11 ms·

A word about private attribution in Firefox

77 points by ghostwords 2y ago

msla 2y ago
> The Internet has become a massive web of surveillance, and doing something about it is a primary reason many of us are at Mozilla. They could start by making their own surveillance opt-in.
throwaway81523 2y ago
More dissembling. Anonymous and private are not the same thing. Claude Shannon mathematically formalized what privacy is all the way back in 1949, and this isn't it. No matter how much Mozilla twists and squirms, they are deploying a system that converts your private activities into information that benefits your adversaries. A privacy preserving system doesn't do that. It gives nothing to your adversaries.
- metadat 2y ago
  Yes, we're being asked to accept Mozilla giving up on thwarting the adversaries and instead transitioning to cooperating with them, "because the economic forces are too powerful" - which is a politically indirect way of saying "Because Mozilla want 'dat money, badly".
- striking 2y ago
  You can't reference Claude Shannon and information theory and then say a system to serve ads that preserves privacy can't exist. It's especially ironic because they use a technique called Differential Privacy to prevent any actual bits of information from being leaked to advertisers: https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/#user-content-fnref-7 https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/#user-content-f... / https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.16719 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.16719
  - eulgro 2y ago
    It's information still, maybe not targeted to the individual, but it allows still identifying trends which will eventually result in an ad I will (maybe) see. The advertiser wastes its time trying to show me an ad I will likely block, requiring filter managers to spend time blocking the ad and requiring me to spend time installing the extension. The total utility of the system is negative, even if just slightly. Sure there are cases where an ad could inform me of something useful I actually need, but this has basically never occurred to me, ever. From there we can devise that the best solution for society is a global ban on advertisement.
    - striking 2y ago
      I think the first order utility of the system is indeed negative. But the second order effect is to set a boundary with advertisers as to what is acceptable, which is positive. I don't think it actually allows advertisers to identify trends except in terms of conversion rates. Let me reproduce the paragraph I linked to: > Since the DAP server acts as a middleman, and reports are only generated at conversion times (impressions without conversions are not reported), ad networks have no way through this method of collecting your personal information (such as your user information or your IP address/browser client info). All they receive is an aggregate that informs them that their ad (published on source ) led number of people to a positive outcome for their customer over a period of time . Some amount of noise is also added to the information in order to further strengthen privacy[7]. Impressions without conversions aren't reported, so the only trends seen are over conversions as grouped by websites. If that's all it takes for advertisers to stop fingerprinting us, I'm open to something along those lines.
      - throwaway81523 2y ago
        > But the second order effect is to set a boundary with advertisers as to what is acceptable, which is positive. The idea of advertisers respecting boundaries or caring what other people think is acceptable seems hopelessly naive. As I remember, the Do Not Track (DNT) header was motivated by the same ideal, and it failed totally, as one should expect. Advertisers will take whatever they can pry loose. > Impressions without conversions aren't reported, so the only trends seen are over conversions as grouped by websites. If that's all it takes for advertisers to stop fingerprinting us, I'm open to something along those lines. They won't stop, and anyway fingerprinting is just one invasion out of many. If they also want information about trends, then of course I want to deny that to them as well. Thought experiment: instead of opting everyone in by default, suppose Mozilla does an A/B test. Opt in 50% of the users by default, and opt out the other 50%. Then see how many users in each group switch the setting away from the default. Do you expect more will opt in on purpose, or opt out on purpose? What does that make you think of Mozilla's actual choice of default?
  - throwaway81523 2y ago
    Differential privacy just means the info isn't linked to individual users. It is still information. Statistical information is information. If it was useless to advertisers, they wouldn't be willing to pay for it. And if it is useful to the advertisers, then extracting it without user permission is invasive.
    - striking 2y ago
      Fine, but privacy is privacy. I'm no fan of advertisers either, but if you're going to invoke Shannon let's use the right terms and stay intellectually consistent.
      - throwaway81523 2y ago
