't seem like it should be an issue anymore. Though that also means finding a good source for them as I currently just use the packages from Debian Stable (well, upcoming stable as I upgraded to Buster early).
- floatboth 7y ago
  ESR for personal use? wow. I'd only expect that on boring corporate machines. I use Nightly everywhere :)
The_rationalist 7y ago
Please tell me I'm misunderstanding something! By enabling by default the blocking of those third party scripts: https://disconnect.me/trackerprotection/blocked https://disconnect.me/trackerprotection/blocked This Wil have three consequences: Many websites will partially break? Which ones? webmaster will lack many data necessary to understand what users do on their platform, where they missclick, what they don't use etc, thus diminishing the ability of webmasters to make great products. *the most dramatic one: People will see ads but the owner of a website will no longer earn ad money, because those are the third party scripts that allowed to prove to the ad platform that a user had effectively seen X ads.
- Nursie 7y ago
  Sorry, but as a web user I never signed up for stalking by site owners, nor did I sign up to be stalked across sites by their advertisers. I certainly didn't sign up to let you co-opt my computer to do this. You're going to have to live with it. Get some beta testers onboard maybe.
  - jamiequint 7y ago
    Actually you did, because the world does not exist to serve you, it's a mutual transaction between two parties. Websites need to make money and understand how users are using their service so they can survive and improve. 99% of the data anyone is collecting which you call "stalking" is either available in server logs or could be easily modified so that it was. I guess you might just have to stop using the internet.
    - Nursie 7y ago
      Actually I didn't, because it's my device and it will operate how I see fit. This includes not being coopted to spy on me. My only 'contract' with the other party is that I requested some information, and they supplied it. I can render it how I see fit, or not at all. Websites can find a way to operate without this information stream or go bust, it's no skin off my nose one way or another. > 99% of the data anyone is collecting which you call "stalking" is either available in server logs It's very unlikely that server logs will be able to contain mis-clicks and behavioural analytics to the same extent that analytics services use. > I guess you might just have to stop using the internet Or, you know, do exactly what the post I replied to was complaining about and use a browser that takes steps to protect my privacy, various blocking plugins etc etc
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
It appears this would block pretty much all the major analytics tracking cookies (e.g. Google analytics, mixpanel, etc.) based on the linked Disconnect list, https://disconnect.me/trackerprotection https://disconnect.me/trackerprotection . While I realize that's kind of the point, in my mind there is somewhat of a difference between "the site I'm on is tracking me to figure out how I use their site" vs. "any site I visit is essentially aggregated data because all the sites use the same major trackers and ad networks". I wonder if the big analytics companies will need to change their business model, or at least their tech, to account for these kinds of changes.
- flattone 7y ago
  That is so well stated. I think from a pure interested user perspective the bottom line is I don't care what happens to anything as long as I'm not tracked/measured etc. Find another way or just get lucky with the correct mixture of creativity and hiring. My web browsing does not exist for companies to exist.
- jeena 7y ago
  They could ask me how I use their site, instead of giving the data about every step I do to 3rd parties.
  - creato 7y ago
    People that respond to such questions surely are a very biased sample of the overall user base.
    - chris_wot 7y ago
      So let's make more people respond to such questions. The answer is not to say "it's biased" but to fix the core issue.
      - cortesoft 7y ago
        No. I hate those questions and don't want to answer them. Just let me use your site and figure out what works from there. You can still have analytics with this Firefox change, you just have to use your own domain for the cookies.
miguelmota 7y ago
The only thing preventing me from completely switching over to Firefox is the developer aren't as good as Chrome's which is faster and less clunky for debugging.
- mevile 7y ago
  I have not found this to be the case at all. The dev tools are amazing. I have not yet had the chance to use them with a webworker or websockets so I don't know about it compares with some aspects of chrome's dev tools.
pinkflounder 7y ago
Can't compete with Brave.
propogandist 7y ago
All this does is cause advertisers to look at more advances mechanisms to track users and make it 'mainstream' -- like browser fingerprinting. These are also not explictly governed by existing legislation, so they can also worry about things like cookie laws and there's little to no defense.
- icxa 7y ago
  Speaking from experience, Safari seems to be very good at defeating current fingerprinting techniques
- baroffoos 7y ago
  Firefox has a setting you can enable to resist fingerprinting. It must do something because every anti abuse measure on the internet flags you as a bot once you turn it on.
- deadbunny 7y ago
  So the usual arms race between people and advertisers?
- chopin 7y ago
  Within the GDPR realm fingerprinting has exactly the same legal implications as (third-party) cookies have.
Jonanin 7y ago
I like these updates just as much as everyone else, but I can't help but think they seem a little bit like biting the hand that feeds you. What will they do when Google decides against renewing their Firefox search contract? Mozilla is highly dependent on the hundreds of million of dollars this contract provides. The politics of this situation are interesting for sure.
- xfitm3 7y ago
  Mozilla's #1 priority is not to piss off Google, so I'm sure there was a conversation before this happened. Besides, when it comes to money, Google profits many times over whatever payout they give Mozilla.
  - chii 7y ago
    I'm certain that Firefox not shipping a default adblocker is a compromise they made to get that revenue from Google.
  - gavindean90 7y ago
    It was a few years ago that the default search engine for Firefox was Yahoo. I would think that Google would be happy to see Firefox fighting back at them. You don't have a monopoly if Firefox is going strong.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  given the current antitrust momentum I don't think they'd ever cut Mozilla off in a way that makes them look coercive. If anything the current arrangement is a hedge against bad PR. "if we hate competition and privacy so much, why do you think we're in business with our anti-ad competitor?" etc..
- mobjack 7y ago
  Google makes lots of money from search ads from Firefox users. Even with these changes, there are still lots of ways for Google to track you and monetize ads.
okko12 7y ago
Browser cannot stop anyone from tracking you. It is just a commercial exploitation.
taurath 7y ago
Does this block tracking pixels as well? Tag managers?
netwanderer3 7y ago
People were racing to add those social media buttons linked to Facebook back in the days and now they're scrambling to remove them. It's just funny how this works.
binarymayhem 7y ago
