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T-Mobile recently started preventing you from logging in to their website using Firefox in Private Mode. Phone calls with T-Mobile representatives have made it

T-Mobile recently started preventing you from logging in to their website using Firefox in Private Mode. Phone calls with T-Mobile representatives have made it clear that it's their privacy department who initiated and enforced this. So it's clear that T-Mobile does not value your privacy. That's the last straw for me. I'm moving to a competitor after being with T-Mobile for over a decade. It's one thing to know that your provider actively monitors your network activity and violates your privacy there. There's little to nothing you can do about that thanks to governments. But to prevent me from even using a browser feature intended to help with privacy? Fuck You, T-Mobile.

ars 4y ago
It's only on Firefox and not on Chrome. So it's clearly not about privacy there was some bug that they decided not to bother fixing and took the lazy way out.
- inetknght 4y ago
  > It's only on Firefox and not on Chrome. So it's clearly not about privacy Yup. I knew it wasn't about privacy when their website worked "fine" just a few months ago. Their competitors, and my banks, still work fine in Firefox's Privacy Mode. So there's absolutely no real technical reason whatsoever for them to disable it. > there was some bug that they decided not to bother fixing and took the lazy way out My guess is that the bug being that Firefox's Privacy Mode actually prevented a lot of T-Mobile's invasive tracking.
  - syrrim 4y ago
    Private mode also enables "tracking protection", which prevents connections to 3rd party sites. It breaks the model of the web, and there are many legitimate use cases that don't work when its enabled. I use uB0 to prevent tracking, and generally disable "tracking protection" to make sure sites keep working.
    - inetknght 4y ago
      > Private mode also enables "tracking protection", which prevents connections to 3rd party sites. Yup and this is a good thing. > It breaks the model of the web, I would argue that it breaks the model of user-abusive models. This is still a good thing. > there are many legitimate use cases that don't work when its enabled Can you enumerate some of them?
      - metacritic12 4y ago
        Inlinking third party resources is literally in the original hypertext specification of the web. An HTML site might want to play a video hosted by a third party, or load a shared resource. Tags like <img src> even at the start of the web was intended to let you load images from any host. I would argue a browser that doesn't access resources on other domains or IPs is not a web browser at all, but instead some weird sandbox that lets you run a self contained app.
        inetknght 4y ago
        > Inlinking third party resources is literally in the original hypertext specification of the web. Indeed, but it was intended for real content. That intent is being abused by large corporations for tracking purposes and necessitates a heavy-handed block to it. Plus, including third party resources often ends up causing bitrot. It's much better to host your own copy of the things your site wants to load. You want to put in some 5 megabyte of javascript trash? Then you should pay the bandwidth costs for that too instead of letting someone else, with different motives, handle it for you. If you don't want to handle updates to that javascript library, if you don't want to pay for the bandwidth, if you want to offload all of that cost to someone else who doesn't care about the end user's privacy and functionality, then you are literally one of the problems with the "modern" web. > An HTML site might want to play a video hosted by a third party, or load a shared resource. There's no situation where I want website A to load resources from website B. Want to share a youtube video? Then give me a youtube link. I don't want to open some potentially malicious third party website which just loads a youtube link. If I don't want to use youtube _at all_ then your site will break too. If I get blocked or banned from youtube, then your site will break anyway and that's still a _you_ problem and not a _me_ problem. It's the same for images, audio, javascript, whatever. If you want it to load on my machine, then you should host it on your machine accessible from the exact same domain that serves your website. > I would argue a browser that doesn't access resources on other domains or IPs is not a web browser at all, but instead some weird sandbox that lets you run a self contained app. That is exactly what we have right now anyway. And I fully agree: browsers have turned into semi-sandboxes to let people run self-contained "apps". I don't want or like it and I argue that that very "model" of the web is not conducive to users' privacy.
  - ars 4y ago
    It's clear you enjoy a good conspiracy theory, but you are quite wrong. First of all Firefox, in regular mode, already blocks all tracking cookies. There is ZERO extra blocking in privacy mode. > So there's absolutely no real technical reason whatsoever for them to disable it. The only difference is in privacy mode some offline data storage API's do not work (return null, rather than storing, and then discarding, data). T-Mobile uses those API's, and they did not feel like dealing with the case of them not working. If you install an extension that re-enables the API's, magically T-Mobile starts working even in privacy mode! > My guess is that the bug being that Firefox's Privacy Mode actually prevented a lot of T-Mobile's invasive tracking. Like I said, you clearly enjoy conspiracy theories, but T-Mobile doesn't have much tracking on their login page.
    - inetknght 4y ago
      > There is ZERO extra blocking in privacy mode. Indeed? But there is extra privacy in privacy mode. I don't have to remember to log-out, I don't have to worry about cached items, I don't have to worry about a tab in Private Mode talking to a tab outside of Private Mode (and indeed, that is extra blocking). > The only difference is in privacy mode some offline data storage API's do not work That's a good thing. I do not want websites to store data on my machine. If the website cannot function without data stored locally then the website is not a valid website. It's now an app. I do not want to install apps in my browser. And further: why is this a technical decision made by their privacy team instead of their engineers? Why don't they able to explicitly state what features are required instead of blanket banning the mode? T-Mobile is clearly in the wrong here.
    - warkdarrior 4y ago
      Plus, why would T-Mobile do "invasive tracking" on their login page? One or two clicks later they'll know exactly who you are.
      - inetknght 4y ago
        Well that's a good point. But then: why is it the privacy policy department who mandated the change?
deleted 4y ago
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ars 4y ago