        Do you understand Shannon's definition? Have I made a mistake somewhere? Differential privacy as I understood it is a statistical notion. It gives the advertiser a noisy average of the behaviour of a large group but not about the individual users in the group. Mozilla pulls a switcheroo saying that the individual info is protected so everything is fine. In fact the statistical info is invasive too, and that's Shannon's notion. The system is private if the information gained by the adversary is exactly zero. Also, "advertiser" is way too benign a term: in cryptography we generally use "adversary". Consider that in this election season, the Trump and Biden political campaigns will be among the biggest advertisers. Mozilla will sell them information and they will use it. Question: will they only use it to solicit votes, or will they also use it to help round up their enemies if they get into power? And yes, they can use statistical information for that. The first thing they will want to know about any specific class of enemy is how many of them there are, before worrying about identifying individuals. So Mozilla shouldn't help them with either.
        striking 2y ago
        Does Shannon actually have a concrete definition of "privacy"? Maybe you're confusing it with "perfect secrecy", which is a cryptographic measure I'm not sure applies here. > Mozilla will give them information and they will use it. Let's just get on the same page about what information the advertisers get. I'll reproduce the paragraph I linked to: > Since the DAP server acts as a middleman, and reports are only generated at conversion times (impressions without conversions are not reported), ad networks have no way through this method of collecting your personal information (such as your user information or your IP address/browser client info). All they receive is an aggregate that informs them that their ad y (published on source x) led number of people to a positive outcome for their customer over a period of time p. Some amount of noise is also added to the information in order to further strengthen privacy[7]. I'm not aware of how you "round up your enemies" using conversion rate information on websites. It doesn't even tell you how many "specific class of enemy" there is, it's too muddled by the variable of the click rate of the audience. Not to mention that as state actors I'm sure they would have other, more useful and reliable methods of doing... whatever you're accusing them of doing.
  - Tao3300 2y ago
    > You can't reference Claude Shannon and information theory and then say a system to serve ads that preserves privacy can't exist. They didn't say that. They said this isn't it.
readthenotes1 2y ago
[flagged]
- metadat 2y ago
  Minor pedantry: It's "Peace for our time" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time > It is often misquoted as "peace in our time", a phrase already familiar to the British public by its longstanding appearance in the Book of Common Prayer. I must admit, even after reading the WP article, I am not clear on how it applies to TFA reddit post.
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    I'm a major quibbler, so minor pedantry is appreciated!
    - metadat 2y ago
      Haha I'm glad you're the best kind of fun person. Noted, cya around.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
stefan_ 2y ago
It's an endless cycle of Mozilla buying some shitty company then forcing their shitty "technology" into Firefox. We must be on episode three or what of this nonsense now. "Leader"ship is rotten.
perihelions 2y ago
But *what's in it for the user?* - "in the absence of alternatives, there are enormous economic incentives for advertisers to try to bypass these countermeasures, leading to a perpetual arms race that we may not win" It's in the user's interest to attempt to appease the spammers? It's in the user's interest to voluntarily hand over some personal, private information about themselves, to commercial stalkers, in hopes that–what–satiates the data harvesters? Is this Mozilla's position?
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  Mozilla themselves siphon telemetry (eg: incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org), they're at best a faux defender of privacy. Seriously, they don't deserve peoples' support.
  - squigz 2y ago
    What's wrong with telemetry?
    - msla 2y ago
      It is a violation of privacy.
      - squigz 2y ago
        How so?
        basscomm 2y ago
        Because once I get a product from a vendor, it's none of the vendor's business how I use the product unless I want to tell them about it. Software vendors seem to think that they're entitled to this information because they really want it, but they're wrong.
        exsomet 2y ago
        > Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment for monitoring. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemetry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemetry Telemetry’s incompatibility with privacy is self-evident.
gorgoiler 2y ago
I’ve started seeing adverts in theguardian.com again today, on iOS, where there weren’t any before. I use Firefox Focus and noticed that my is at version 128, released a week ago. Is this purely a coincidence or am I seeing this because of a change in policy at Mozilla?
- roblabla 2y ago
  Highly suggest trying orion browser on iOS. It supports webextensions, so you can install ublock origin.
- Tao3300 2y ago
  IIRC, iOS doesn't allow any browser that isn't a wrapper around Safari.
  - paulryanrogers 2y ago
    Unless you're in the EU
  - gorgoiler 2y ago
    Firefox Focus, while being a Safari based browser in its own right, is also a “content blocker” plugin, supported in iOS Safari for several major versions.
  - weikju 2y ago