I'm not sure why the "Multi Account Containers" are not built into the browser but I found this add-on to be a motivating factor in switching to FF. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
- edraferi 7y ago
  When I first tried to switch to from Chrome to Firefox, I got frustrated by the different approaches to user profiles, but multi-containers fixed it for me. Chrome makes it easy to switch profiles/accounts with the account button in the top right, but Firefox profile management is clunky. You have to choose on startup and can’t launch a window with a different profile from the browser itself. Next time I tried, I found Multi-containers! It’s EXACTLY what I was trying to do with Chrome Profiles (isolate cookies per persona) and it improves on Chrome in a couple ways: - lighter than Chrome profiles, very fast to create new containers - Not tied to a google account - multiple containers in the same window - Domain-specific rules make sure you don’t cross-contaminate containers accidentally - Profile stuff like History and bookmarks is shared across containers and securely synced with client side encryption by default. You can also get a REAL win for privacy by adding the Temporary Containers extension [0]. This lets you create arbitrarily many containers. It defaults to being an option (right click -> open in temp container) but can be set much more aggressively. I have it create a new temporary container every time I move to a new domain. Amazing. That DOES require some manual configuration to avoid breaking complex products like Office365. I created a huge regex that identifies Office365 domains and triggers a whitelist with less aggressive isolation. Still, not too much more work than running uBlock Origin with 3rd party resources disabled by default. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
  - zamu 7y ago
    > - Profile stuff like History and bookmarks is shared across containers and securely synced with client side encryption by default. That's actually why I prefer the full profile option in Firefox (i.e. running 'firefox -p' and selecting a profile). I don't want shared history across profiles.
rukshn 7y ago
Unpopular opinion on HN - Majority regular net users don't care about tracking and the FF focus on privacy will not give them the browser landscape they are losing daily. They should be focused on giving a better smooth UI, make it faster, remove unwanted extensions like pocket, make all the sites work. Let's see how valid this comment is in couple of years.
- m45t3r 7y ago
  Firefox is fast enough for most people, it has a UI as good as Chrome (that maybe is shit for some people, however most people don't care), most people don't care if Pocket is included or not (it is not like Firefox keeps nagging you to use it either). The only point I concur with you is that all sites should work, however the majority of times I see a site broken in Firefox is because of the developer not testing in other browsers and not a Firefox fault (it would be the same if the developer just develop on Firefox and didn't test on Chrome). Firefox is not as popular as Chrome thanks to the intense Google advertising some time ago. Even nowadays Google still advertises "this sites runs best on Chrome", kinda like Coca Cola still advertises its products even if they are already the leaders in the segment.
  - rukshn 7y ago
    Why should the developers worry about a browser that is only covering 10% as I remember that is the cover ? Specially if you have a small team who has time and people to make multiple versions to run on different browsers? You can just put a banner saying this website works well on chrome. FF should be more active in making all the sites work on their browser.
    - sfink 7y ago
      > FF should be more active in making all the sites work on their browser. How? By matching any bugs or spec incompatibilities Chrome has that makes the site only work in Chrome? Or by begging the site authors to fix the HTML or CSS or JS? Because I don't see any other options. The first defeats the purpose of having an independent browser (or web standards). The second won't work -- or at least, its success is determined entirely by market share, not directly by what Mozilla does. I'm really not sure what you're asking for.
TheArcane 7y ago
Multi-account containers is probably why I won't leave Firefox. I have different containers for Facebook and all its websites(instagram, whatsapp), google, amazon, Microsoft.
- trickstra 7y ago
  isn't that the same as the Person profiles in Chrome?
  - cordellwren 7y ago
    No, Profiles are an entirely separate feature that Firefox also has. Setting up separate profiles for every major site could achieve something similar, but that would obviously be unimaginably inconvenient. Containers are like sandboxed virtual browser instances that nullify most methods of cross-site tracking, while also enabling you to conveniently stay logged in to all of your sites. Switching between the containers is seamless, and does not require any conscious user action apart from initially setting them up. Plus, the real kicker is using Temporary Containers as the default setting for new tabs, which can make it as if every Google search or inconsequential browsing session is done in a Private Window instance. This means there's no way in terms of cookies and trackers for Google to obtain cumulative data about your searches and browsing habits, but you can safely keep local records of your history if you want. There's no way to achieve any of this in Chrome with anything approaching the same level of simplicity or convenience.
    - trickstra 7y ago
      How so? This is exactly what personal profiles do. Keeping a separate cookie jar, local storage, history, extensions. Basically only the browser version and OS related stuff is left to track you. Ok, except if Google tracks browser usage directly. I've been using separate profile for each of the evil websites I have to use, no cookie leaking.
      - cordellwren 7y ago
rhaksw 7y ago
This feature breaks hundreds of websites listed in a 5 year old issue [1] The last descriptive update was 4 years ago, > As the list is increasingly managed according to policy, breakage is a feature, not a bug. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1101005 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1101005 Among the broken websites is one I just completed, revddit, "removeddit for user pages": https://revddit.com/user/rhaksw https://revddit.com/user/rhaksw
- SquareWheel 7y ago
  Are you the one that created this bot on reddit? https://www.reddit.com/user/revddit/ https://www.reddit.com/user/revddit/ Creating a bot to spam your own website is obviously against the site rules. I see most of your posts on Hacker News are similarly promotional.
  - rhaksw 7y ago
    Promotion through censorship is what I meant to tackle when building the site, so I'm sorry if you feel the bot or citing it on HN is too promotional. Isn't this the place for sharing such work? If not here, where? The bot itself only responds once per user or thread, and I've already blacklisted some subreddits per suggestions [1]. Feel free to pm me at u/rhaksw if you would like to discuss it further. [1] https://www.reddit.com/wiki/bottiquette https://www.reddit.com/wiki/bottiquette
    - SquareWheel 7y ago
      Your bot violates multiple rules of bottiquette: >[Please don't] write bots that reply to comments or send private messages without solicitation. >[Please don't] have your bot reply to every instance of a common word or phrase It also violates the site's self-promotion guidelines. It's a spambot, plain and simple. I have reported it as such.