It's only on Firefox and not on Chrome. So it's clearly not about privacy there was some bug that they decided not to bother fixing and took the lazy way out.

inetknght 4y ago
> It's only on Firefox and not on Chrome. So it's clearly not about privacy Yup. I knew it wasn't about privacy when their website worked "fine" just a few months ago. Their competitors, and my banks, still work fine in Firefox's Privacy Mode. So there's absolutely no real technical reason whatsoever for them to disable it. > there was some bug that they decided not to bother fixing and took the lazy way out My guess is that the bug being that Firefox's Privacy Mode actually prevented a lot of T-Mobile's invasive tracking.
- syrrim 4y ago
  Private mode also enables "tracking protection", which prevents connections to 3rd party sites. It breaks the model of the web, and there are many legitimate use cases that don't work when its enabled. I use uB0 to prevent tracking, and generally disable "tracking protection" to make sure sites keep working.
  - inetknght 4y ago
    > Private mode also enables "tracking protection", which prevents connections to 3rd party sites. Yup and this is a good thing. > It breaks the model of the web, I would argue that it breaks the model of user-abusive models. This is still a good thing. > there are many legitimate use cases that don't work when its enabled Can you enumerate some of them?
    - metacritic12 4y ago
      Inlinking third party resources is literally in the original hypertext specification of the web. An HTML site might want to play a video hosted by a third party, or load a shared resource. Tags like <img src> even at the start of the web was intended to let you load images from any host. I would argue a browser that doesn't access resources on other domains or IPs is not a web browser at all, but instead some weird sandbox that lets you run a self contained app.
      - inetknght 4y ago
        > Inlinking third party resources is literally in the original hypertext specification of the web. Indeed, but it was intended for real content. That intent is being abused by large corporations for tracking purposes and necessitates a heavy-handed block to it. Plus, including third party resources often ends up causing bitrot. It's much better to host your own copy of the things your site wants to load. You want to put in some 5 megabyte of javascript trash? Then you should pay the bandwidth costs for that too instead of letting someone else, with different motives, handle it for you. If you don't want to handle updates to that javascript library, if you don't want to pay for the bandwidth, if you want to offload all of that cost to someone else who doesn't care about the end user's privacy and functionality, then you are literally one of the problems with the "modern" web. > An HTML site might want to play a video hosted by a third party, or load a shared resource. There's no situation where I want website A to load resources from website B. Want to share a youtube video? Then give me a youtube link. I don't want to open some potentially malicious third party website which just loads a youtube link. If I don't want to use youtube _at all_ then your site will break too. If I get blocked or banned from youtube, then your site will break anyway and that's still a _you_ problem and not a _me_ problem. It's the same for images, audio, javascript, whatever. If you want it to load on my machine, then you should host it on your machine accessible from the exact same domain that serves your website. > I would argue a browser that doesn't access resources on other domains or IPs is not a web browser at all, but instead some weird sandbox that lets you run a self contained app. That is exactly what we have right now anyway. And I fully agree: browsers have turned into semi-sandboxes to let people run self-contained "apps". I don't want or like it and I argue that that very "model" of the web is not conducive to users' privacy.
- ars 4y ago
  It's clear you enjoy a good conspiracy theory, but you are quite wrong. First of all Firefox, in regular mode, already blocks all tracking cookies. There is ZERO extra blocking in privacy mode. > So there's absolutely no real technical reason whatsoever for them to disable it. The only difference is in privacy mode some offline data storage API's do not work (return null, rather than storing, and then discarding, data). T-Mobile uses those API's, and they did not feel like dealing with the case of them not working. If you install an extension that re-enables the API's, magically T-Mobile starts working even in privacy mode! > My guess is that the bug being that Firefox's Privacy Mode actually prevented a lot of T-Mobile's invasive tracking. Like I said, you clearly enjoy conspiracy theories, but T-Mobile doesn't have much tracking on their login page.
  - inetknght 4y ago
    > There is ZERO extra blocking in privacy mode. Indeed? But there is extra privacy in privacy mode. I don't have to remember to log-out, I don't have to worry about cached items, I don't have to worry about a tab in Private Mode talking to a tab outside of Private Mode (and indeed, that is extra blocking). > The only difference is in privacy mode some offline data storage API's do not work That's a good thing. I do not want websites to store data on my machine. If the website cannot function without data stored locally then the website is not a valid website. It's now an app. I do not want to install apps in my browser. And further: why is this a technical decision made by their privacy team instead of their engineers? Why don't they able to explicitly state what features are required instead of blanket banning the mode? T-Mobile is clearly in the wrong here.
  - warkdarrior 4y ago
    Plus, why would T-Mobile do "invasive tracking" on their login page? One or two clicks later they'll know exactly who you are.
    - inetknght 4y ago
      Well that's a good point. But then: why is it the privacy policy department who mandated the change?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]