    This is besides the point, as different browsers can still offer other features not in Safari. Such as the mentioned extensions support for Orion.
christophilus 2y ago
3 cheers for serenity browser.
- Tao3300 2y ago
  Ladybug? Yeah, it seems like a long shot, but we need it.
Hnrobert42 2y ago
It seems like a lot of folks are pretty upset about this. I go to great lengths to avoid advertising. I've even routed mail to my post office's general delivery rather than give away my address. But I am also practical. The CEO makes a fair point that ads aren't going away. This wouldn't work as an opt-in. The big miss here was messaging. The CEO has got to know most FF users use FF to for privacy. If they wanna make it an opt out, fine. But then people have to know there is something to out of. Then again, maybe this was in the release notes and on the blog.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > Then again, maybe this was in the release notes and on the blog. It belonged in the big tab they popped up when 128 was installed. If that's not for informing users about major new features they really should know about, what is it for?
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    It's weird, I never get that tab here on my FreeBSD install. Whatever triggers it doesn't happen for me. Now, it's not even an officially supported platform for firefox so perhaps the maintainer did something that breaks it, and it's not super critical because I follow the news anyway. I'm glad it works in at all in the first place.
- bravetraveler 2y ago
  I'd much rather the ongoing game of cat and mouse than... this creation, honestly. It's entirely practical. I haven't seen significant advertising in forever. HN dogfood is the most of it Basically, I don't buy the proposition that the surveillance will ever stop, so I won't disarm myself
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    > I'd much rather the ongoing game of cat and mouse than... this creation, honestly. It's entirely practical. Also, I'm 100% sure that advertisers won't stop fingerprinting even when they have this, because it every little tidbit of info they can get will be worth it for them. It's not a gamechanger for either side. I won't let go of my adblocker and they won't let go of their sneaky invasive tactics.
segphault 2y ago
I don't find this persuasive at all. Mozilla wants to frame itself as the browser vendor that cares about privacy, but there are now popular independent browsers like Vivaldi and Orion that go much further than Firefox to protect user privacy, shipping tightly-integrated and fully-featured adblocking out of the box. Firefox on iOS still doesn't natively support adblocking, they weirdly segmented that capability out into a separate "Firefox Focus" product. Mozilla becoming an advertising company unquestionably warps their incentives and brings them out of alignment with the end user. Tracking-based internet advertising is inherently adversarial and there's no silver bullet or technical approach that magically makes it less so. The fact that their chief partner for this is Meta is deeply disqualifying, given Meta's track record (e.g. Onavo scandal, among a multitude of other things). There's a ton of real-world value in having Firefox, with a non-Chromium rendering engine, remain relevant in the market. But if Mozilla wants to retain any marketshare at all, they are going to have to compete with other independent browser vendors on UX and privacy. Becoming an advertising company is not the way.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Vivaldi is based on Chromium and Orion is at least based on WebKit. So not significantly independent IMO.
- httpsterio 2y ago
  Vivaldi at least is closed source and I had a hard time understanding their revenue model so it's hard to gauge how privacy respecting they actually are.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  Firefox is basically 100% funded by Google. It can't ship an adblocker without defunding itself. It also has a lot more work to do than browsers which are basically Chrome skins.
dmart 2y ago
No matter how you try to spin this, I don’t think you can call your browser a “user agent” if it’s implementing features that exclusively benefit advertising companies. If it were feasible to write one’s own web browser for personal use, no one would add this feature out of kindness to advertisers.
curt15 2y ago
Will they try to nerf UBlock Origin next lik what Chrome is about to do in the name of "privacy"?
kccqzy 2y ago
Honestly I am pretty convinced by this post. Good job Mozilla. > Digital advertising is not going away, but the surveillance parts could actually go away if we get it right. This rings especially true to me. A lot of people, especially HN readers and myself included, hate advertising so much that we want to block ads altogether. But clearly we are still in the minority and we have to accept its existence. I think Mozilla's position here is clear: digital ads are evil but it's a necessary evil, so the best we can do is to limit how evil it could be.
- dns_snek 2y ago
  I'd much rather see them take the stance of "we don't negotiate with terrorists", but they clearly do.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
MenhirMike 2y ago