      - rhaksw 7y ago
        The site reflects users' own data, and I built it without pay. There are no ads. I am sorry you are upset about it.
telaelit 7y ago
I can proudly say that I’ve ditched Chrome for Firefox for about a month now. The first few days were a little rough (migrating passwords and what not), but now I love it. Keep up the good work FF!
stunt 7y ago
I always use Firefox and will always use and support Firefox and Mozilla.
agumonkey 7y ago
Going back to Firefox nightly since the google ad issue. I'm sad to say, Firefox UI still lags 2x more than Chromium (even abused with 40+ tabs) on my old machine to the point of being a noticeable annoyance. Hopefully Mozilla will have funding and manpower to improve this. Thanks for the work nonetheless.
rv-de 7y ago
Is this setting extending ublock origin or already covered by it?
- floatboth 7y ago
  Mozilla uses the Disconnect lists. uBlock has larger lists that include the majority of ads not just trackers, but they do cover trackers as well of course.
MikusR 7y ago
Is there a version of Firefox that protects you from Mozilla installing mr. Robot ads?
ghusbands 7y ago
There's a huge political problem with protections that are on by default, and that's that opponents (advertisers) can easily argue that they are not the explicit will of the user and hence feel justified in doing whatever they can to bypass them. So this action increases the justification for browser fingerprinting and other dark tracking patterns. The same sort of thing undermined do-not-track headers. The instant they passed from being user-enabled to on-by-default, advertisers were presented with a strong excuse to ignore them.
- deadbunny 7y ago
  Bullshit. If I install privacy respecting software over non privacy respecting software then you have to assume I want to keep my privacy and don't want you tracking me.
  - ghusbands 7y ago
    I'm not tracking anyone. But the majority of Firefox users aren't choosing it for privacy reasons, so these privacy-preserving features are not a good signal that the user actually wants that privacy. It was worse for do-not-track, as all the major browsers enabled it by default, making it not at all a signal of user preference.
    - deadbunny 7y ago
      > I'm not tracking anyone Context is fun eh. > But the majority of Firefox users aren't choosing it for privacy reasons I'd like some stats on that please. Given the market share Firefox has why are people installing Firefox? > so these privacy-preserving features are not a good signal that the user actually wants that privacy. I consider installing privacy protecting software a pretty good signal but maybe I'm being generous. > It was worse for do-not-track, as all the major browsers enabled it by default, making it not at all a signal of user preference. Seems like a pretty strong signal that people don't want to be tracked to me, if a browser impliments something as a default then it would suggest to me that they know more than 50% of their userbase would think not being tracked online is a pretty fucking good idea.
misterman0 7y ago
Sorry but I can't make the switch from chrome to ff because I don't buy ff's agenda any more than I do Google's. Neither is in the browser game to make money from great browser product. I want someone to be as dedicated to the product as id was to doom. I want to be able to use their browser for free for a year or three. If I still like you then I'll mary you. Then I'll pay a yearly fee for as long as I live. Edit: until you start to act a fool. If you do then you're out. Can someone please create this product?
- jmichaelhudson 7y ago
  I truly, truly do not understand what is going on here at HN. 2 weeks ago mozilla deactivated by super-incompetent accident all of their security add ons and required a completely opaque 'studies' tool to push an update. With the security features deactivated tons of people who need to get work done or didn't understand what was going on used the web with all of the tracking features turned on, no doubt allowing tons of previously anonymous stored data on users to be de-anonymized. They don't have to be able to track everyone all of the time, you just have to really get a unique identifier on the browser tracks left in the databases. Many FF installs in linux distributions ceased to function at all. These simple observations went hardly remarked on HN. BoingBoing.net which has previously covered security issues well, somehow did not notice/report this event, which stands out in recent memory as one of the worst privacy catastrophes. An inquiry to Mr. Doctorow himself in regards to this, as well as why there is still a tracking F on the page in 2019, has gone unanswered. Now, a month later, without any further discussion of this event, Firefox wants us to trust it to single-handedly defeat tracking with a single new catch-all feature. On HN, top rated comments, rather than expressing skepticism and asking for details, are about a completely different browser, Safari. Perhaps the best comment after the firefix addon-aggedon noted, FF does not have to have a studies feature, it does not have to push automatic updates, it does not have to have a single signing certificate for all of the add-ons which creates a single point of failure. This line of inquiry is devastating to the true nature of mozilla and the loyalties of the individuals behind this code. I am posting this as a response to the lowest rated, yet in my opinion best comment in this topic, hoping that other people who notice the complete distractions and consensus cracking going on all over the place above the fold, will know where to look for someone saying something intelligent about the situation. And so this: the problem is not the computers and the software, it is the nature of these institutions and the people in them. Semi-corporate half-charitable, expansive things like whatever Mozilla is lend themselves easily to the same sort of infiltration and takeover as normal, evil, corporations. Do you not think the fbi, cia, air force and mossad have been spending years getting their agents into the 'key positions' at mozilla? Does mozilla(or canonical) seem to you like an organization who could resist this sort of effort? It is now obvious that Firefox is run by the enemies of open culture, and having only the choice between FF and Chrome, developed by an even less trustworthy institution, the internet as dreamed of by people who care about freedom and liberty of the individual is in serious trouble. So the comment to which I am replying is the best, what shape of institution will create software to make the internet open and fair, and facilitate free speech without infiltration and subversion by spies and paid propagandists? Why can all of the kings horses and all the kings men not create a functional browser that doesn't publicize reading habits and de-anonymize with extremely obfuscated input analysis, if not outright keylogging and password theft and intentional malware backdoors? The browser has replaced the television for most people, if you haven't noticed, so this is important and how discusion platforms like hackernews deal with the discussion of this, reveals all we need to know about the institution and individuals behind hackernews. Something is rotten here and it could not be more obvious to anyone still capable of independent thought.
eudora 7y ago
Knocking it out of the park, Mozilla, keep it up. Getting more people on Firefox would do the tech world so much good, diversifying who controls what in the web.
gzimhelshani 7y ago
Been using FF for 3 weeks now, love it so far.