Our Browser options are currently all tied to one of the big AdTech companies: * Safari is owned by Apple * Edge is owned by Microsoft * Chrome is owned by Google * Firefox is partnered with Facebook/Meta I guess technically there's Opera (owned by Chinese company Kunlun) and Brave (known for inserting affiliate links into stuff), which aren't any better. In the future there might be Ladybird (where we'll have to see if Shopify wants something in return for their >=$100,000 investment), though that's pretty far off. I know that maintaining a browser is a massive amount of work, but man, things are bleak. I guess that an OSS fork like Librewolf or Chromium is the best option these days.
- lilyball 2y ago
  What makes Apple an AdTech company? As far as I'm aware the only ads Apple runs these days are in the App Store, i.e. outside of the browser.
  - MenhirMike 2y ago
    They do have a "Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement" setting that's enabled by default. Just like Firefox, you can opt out of it, but it is opt-out - so same deal as with Firefox. Apple may be a lot better than others, but they're still doing tracking.
    - lilyball 2y ago
      yeah, i believe that's this thing https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution-for-the-web/ https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att... This is not tracking for Apple ads, this is the exact sort of thing that Firefox is experimenting with now, of providing a carrot to advertisers in the form of a means of measuring ad effectiveness without violating user privacy.
  - lern_too_spel 2y ago
    Apple turned on its equivalent of PPA by default in Safari and iOS back in 2021. Apple also runs ads in Apple News, which you cannot uninstall on MacOS.
ineptech 2y ago
I clicked on this with a rebuttal already half-written in my head, but (after skimming the CTO's post and then reading the detailed explanation of PPA[0]) I'll admit that I jumped the gun on assuming that PPA was just the latest name for storing an ad id. The idea behind it (that you have to give the advertisers an anonymous way to measure conversions to have a shot at getting them to give up tying your traffic back to your identity) is reasonable, and the implementation doesn't look crazy. There's details I don't understand yet and I'd like to see someone smarter than me critique the details, but for now I'll put my money where my mouth is by going in to Settings and re-enabling it. 0: https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-experiment https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-experime...
- weare138 2y ago
  That's missing the broader point. It's a web browser and users don't want this 'feature'. None of this is necessary for me to browse the web which is all I want from my web browser. Why should I have to jump through hoops and compromise my security and privacy to help some corporation with their marketing and advertising metrics? Why not just make this an opt-in option for users who want to volunteer their data to help these ad-tech companies? Oh that's right, no one in their right mind would do that. And the CTO's whole argument about stopping the 'perpetual arms race' by compromising with and appeasing the aggressor is absurd. Malicious actors and ad-tech companies will just exploit this too. If there's a legitimate way to access this data then we can only assume there's an illegitimate way to do it also.
  - ineptech 2y ago
    No offense but are you confident you know what PPA is/does? "volunteer their data" doesn't seem a remotely fair characterization to me. Ignore the CTO's hand-wavey justification and go look at what it actually does and tell me if you still hate it this much. I agree with you ideologically but I think you're engaging in friendly fire here.
0x000xca0xfe 2y ago
> That said, we consider modal consent dialogs to be a user-hostile distraction from better defaults What a load of b** So THAT is why they turned a feature on by default that does not have any upside for the users? Why has blatant lying become acceptable for executives? Can't wait for Ladybird to become a viable alternative.
- genezeta 2y ago
  (after the uproar): > we consider modal consent dialogs to be a user-hostile distraction from better defaults, and do not believe such an experience would have been an improvement here. (before the uproar): > This feature will be enabled by default with an option to disable it. Having this enabled for more people ensures that there are more people contributing to aggregates, which in turn improves utility. So, yeah, bs excuse.
  - hn92726819 2y ago
    Didn't they recently have a modal dialog to choose colors and download their mobile app too? Now it really doesn't make sense
    - bravetraveler 2y ago
      Yep, some weird 'express yourself with this limited selection of colors' thing. Keeping in mind we've been able to adjust that for as long as I can recall
dang 2y ago
Recent and related: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 - July 2024 (190 comments) "Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 - July 2024 (166 comments) Ad-tech setting 'Privacy-Preserving Attribution' is opt-out in Firefox 128 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 - July 2024 (186 comments)
perihelions 2y ago
If anyone reading this was wondering, like me, "how can I automate diff'ing about:preferences to scan for new checkboxes that were inserted and opted-in without my knowledge?"—you can track the zip archive browser/omni.ja in the Firefox install root, and diff this specific file inside that archive (en-US for example), localization/en-US/browser/preferences/preferences.ftl Which is a plain-text localization file whose version diff will, in this example, contain: 1274,1282d1217 < website-advertising-header = Website Advertising Preferences < < website-advertising-private-attribution = < .label = Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement < .accesskey = a < < website-advertising-private-attribution-description = This helps sites understand how their ads perform without collecting data about you. < It might be pragmatic to run this as an OS hook of some kind! Pop a short warning dialog every time Firefox adds a checkbox. Probably much shorter than the complete patch notes.
- anotherhue 2y ago
  At what point do you admit this is a failed relationship?
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
    I'm betting never. Some people want to keep letting the company do remote installation of code on their computers ("automatic updates") even when everyone knows the company is selling them out. "The fox guards our hen house. In return we let him eat all the chickens he wants." Mozilla has got you covered. Do Firefox users ever share patches to remove these undesirable "features". There are patched versions of Firefox with goofy names that claim privacy advantanges. But AFAICT always distributed in binary form.
    - MaxMatti 2y ago
      If Firefox is so bad then which better alternative do you propose? The one owned by the biggest advertising company? The one that is only available on Apple's devices? The one owned by the company that puts ads into the start menu of your OS? The one that injects its own affiliate ID into the websites you browse? The one that takes tens of seconds to load even the simplest website? One of those that don't support JavaScript and thus don't let you use 99% of the web?
freitasm 2y ago
I think he lost me on "working with Meta."
mardifoufs 2y ago
>The prototype is temporary, restricted to a handful of test sites Does that mean that there's only a few websites that can benefit from this data, and that there would be a list of websites that can profit from this or something like that in the future? Not sure if that's a good thing. I hate ads, and think that enabling this by default is still a super weird inversion of control (the user client should think about the user, not the websites that it browses). But I really wonder about who will gate keep the access to the aggregated data, and if that won't make the big players even more dominant in web advertising.
VariousPrograms 2y ago
Claiming modal consent dialogs are “user hostile” then making an obvious anti-feature silently opt-out is really insulting user intelligence. The browser is one of the most important tools and we’re stuck with no truly good options. I’m positive my terminal or image editor is never going to smuggle data to help ad companies out, but with browsers and operating systems those concerns are the norm now.
Yizahi 2y ago
So from his post I got that together with Meta at W3C PATGC in partnership with ISRG they have created a DAP/Prio which uses an MPC, which is pretty uncompromising on a privacy front. I guess all my concerns are alleviated now, sounds very authoritative.
yaris 2y ago
I'm sure I miss something, so could anyone from "privacy-protectionists" explain how they see Mozilla/Firefox surviving in the medium-to-long run, given that: - main source of income for Mozilla is an Ads Company - "ads industry is not going to pack up and leave" - ads industry has much deeper pockets than Mozilla (even if Mozilla replaces Google's money bags with someone else's money bags of equal size) - any step away from the extreme privacy-protecting position is seen as treason ?
- account42 2y ago
  Firefox survives because it is open source. Mozilla will hopefully not survive and make space for someone who actually cares about privacy. > main source of income for Mozilla is an Ads Company Yes, that is a big part of why Mozilla cannot be redeemed. > "ads industry is not going to pack up and leave" They have already been banished from all my devices. > ads industry has much deeper pockets than Mozilla (even if Mozilla replaces Google's money bags with someone else's money bags of equal size) So? That won't allow them to control what runs on my devices. > any step away from the extreme privacy-protecting position is seen as treason Yes, it is betraying the trust people have put in a self-proclaimed privacy champion.
nelgaard 2y ago
It seems to me that Mozilla is gambling with the privacy of their users. The gamble might be worth it, even though I do not think so. But even if it somehow was a good gamble, that it not how Free Software projects should work. Free software should prioritize the wishes of users. If a lot of firefox users collectively decided to give up some privacy to avoid loosing more privacy, that is their choice, but that is not what have been happening. Using this kind of defeatist arguments, there is no end to backdoors and compromises that can be defended. I would prefer Mozilla to fight in the arms race. I also wonder: what is the next step? I.e., why would advertizing trust firefox instances. It is tempting to create a fork of Firefox that use and manipulate this API in all kind of ways.
jeremayschm 2y ago
[flagged]
M95D 2y ago
Why is everybody concerned about FF adding an alternative to tracking (a good intention in my opinion) and why is nobody concerned about the technical details, especially the so-called "3rd party" that is supposed to aggregate and anonymize the data? That anonymizer can be corrupted, bought, hacked, etc.