1069 points by teddyfrozevelt 7y ago

>For new users who install and download Firefox for the first time, Enhanced Tracking Protection will automatically be set on by default as part of the ‘Standard’ setting in the browser and will block known “third-party tracking cookies” according to the Disconnect list. Despite other issues, which there are some, I'm really happy to see FF not only enable more ways for users to protect themselves - but to be rolling it out as a default. A lot of non-technical users I've encountered usually want the extra (usually non-default) protections, but don't know where to begin (or what is even available) so they continue with the default installation. FF setting some of the more mature privacy protection features as a default moving forward is a great sign of commitment to the cause of bringing privacy to everyone. Even those who don't know how to poke around the settings or about:config. >Today, we’re releasing the latest update for Facebook Container which prevents Facebook from tracking you on other sites that have embedded Facebook capabilities such as the Share and Like buttons on their site. This is a much needed change that I'm also really happy to see. Not really containing anything if the embeds still function.

toper-centage 7y ago
These Firefox tools are really great. One big issue right now that I have with the strict fingerprint resisting is that it zeroes the timezone to UTC+0. It messes up with websites like slack and others. I had to use an extra addon to set a custom timezone.
godelski 7y ago
My parents are completely tech illiterate. But they are also afraid of this tracking and becoming much more aware of this power. So they ask me to set up their browsers to do so. I don't go full in, but basic stuff. There are still little hiccups but even they are happier to have small hiccups than be tracked. They see it as a fair trade-off. I think this attitude is common non-technical users. Tldr: I fully support security by default.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

Sujan 7y ago

The Lockwise addon is interesting - but that they are not using their own addon site is strange.

abledon 7y ago
why use lockwise instead of say, bitwarden?

whizzkid 7y ago

It is funny how my browser preferences has changed over last 5 years. 2014 me as a developer had Chrome as number 1 browser for both development and all rest. Firefox once a month just to check cross browser compatibility. And Safari was just installed without me using it. 2019 me uses Safari for everything except development. Excellent power consumption and UX. Firefox for development. And lastly Chrome for all web apps that only work on Chrome. ( Google Meet etc. ) I feel much much better that I am not dependent on chrome.

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
Are there Chrome-only webapps you use that don't just work with a User-Agent switcher?
- shrikant 7y ago
  Most Google apps only just about "work" on Firefox. They're clearly optimised for Chromium and it shows. I use Firefox for all my browsing needs except for Google apps, for which I keep an install of Vivaldi around. I only really fire up Chrome if some stupid internal workplace app refuses to work on anything else. It truly is the new IE.
  - zepearl 7y ago
    > It truly is the new IE Funny, and true at least in the company I'm working for (officially supported browsers are primarily IE11 and optionally Chrome). A colleague told me a few months ago that Firefox was not supported because it did not support some Windows "policies" (Windows or Active Directory? Not sure, no clue about that stuff) but that Firefox was going to support them soon... .
    - shawnz 7y ago
      Likely they did indeed mean Group Policy in the Active Directory sense, although that's been supported in Firefox for over a year now

SamuelAdams 7y ago

I'm an existing Firefox user. Is there a short list of settings to check to make sure this "Enhanced Tracking Protection" is enabled? In short, I'm looking for a list of instructions: go to Options > Privacy and Security > Content Blocking > make sure cookies is set to at least "All third party cookies...".

riquito 7y ago
It's explained in the article. > For existing users, we’ll be rolling out Enhanced Tracking Protection by default in the coming months without you having to change a thing. If you can’t wait, you can turn this feature on by clicking on the menu icon marked by three horizontal lines at the top right of your browser, then under Content Blocking. Go to your privacy preferences and click on the Custom gear on the right side. Mark the Cookies checkbox and make sure that “Third-party trackers” is selected. To learn more about our privacy and security settings and get more detail on what each section – Standard, Strict, and Custom – includes, visit here [1]. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking
floatingatoll 7y ago
I think you’re just about right - it’s Options > Privacy > Content > Custom > “Block third-party trackers”. (It is not “Block all third-party cookies”, make sure to select the correct one.)
- toastal 7y ago
  And yet you've sadly got some companies like Alibaba[1] telling users to enable all third-party cookies. This is terrible advice. 1: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/doc-detail/62160.htm https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/doc-detail/62160.htm
thomasfedb 7y ago
A good way to get all these settings is to generate a profile with this tool: https://ffprofile.com/ https://ffprofile.com/

temac 7y ago

Ironically, it triggers on blog.mozilla.org :/

a1369209993 7y ago
It's worth noting that this isn't actually inconsistent. If your browser does security properly, blog.mozilla.org saying "here, have some malware" doesn't matter because it will be ignored. If it doesn't, one more website serving (functionality-irrelevant) malware makes it that much marginally more painful to keep using a defective browser.
- stkdump 7y ago
  Wait, are you saying that blog.mozilla.org serves malware?
  - a1369209993 7y ago
    Well, I'm not, but temac is saying that Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection is saying that blog.mozilla.org serves malware. I'd call that plausible and presumed true for the sake of discussion but unconfirmed.

jacquesm 7y ago

I have two main computers. One has for continuity reasons the old version of Firefox, the other the new one. The old version is so much more usable that I find myself using that computer much more frequently. It is rock solid with 100's of tabs open, all my extensions work and without silly restrictions on what they can and can not do and it uses a lot less memory. It's measurably faster too. I'm all for progress and improvements in software but after a long stretch of being a very ardent FF supporter I really do wonder if they have a future. If a competitor had a dream about what they could do to ruin Firefox they could not have done a better job. Enhanced tracking protection is great but it doesn't matter if you push away your users.

dralley 7y ago
Setting aside possible hardware differences between the two, try doing a profile refresh, because that's messed up. I've also got a Firefox 52 installation lying around and the new version is noticably faster.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Interesting. Thanks for the tip, I'll give that a shot. Hardware differences are negligible, in fact the machine where FF is noticeably slower is the faster machine. Especially start-up is super slow, takes a couple of minutes at times.
  - Drdrdrq 7y ago
    That is seriously weird. I don't have the fastest machine possible yet FF starts in a second or two. Bigger problem are the apps that consume too much CPU and memory. Unfortunately there is no nice way to avoid their killing the whole system (Linux here). But other browsers are no better. The browser makers should realize they are delivering a multiuser OS and protect the resources accordingly.
    - sfink 7y ago
      I've used cgroups in the past to handle that problem when I was using stuff that would otherwise bring down my machine. But I don't know that I'd call it a nice way; at least back then, it was a PITA to set up.

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago

It sounds like this is similar to what Apple added to Safari two years ago (https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/apple-adds-a-tracker-blocker-to-desktop-safari/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/apple-adds-a-tracker-block...), though I don't know the details. I will be excited for the day when Privacy Badger is an unnecessary extension.