77 points by ghostwords 2y ago

msla 2y ago

> The Internet has become a massive web of surveillance, and doing something about it is a primary reason many of us are at Mozilla. They could start by making their own surveillance opt-in.

throwaway81523 2y ago

More dissembling. Anonymous and private are not the same thing. Claude Shannon mathematically formalized what privacy is all the way back in 1949, and this isn't it. No matter how much Mozilla twists and squirms, they are deploying a system that converts your private activities into information that benefits your adversaries. A privacy preserving system doesn't do that. It gives nothing to your adversaries.

metadat 2y ago
Yes, we're being asked to accept Mozilla giving up on thwarting the adversaries and instead transitioning to cooperating with them, "because the economic forces are too powerful" - which is a politically indirect way of saying "Because Mozilla want 'dat money, badly".
striking 2y ago
You can't reference Claude Shannon and information theory and then say a system to serve ads that preserves privacy can't exist. It's especially ironic because they use a technique called Differential Privacy to prevent any actual bits of information from being leaked to advertisers: https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/#user-content-fnref-7 https://andrewmoore.ca/blog/post/mozilla-ppa/#user-content-f... / https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.16719 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.16719
- eulgro 2y ago
  It's information still, maybe not targeted to the individual, but it allows still identifying trends which will eventually result in an ad I will (maybe) see. The advertiser wastes its time trying to show me an ad I will likely block, requiring filter managers to spend time blocking the ad and requiring me to spend time installing the extension. The total utility of the system is negative, even if just slightly. Sure there are cases where an ad could inform me of something useful I actually need, but this has basically never occurred to me, ever. From there we can devise that the best solution for society is a global ban on advertisement.
  - striking 2y ago
    I think the first order utility of the system is indeed negative. But the second order effect is to set a boundary with advertisers as to what is acceptable, which is positive. I don't think it actually allows advertisers to identify trends except in terms of conversion rates. Let me reproduce the paragraph I linked to: > Since the DAP server acts as a middleman, and reports are only generated at conversion times (impressions without conversions are not reported), ad networks have no way through this method of collecting your personal information (such as your user information or your IP address/browser client info). All they receive is an aggregate that informs them that their ad (published on source ) led number of people to a positive outcome for their customer over a period of time . Some amount of noise is also added to the information in order to further strengthen privacy[7]. Impressions without conversions aren't reported, so the only trends seen are over conversions as grouped by websites. If that's all it takes for advertisers to stop fingerprinting us, I'm open to something along those lines.
    - throwaway81523 2y ago
      > But the second order effect is to set a boundary with advertisers as to what is acceptable, which is positive. The idea of advertisers respecting boundaries or caring what other people think is acceptable seems hopelessly naive. As I remember, the Do Not Track (DNT) header was motivated by the same ideal, and it failed totally, as one should expect. Advertisers will take whatever they can pry loose. > Impressions without conversions aren't reported, so the only trends seen are over conversions as grouped by websites. If that's all it takes for advertisers to stop fingerprinting us, I'm open to something along those lines. They won't stop, and anyway fingerprinting is just one invasion out of many. If they also want information about trends, then of course I want to deny that to them as well. Thought experiment: instead of opting everyone in by default, suppose Mozilla does an A/B test. Opt in 50% of the users by default, and opt out the other 50%. Then see how many users in each group switch the setting away from the default. Do you expect more will opt in on purpose, or opt out on purpose? What does that make you think of Mozilla's actual choice of default?
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  Differential privacy just means the info isn't linked to individual users. It is still information. Statistical information is information. If it was useless to advertisers, they wouldn't be willing to pay for it. And if it is useful to the advertisers, then extracting it without user permission is invasive.
  - striking 2y ago
    Fine, but privacy is privacy. I'm no fan of advertisers either, but if you're going to invoke Shannon let's use the right terms and stay intellectually consistent.
    - throwaway81523 2y ago
      Do you understand Shannon's definition? Have I made a mistake somewhere? Differential privacy as I understood it is a statistical notion. It gives the advertiser a noisy average of the behaviour of a large group but not about the individual users in the group. Mozilla pulls a switcheroo saying that the individual info is protected so everything is fine. In fact the statistical info is invasive too, and that's Shannon's notion. The system is private if the information gained by the adversary is exactly zero. Also, "advertiser" is way too benign a term: in cryptography we generally use "adversary". Consider that in this election season, the Trump and Biden political campaigns will be among the biggest advertisers. Mozilla will sell them information and they will use it. Question: will they only use it to solicit votes, or will they also use it to help round up their enemies if they get into power? And yes, they can use statistical information for that. The first thing they will want to know about any specific class of enemy is how many of them there are, before worrying about identifying individuals. So Mozilla shouldn't help them with either.
      - striking 2y ago
        Does Shannon actually have a concrete definition of "privacy"? Maybe you're confusing it with "perfect secrecy", which is a cryptographic measure I'm not sure applies here. > Mozilla will give them information and they will use it. Let's just get on the same page about what information the advertisers get. I'll reproduce the paragraph I linked to: > Since the DAP server acts as a middleman, and reports are only generated at conversion times (impressions without conversions are not reported), ad networks have no way through this method of collecting your personal information (such as your user information or your IP address/browser client info). All they receive is an aggregate that informs them that their ad y (published on source x) led number of people to a positive outcome for their customer over a period of time p. Some amount of noise is also added to the information in order to further strengthen privacy[7]. I'm not aware of how you "round up your enemies" using conversion rate information on websites. It doesn't even tell you how many "specific class of enemy" there is, it's too muddled by the variable of the click rate of the audience. Not to mention that as state actors I'm sure they would have other, more useful and reliable methods of doing... whatever you're accusing them of doing.
- Tao3300 2y ago
  > You can't reference Claude Shannon and information theory and then say a system to serve ads that preserves privacy can't exist. They didn't say that. They said this isn't it.

readthenotes1 2y ago

[flagged]

metadat 2y ago
Minor pedantry: It's "Peace for our time" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time > It is often misquoted as "peace in our time", a phrase already familiar to the British public by its longstanding appearance in the Book of Common Prayer. I must admit, even after reading the WP article, I am not clear on how it applies to TFA reddit post.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  I'm a major quibbler, so minor pedantry is appreciated!
  - metadat 2y ago
    Haha I'm glad you're the best kind of fun person. Noted, cya around.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

stefan_ 2y ago

It's an endless cycle of Mozilla buying some shitty company then forcing their shitty "technology" into Firefox. We must be on episode three or what of this nonsense now. "Leader"ship is rotten.

perihelions 2y ago

But *what's in it for the user?* - "in the absence of alternatives, there are enormous economic incentives for advertisers to try to bypass these countermeasures, leading to a perpetual arms race that we may not win" It's in the user's interest to attempt to appease the spammers? It's in the user's interest to voluntarily hand over some personal, private information about themselves, to commercial stalkers, in hopes that–what–satiates the data harvesters? Is this Mozilla's position?

Dalewyn 2y ago
Mozilla themselves siphon telemetry (eg: incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org), they're at best a faux defender of privacy. Seriously, they don't deserve peoples' support.
- squigz 2y ago
  What's wrong with telemetry?
  - msla 2y ago
    It is a violation of privacy.
    - squigz 2y ago
      How so?
      - basscomm 2y ago
        Because once I get a product from a vendor, it's none of the vendor's business how I use the product unless I want to tell them about it. Software vendors seem to think that they're entitled to this information because they really want it, but they're wrong.
      - exsomet 2y ago
        > Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment for monitoring. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemetry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemetry Telemetry’s incompatibility with privacy is self-evident.

gorgoiler 2y ago

I’ve started seeing adverts in theguardian.com again today, on iOS, where there weren’t any before. I use Firefox Focus and noticed that my is at version 128, released a week ago. Is this purely a coincidence or am I seeing this because of a change in policy at Mozilla?

roblabla 2y ago
Highly suggest trying orion browser on iOS. It supports webextensions, so you can install ublock origin.
Tao3300 2y ago
IIRC, iOS doesn't allow any browser that isn't a wrapper around Safari.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Unless you're in the EU
- gorgoiler 2y ago
  Firefox Focus, while being a Safari based browser in its own right, is also a “content blocker” plugin, supported in iOS Safari for several major versions.
- weikju 2y ago
  This is besides the point, as different browsers can still offer other features not in Safari. Such as the mentioned extensions support for Orion.

christophilus 2y ago

3 cheers for serenity browser.

Tao3300 2y ago
Ladybug? Yeah, it seems like a long shot, but we need it.

Hnrobert42 2y ago

It seems like a lot of folks are pretty upset about this. I go to great lengths to avoid advertising. I've even routed mail to my post office's general delivery rather than give away my address. But I am also practical. The CEO makes a fair point that ads aren't going away. This wouldn't work as an opt-in. The big miss here was messaging. The CEO has got to know most FF users use FF to for privacy. If they wanna make it an opt out, fine. But then people have to know there is something to out of. Then again, maybe this was in the release notes and on the blog.

lolinder 2y ago
> Then again, maybe this was in the release notes and on the blog. It belonged in the big tab they popped up when 128 was installed. If that's not for informing users about major new features they really should know about, what is it for?
- wkat4242 2y ago
  It's weird, I never get that tab here on my FreeBSD install. Whatever triggers it doesn't happen for me. Now, it's not even an officially supported platform for firefox so perhaps the maintainer did something that breaks it, and it's not super critical because I follow the news anyway. I'm glad it works in at all in the first place.
bravetraveler 2y ago
I'd much rather the ongoing game of cat and mouse than... this creation, honestly. It's entirely practical. I haven't seen significant advertising in forever. HN dogfood is the most of it Basically, I don't buy the proposition that the surveillance will ever stop, so I won't disarm myself
- wkat4242 2y ago
  > I'd much rather the ongoing game of cat and mouse than... this creation, honestly. It's entirely practical. Also, I'm 100% sure that advertisers won't stop fingerprinting even when they have this, because it every little tidbit of info they can get will be worth it for them. It's not a gamechanger for either side. I won't let go of my adblocker and they won't let go of their sneaky invasive tactics.

segphault 2y ago

I don't find this persuasive at all. Mozilla wants to frame itself as the browser vendor that cares about privacy, but there are now popular independent browsers like Vivaldi and Orion that go much further than Firefox to protect user privacy, shipping tightly-integrated and fully-featured adblocking out of the box. Firefox on iOS still doesn't natively support adblocking, they weirdly segmented that capability out into a separate "Firefox Focus" product. Mozilla becoming an advertising company unquestionably warps their incentives and brings them out of alignment with the end user. Tracking-based internet advertising is inherently adversarial and there's no silver bullet or technical approach that magically makes it less so. The fact that their chief partner for this is Meta is deeply disqualifying, given Meta's track record (e.g. Onavo scandal, among a multitude of other things). There's a ton of real-world value in having Firefox, with a non-Chromium rendering engine, remain relevant in the market. But if Mozilla wants to retain any marketshare at all, they are going to have to compete with other independent browser vendors on UX and privacy. Becoming an advertising company is not the way.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
Vivaldi is based on Chromium and Orion is at least based on WebKit. So not significantly independent IMO.
httpsterio 2y ago
Vivaldi at least is closed source and I had a hard time understanding their revenue model so it's hard to gauge how privacy respecting they actually are.
michaelmrose 2y ago
Firefox is basically 100% funded by Google. It can't ship an adblocker without defunding itself. It also has a lot more work to do than browsers which are basically Chrome skins.