LamaOfRuin 7y ago
It seems like that would be today? I'm pretty sure they both work off the same Disconnect maintained list.
- teddyfrozevelt 7y ago
  Privacy Badger uses heuristics to determine when a domain might be tracking you. https://www.eff.org/privacybadger/faq#How-does-Privacy-Badger-work https://www.eff.org/privacybadger/faq#How-does-Privacy-Badge...
  - LamaOfRuin 7y ago
    Ah, good to know. I'm not sure if they changed that since launch, or I was just conflating them with one of the other extensions. This sounds more like Safari's newer behaviour, which sounds good in theory but in Safari's case where it can't be turned off, it breaks things in practice. This seems like a good solution for people that are aware of what's happening enough to pay attention and disable it when something is not working as expected, but makes a bad default for the typical user.
floatingatoll 7y ago
Safari uses a machine-learning classifier algorithm to determine which third-party sites are trackers: https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/ https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention... Disconnect may or may not use M-L classifiers in their selection process, I don’t know.
- 7y ago

tick_tock_tick 7y ago

Now if only the could fix firefox to not be the slowest and biggest battery draining browser on mac.

mostlysimilar 7y ago
I believe this is related to using scaled resolution in macOS. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 I was able to achieve way better performance by changing this to `true` in `about:config`: gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque Another note, performance seems way better when changing the following to `true`: gfx.webrender.all gfx.webrender.enabled If anyone with deeper understanding of these options has any reasons why this is a bad idea I'm all ears. Otherwise it's made my experience way better.
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  The WebRender team seems to be rolling out very gradually and is, if I remember a recent blog post correctly, restricting based on specific GPUs and specific platforms that are proven to work without e.g. crashing or breaking out various things (like window toolbars). If you set these options, and then later on, you find that your Firefox is super buggy and won't render anything properly and has weird crashes, it could be because you set these options — and it might take hours or days to realize that. (And then reverse them, somehow, assuming that gfx.webrender.all hasn't broken about:config!)
  - chronogram 7y ago
    I did definitely notice much better WebRender performance on Nvidia than on Intel, so I turned off WebRender on the Intel laptop.
    - floatingatoll 7y ago
      I went looking at the WebRender blog and they are apparently still making performance improvements every time they post an update, so make sure to clear your override and let the defaults take effect in a few weeks - either it’ll be better or (I assume) the telemetry data will highlight your OS+GPU+driver pairing as needs-improvement (which it can’t with it force-disabled).

PatrolX 7y ago

I've dumped Chrome altogether since FF 67 was released. My only gripe is they still aren't blocking ALL ads, but regardless it's a way better user experience now than it ever was. Firefox 67 feels like a whole new beast compared to their older versions. If you haven't tried FF for a while I recommend doing so and I suggest trying it across multiple devices. The tab management, syncing, pinning and sending etc. across multiple devices is awesome.

pault 7y ago
I'll second the multi device functionality. I use Firefox on desktop and iOS and all of my history, autocomplete, and tabs follow me and everywhere. It's incredibly convenient.
- Klonoar 7y ago
  For Mac users, this is... not great. Firefox on Mac continues to be an oddball in comparison to how it runs on Windows/Linux. I'll keep using Safari, which also gives me that wonderful cross-device syncing.
  - EugeneOZ 7y ago
    It is great for Mac users. Firefox 67+ is faster than Chrome and works flawlessly on MBP 2014. Some "Mac users" also use dev tools, and Firefox is better than Safari in this aspect.
    - Klonoar 7y ago
      This is not my experience, and certainly not the majority experience given how often the topic of Firefox on Mac comes up in every single thread on this site. When you parrot this around, you stop Mozilla from feeling the pressure necessary to build a compelling product on Mac.
Jonanin 7y ago
They can't and likely won't ever block ALL ads because they are funded through a search contract with Google. The whole point of that contract is to drive ad revenue.

arendtio 7y ago

Does anybody have experience setting up and running a custom FF Account/Sync server? https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-fxa.html https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run...

paulryanrogers 7y ago
I tried Weave back in the day and it was not trivial. The newer Firefox Sync has a FOSS server though it's not as TNO if I recall correctly, likely to allow selective sync and sharing.
jeena 7y ago
I set it up 2015 https://jeena.net/firefox-sync-15 https://jeena.net/firefox-sync-15 and it's running on my server ever since mostly without problems. I think it hang one time so I needed to restart it but otherwise great software, even though the documentation on how to install it was kind of non existent back then. But now that also improved a lot in addition that it's now easy to use on Android too.

Mikeb85 7y ago

I like all the work Firefox is putting in. Even though I'm not personally against Chrome, I've been using FF lately and it's very good.

frenchman99 7y ago

The article starts with: "It’s been several weeks since I was promoted to Senior Vice President of Firefox, responsible for overall Firefox product and web platform development." How is this relevant? Did Dave Camp's SVP appointment trigger these changes? Honest question, because this is the first sentence of the article and I'm having a hard time understanding why. Tracking protection is great though. I hope Firefox gains market share again, I love the direction it's taking.

jammygit 7y ago
A local struggling theatre company has a new president and the theatre is thriving under him. He told us in private that everything about his public appearance is curated in order to give the theatre a face, and that its an important part of saving struggling theatres - to attach a face to it. Maybe it’s the same thing?
ludston 7y ago
He's probably feeling pretty chuffed about it and just wants to share :)
hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
Maybe his hiring was part of the same process? Products reflect the organizations that produce them.
fabrice_d 7y ago
The dev for these features started a long time ago, notably by Monica Chew as Roc reminds us (https://twitter.com/rocallahan/status/1136041917404160000 https://twitter.com/rocallahan/status/1136041917404160000). More recently Ehsan Akhgari has been instrumental in pushing to the shipping line. Kudos to all!

hartator 7y ago

> It’s been several weeks since I was promoted to Senior Vice President of Firefox Awesome for you?

eikenberry 7y ago

Starting to look forward to July when the next ESR will be out. Really tempted to just go ahead and upgrade to FF67 now but have grown fond of the stability of the ESR releases.

jillesvangurp 7y ago
I've been on the Beta channel for the last few years. I can't remember the last time it crashed. It's just not a thing with Firefox these days. But then, they do push out new betas every few days so I end up restarting the browser quite often. Either way, stability is fine even with the Betas. I'm pretty sure there are quite many beta users so by the time a release comes out of beta, it has already survived many weeks of testing in the field by gazillions of real users abusing it on all kinds of platform and hardware combinations. So, stable should be perfectly fine for day to day use if you feel less adventurous. It's basically the release intended for world+dog. The only people actually using ESR probably are enterprises that for whatever reason actually care about which version of Firefox they are using and third party software integrators that just don't want to deal with major changes every minor release. Tor browser is a good example. I'll click the update button after clicking reply. It seems I missed a few updates. Zero issues that I noticed with this one: 68.0b4.
- eikenberry 7y ago
  Thanks. I switched to Chromium way back when FF first started their fast release cycle and kept breaking all my plugins. I finally switched back about a year or so ago and stuck with the ESR releases to be sure to avoid that. But now that they seem to have a stable plugin API I was considering switching to the standard stable releases as it doesn't seem like it should be an issue anymore. Though that also means finding a good source for them as I currently just use the packages from Debian Stable (well, upcoming stable as I upgraded to Buster early).
floatboth 7y ago
ESR for personal use? wow. I'd only expect that on boring corporate machines. I use Nightly everywhere :)

The_rationalist 7y ago

Please tell me I'm misunderstanding something! By enabling by default the blocking of those third party scripts: https://disconnect.me/trackerprotection/blocked https://disconnect.me/trackerprotection/blocked This Wil have three consequences: Many websites will partially break? Which ones? webmaster will lack many data necessary to understand what users do on their platform, where they missclick, what they don't use etc, thus diminishing the ability of webmasters to make great products. *the most dramatic one: People will see ads but the owner of a website will no longer earn ad money, because those are the third party scripts that allowed to prove to the ad platform that a user had effectively seen X ads.

Nursie 7y ago
Sorry, but as a web user I never signed up for stalking by site owners, nor did I sign up to be stalked across sites by their advertisers. I certainly didn't sign up to let you co-opt my computer to do this. You're going to have to live with it. Get some beta testers onboard maybe.
- jamiequint 7y ago
  Actually you did, because the world does not exist to serve you, it's a mutual transaction between two parties. Websites need to make money and understand how users are using their service so they can survive and improve. 99% of the data anyone is collecting which you call "stalking" is either available in server logs or could be easily modified so that it was. I guess you might just have to stop using the internet.
  - Nursie 7y ago
    Actually I didn't, because it's my device and it will operate how I see fit. This includes not being coopted to spy on me. My only 'contract' with the other party is that I requested some information, and they supplied it. I can render it how I see fit, or not at all. Websites can find a way to operate without this information stream or go bust, it's no skin off my nose one way or another. > 99% of the data anyone is collecting which you call "stalking" is either available in server logs It's very unlikely that server logs will be able to contain mis-clicks and behavioural analytics to the same extent that analytics services use. > I guess you might just have to stop using the internet Or, you know, do exactly what the post I replied to was complaining about and use a browser that takes steps to protect my privacy, various blocking plugins etc etc

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

It appears this would block pretty much all the major analytics tracking cookies (e.g. Google analytics, mixpanel, etc.) based on the linked Disconnect list, https://disconnect.me/trackerprotection https://disconnect.me/trackerprotection . While I realize that's kind of the point, in my mind there is somewhat of a difference between "the site I'm on is tracking me to figure out how I use their site" vs. "any site I visit is essentially aggregated data because all the sites use the same major trackers and ad networks". I wonder if the big analytics companies will need to change their business model, or at least their tech, to account for these kinds of changes.

flattone 7y ago
That is so well stated. I think from a pure interested user perspective the bottom line is I don't care what happens to anything as long as I'm not tracked/measured etc. Find another way or just get lucky with the correct mixture of creativity and hiring. My web browsing does not exist for companies to exist.
jeena 7y ago
They could ask me how I use their site, instead of giving the data about every step I do to 3rd parties.
- creato 7y ago
  People that respond to such questions surely are a very biased sample of the overall user base.
  - chris_wot 7y ago
    So let's make more people respond to such questions. The answer is not to say "it's biased" but to fix the core issue.
    - cortesoft 7y ago
      No. I hate those questions and don't want to answer them. Just let me use your site and figure out what works from there. You can still have analytics with this Firefox change, you just have to use your own domain for the cookies.

miguelmota 7y ago

The only thing preventing me from completely switching over to Firefox is the developer aren't as good as Chrome's which is faster and less clunky for debugging.

mevile 7y ago
I have not found this to be the case at all. The dev tools are amazing. I have not yet had the chance to use them with a webworker or websockets so I don't know about it compares with some aspects of chrome's dev tools.

pinkflounder 7y ago

Can't compete with Brave.

propogandist 7y ago

All this does is cause advertisers to look at more advances mechanisms to track users and make it 'mainstream' -- like browser fingerprinting. These are also not explictly governed by existing legislation, so they can also worry about things like cookie laws and there's little to no defense.

icxa 7y ago
Speaking from experience, Safari seems to be very good at defeating current fingerprinting techniques
baroffoos 7y ago
Firefox has a setting you can enable to resist fingerprinting. It must do something because every anti abuse measure on the internet flags you as a bot once you turn it on.
deadbunny 7y ago
So the usual arms race between people and advertisers?
chopin 7y ago
Within the GDPR realm fingerprinting has exactly the same legal implications as (third-party) cookies have.

Jonanin 7y ago

I like these updates just as much as everyone else, but I can't help but think they seem a little bit like biting the hand that feeds you. What will they do when Google decides against renewing their Firefox search contract? Mozilla is highly dependent on the hundreds of million of dollars this contract provides. The politics of this situation are interesting for sure.

xfitm3 7y ago
Mozilla's #1 priority is not to piss off Google, so I'm sure there was a conversation before this happened. Besides, when it comes to money, Google profits many times over whatever payout they give Mozilla.
- chii 7y ago
  I'm certain that Firefox not shipping a default adblocker is a compromise they made to get that revenue from Google.
- gavindean90 7y ago
  It was a few years ago that the default search engine for Firefox was Yahoo. I would think that Google would be happy to see Firefox fighting back at them. You don't have a monopoly if Firefox is going strong.
Barrin92 7y ago
given the current antitrust momentum I don't think they'd ever cut Mozilla off in a way that makes them look coercive. If anything the current arrangement is a hedge against bad PR. "if we hate competition and privacy so much, why do you think we're in business with our anti-ad competitor?" etc..
mobjack 7y ago
Google makes lots of money from search ads from Firefox users. Even with these changes, there are still lots of ways for Google to track you and monetize ads.

okko12 7y ago

Browser cannot stop anyone from tracking you. It is just a commercial exploitation.

taurath 7y ago

Does this block tracking pixels as well? Tag managers?

netwanderer3 7y ago

People were racing to add those social media buttons linked to Facebook back in the days and now they're scrambling to remove them. It's just funny how this works.

binarymayhem 7y ago

I'm not sure why the "Multi Account Containers" are not built into the browser but I found this add-on to be a motivating factor in switching to FF. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

edraferi 7y ago
When I first tried to switch to from Chrome to Firefox, I got frustrated by the different approaches to user profiles, but multi-containers fixed it for me. Chrome makes it easy to switch profiles/accounts with the account button in the top right, but Firefox profile management is clunky. You have to choose on startup and can’t launch a window with a different profile from the browser itself. Next time I tried, I found Multi-containers! It’s EXACTLY what I was trying to do with Chrome Profiles (isolate cookies per persona) and it improves on Chrome in a couple ways: - lighter than Chrome profiles, very fast to create new containers - Not tied to a google account - multiple containers in the same window - Domain-specific rules make sure you don’t cross-contaminate containers accidentally - Profile stuff like History and bookmarks is shared across containers and securely synced with client side encryption by default. You can also get a REAL win for privacy by adding the Temporary Containers extension [0]. This lets you create arbitrarily many containers. It defaults to being an option (right click -> open in temp container) but can be set much more aggressively. I have it create a new temporary container every time I move to a new domain. Amazing. That DOES require some manual configuration to avoid breaking complex products like Office365. I created a huge regex that identifies Office365 domains and triggers a whitelist with less aggressive isolation. Still, not too much more work than running uBlock Origin with 3rd party resources disabled by default. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...
- zamu 7y ago
  > - Profile stuff like History and bookmarks is shared across containers and securely synced with client side encryption by default. That's actually why I prefer the full profile option in Firefox (i.e. running 'firefox -p' and selecting a profile). I don't want shared history across profiles.

rukshn 7y ago

Unpopular opinion on HN - Majority regular net users don't care about tracking and the FF focus on privacy will not give them the browser landscape they are losing daily. They should be focused on giving a better smooth UI, make it faster, remove unwanted extensions like pocket, make all the sites work. Let's see how valid this comment is in couple of years.

m45t3r 7y ago
Firefox is fast enough for most people, it has a UI as good as Chrome (that maybe is shit for some people, however most people don't care), most people don't care if Pocket is included or not (it is not like Firefox keeps nagging you to use it either). The only point I concur with you is that all sites should work, however the majority of times I see a site broken in Firefox is because of the developer not testing in other browsers and not a Firefox fault (it would be the same if the developer just develop on Firefox and didn't test on Chrome). Firefox is not as popular as Chrome thanks to the intense Google advertising some time ago. Even nowadays Google still advertises "this sites runs best on Chrome", kinda like Coca Cola still advertises its products even if they are already the leaders in the segment.
- rukshn 7y ago
  Why should the developers worry about a browser that is only covering 10% as I remember that is the cover ? Specially if you have a small team who has time and people to make multiple versions to run on different browsers? You can just put a banner saying this website works well on chrome. FF should be more active in making all the sites work on their browser.
  - sfink 7y ago
    > FF should be more active in making all the sites work on their browser. How? By matching any bugs or spec incompatibilities Chrome has that makes the site only work in Chrome? Or by begging the site authors to fix the HTML or CSS or JS? Because I don't see any other options. The first defeats the purpose of having an independent browser (or web standards). The second won't work -- or at least, its success is determined entirely by market share, not directly by what Mozilla does. I'm really not sure what you're asking for.

TheArcane 7y ago

Multi-account containers is probably why I won't leave Firefox. I have different containers for Facebook and all its websites(instagram, whatsapp), google, amazon, Microsoft.

trickstra 7y ago
isn't that the same as the Person profiles in Chrome?
- cordellwren 7y ago
  No, Profiles are an entirely separate feature that Firefox also has. Setting up separate profiles for every major site could achieve something similar, but that would obviously be unimaginably inconvenient. Containers are like sandboxed virtual browser instances that nullify most methods of cross-site tracking, while also enabling you to conveniently stay logged in to all of your sites. Switching between the containers is seamless, and does not require any conscious user action apart from initially setting them up. Plus, the real kicker is using Temporary Containers as the default setting for new tabs, which can make it as if every Google search or inconsequential browsing session is done in a Private Window instance. This means there's no way in terms of cookies and trackers for Google to obtain cumulative data about your searches and browsing habits, but you can safely keep local records of your history if you want. There's no way to achieve any of this in Chrome with anything approaching the same level of simplicity or convenience.
  - trickstra 7y ago
    How so? This is exactly what personal profiles do. Keeping a separate cookie jar, local storage, history, extensions. Basically only the browser version and OS related stuff is left to track you. Ok, except if Google tracks browser usage directly. I've been using separate profile for each of the evil websites I have to use, no cookie leaking.
    - cordellwren 7y ago

rhaksw 7y ago

This feature breaks hundreds of websites listed in a 5 year old issue [1] The last descriptive update was 4 years ago, > As the list is increasingly managed according to policy, breakage is a feature, not a bug. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1101005 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1101005 Among the broken websites is one I just completed, revddit, "removeddit for user pages": https://revddit.com/user/rhaksw https://revddit.com/user/rhaksw

SquareWheel 7y ago
Are you the one that created this bot on reddit? https://www.reddit.com/user/revddit/ https://www.reddit.com/user/revddit/ Creating a bot to spam your own website is obviously against the site rules. I see most of your posts on Hacker News are similarly promotional.
- rhaksw 7y ago
  Promotion through censorship is what I meant to tackle when building the site, so I'm sorry if you feel the bot or citing it on HN is too promotional. Isn't this the place for sharing such work? If not here, where? The bot itself only responds once per user or thread, and I've already blacklisted some subreddits per suggestions [1]. Feel free to pm me at u/rhaksw if you would like to discuss it further. [1] https://www.reddit.com/wiki/bottiquette https://www.reddit.com/wiki/bottiquette
  - SquareWheel 7y ago
    Your bot violates multiple rules of bottiquette: >[Please don't] write bots that reply to comments or send private messages without solicitation. >[Please don't] have your bot reply to every instance of a common word or phrase It also violates the site's self-promotion guidelines. It's a spambot, plain and simple. I have reported it as such.
    - rhaksw 7y ago
      The site reflects users' own data, and I built it without pay. There are no ads. I am sorry you are upset about it.

telaelit 7y ago

I can proudly say that I’ve ditched Chrome for Firefox for about a month now. The first few days were a little rough (migrating passwords and what not), but now I love it. Keep up the good work FF!

stunt 7y ago

I always use Firefox and will always use and support Firefox and Mozilla.

agumonkey 7y ago

Going back to Firefox nightly since the google ad issue. I'm sad to say, Firefox UI still lags 2x more than Chromium (even abused with 40+ tabs) on my old machine to the point of being a noticeable annoyance. Hopefully Mozilla will have funding and manpower to improve this. Thanks for the work nonetheless.

rv-de 7y ago

Is this setting extending ublock origin or already covered by it?

floatboth 7y ago
Mozilla uses the Disconnect lists. uBlock has larger lists that include the majority of ads not just trackers, but they do cover trackers as well of course.

MikusR 7y ago

Is there a version of Firefox that protects you from Mozilla installing mr. Robot ads?

ghusbands 7y ago

There's a huge political problem with protections that are on by default, and that's that opponents (advertisers) can easily argue that they are not the explicit will of the user and hence feel justified in doing whatever they can to bypass them. So this action increases the justification for browser fingerprinting and other dark tracking patterns. The same sort of thing undermined do-not-track headers. The instant they passed from being user-enabled to on-by-default, advertisers were presented with a strong excuse to ignore them.

deadbunny 7y ago
Bullshit. If I install privacy respecting software over non privacy respecting software then you have to assume I want to keep my privacy and don't want you tracking me.
- ghusbands 7y ago
  I'm not tracking anyone. But the majority of Firefox users aren't choosing it for privacy reasons, so these privacy-preserving features are not a good signal that the user actually wants that privacy. It was worse for do-not-track, as all the major browsers enabled it by default, making it not at all a signal of user preference.
  - deadbunny 7y ago
    > I'm not tracking anyone Context is fun eh. > But the majority of Firefox users aren't choosing it for privacy reasons I'd like some stats on that please. Given the market share Firefox has why are people installing Firefox? > so these privacy-preserving features are not a good signal that the user actually wants that privacy. I consider installing privacy protecting software a pretty good signal but maybe I'm being generous. > It was worse for do-not-track, as all the major browsers enabled it by default, making it not at all a signal of user preference. Seems like a pretty strong signal that people don't want to be tracked to me, if a browser impliments something as a default then it would suggest to me that they know more than 50% of their userbase would think not being tracked online is a pretty fucking good idea.

misterman0 7y ago

Sorry but I can't make the switch from chrome to ff because I don't buy ff's agenda any more than I do Google's. Neither is in the browser game to make money from great browser product. I want someone to be as dedicated to the product as id was to doom. I want to be able to use their browser for free for a year or three. If I still like you then I'll mary you. Then I'll pay a yearly fee for as long as I live. Edit: until you start to act a fool. If you do then you're out. Can someone please create this product?

jmichaelhudson 7y ago
I truly, truly do not understand what is going on here at HN. 2 weeks ago mozilla deactivated by super-incompetent accident all of their security add ons and required a completely opaque 'studies' tool to push an update. With the security features deactivated tons of people who need to get work done or didn't understand what was going on used the web with all of the tracking features turned on, no doubt allowing tons of previously anonymous stored data on users to be de-anonymized. They don't have to be able to track everyone all of the time, you just have to really get a unique identifier on the browser tracks left in the databases. Many FF installs in linux distributions ceased to function at all. These simple observations went hardly remarked on HN. BoingBoing.net which has previously covered security issues well, somehow did not notice/report this event, which stands out in recent memory as one of the worst privacy catastrophes. An inquiry to Mr. Doctorow himself in regards to this, as well as why there is still a tracking F on the page in 2019, has gone unanswered. Now, a month later, without any further discussion of this event, Firefox wants us to trust it to single-handedly defeat tracking with a single new catch-all feature. On HN, top rated comments, rather than expressing skepticism and asking for details, are about a completely different browser, Safari. Perhaps the best comment after the firefix addon-aggedon noted, FF does not have to have a studies feature, it does not have to push automatic updates, it does not have to have a single signing certificate for all of the add-ons which creates a single point of failure. This line of inquiry is devastating to the true nature of mozilla and the loyalties of the individuals behind this code. I am posting this as a response to the lowest rated, yet in my opinion best comment in this topic, hoping that other people who notice the complete distractions and consensus cracking going on all over the place above the fold, will know where to look for someone saying something intelligent about the situation. And so this: the problem is not the computers and the software, it is the nature of these institutions and the people in them. Semi-corporate half-charitable, expansive things like whatever Mozilla is lend themselves easily to the same sort of infiltration and takeover as normal, evil, corporations. Do you not think the fbi, cia, air force and mossad have been spending years getting their agents into the 'key positions' at mozilla? Does mozilla(or canonical) seem to you like an organization who could resist this sort of effort? It is now obvious that Firefox is run by the enemies of open culture, and having only the choice between FF and Chrome, developed by an even less trustworthy institution, the internet as dreamed of by people who care about freedom and liberty of the individual is in serious trouble. So the comment to which I am replying is the best, what shape of institution will create software to make the internet open and fair, and facilitate free speech without infiltration and subversion by spies and paid propagandists? Why can all of the kings horses and all the kings men not create a functional browser that doesn't publicize reading habits and de-anonymize with extremely obfuscated input analysis, if not outright keylogging and password theft and intentional malware backdoors? The browser has replaced the television for most people, if you haven't noticed, so this is important and how discusion platforms like hackernews deal with the discussion of this, reveals all we need to know about the institution and individuals behind hackernews. Something is rotten here and it could not be more obvious to anyone still capable of independent thought.

eudora 7y ago

Knocking it out of the park, Mozilla, keep it up. Getting more people on Firefox would do the tech world so much good, diversifying who controls what in the web.

gzimhelshani 7y ago

Been using FF for 3 weeks now, love it so far.