dmart 2y ago

No matter how you try to spin this, I don’t think you can call your browser a “user agent” if it’s implementing features that exclusively benefit advertising companies. If it were feasible to write one’s own web browser for personal use, no one would add this feature out of kindness to advertisers.

curt15 2y ago

Will they try to nerf UBlock Origin next lik what Chrome is about to do in the name of "privacy"?

kccqzy 2y ago

Honestly I am pretty convinced by this post. Good job Mozilla. > Digital advertising is not going away, but the surveillance parts could actually go away if we get it right. This rings especially true to me. A lot of people, especially HN readers and myself included, hate advertising so much that we want to block ads altogether. But clearly we are still in the minority and we have to accept its existence. I think Mozilla's position here is clear: digital ads are evil but it's a necessary evil, so the best we can do is to limit how evil it could be.

dns_snek 2y ago
I'd much rather see them take the stance of "we don't negotiate with terrorists", but they clearly do.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

MenhirMike 2y ago

Our Browser options are currently all tied to one of the big AdTech companies: * Safari is owned by Apple * Edge is owned by Microsoft * Chrome is owned by Google * Firefox is partnered with Facebook/Meta I guess technically there's Opera (owned by Chinese company Kunlun) and Brave (known for inserting affiliate links into stuff), which aren't any better. In the future there might be Ladybird (where we'll have to see if Shopify wants something in return for their >=$100,000 investment), though that's pretty far off. I know that maintaining a browser is a massive amount of work, but man, things are bleak. I guess that an OSS fork like Librewolf or Chromium is the best option these days.

lilyball 2y ago
What makes Apple an AdTech company? As far as I'm aware the only ads Apple runs these days are in the App Store, i.e. outside of the browser.
- MenhirMike 2y ago
  They do have a "Privacy Preserving Ad Measurement" setting that's enabled by default. Just like Firefox, you can opt out of it, but it is opt-out - so same deal as with Firefox. Apple may be a lot better than others, but they're still doing tracking.
  - lilyball 2y ago
    yeah, i believe that's this thing https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution-for-the-web/ https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att... This is not tracking for Apple ads, this is the exact sort of thing that Firefox is experimenting with now, of providing a carrot to advertisers in the form of a means of measuring ad effectiveness without violating user privacy.
- lern_too_spel 2y ago
  Apple turned on its equivalent of PPA by default in Safari and iOS back in 2021. Apple also runs ads in Apple News, which you cannot uninstall on MacOS.

ineptech 2y ago

I clicked on this with a rebuttal already half-written in my head, but (after skimming the CTO's post and then reading the detailed explanation of PPA[0]) I'll admit that I jumped the gun on assuming that PPA was just the latest name for storing an ad id. The idea behind it (that you have to give the advertisers an anonymous way to measure conversions to have a shot at getting them to give up tying your traffic back to your identity) is reasonable, and the implementation doesn't look crazy. There's details I don't understand yet and I'd like to see someone smarter than me critique the details, but for now I'll put my money where my mouth is by going in to Settings and re-enabling it. 0: https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-experiment https://github.com/mozilla/explainers/tree/main/ppa-experime...

weare138 2y ago
That's missing the broader point. It's a web browser and users don't want this 'feature'. None of this is necessary for me to browse the web which is all I want from my web browser. Why should I have to jump through hoops and compromise my security and privacy to help some corporation with their marketing and advertising metrics? Why not just make this an opt-in option for users who want to volunteer their data to help these ad-tech companies? Oh that's right, no one in their right mind would do that. And the CTO's whole argument about stopping the 'perpetual arms race' by compromising with and appeasing the aggressor is absurd. Malicious actors and ad-tech companies will just exploit this too. If there's a legitimate way to access this data then we can only assume there's an illegitimate way to do it also.
- ineptech 2y ago
  No offense but are you confident you know what PPA is/does? "volunteer their data" doesn't seem a remotely fair characterization to me. Ignore the CTO's hand-wavey justification and go look at what it actually does and tell me if you still hate it this much. I agree with you ideologically but I think you're engaging in friendly fire here.

0x000xca0xfe 2y ago

> That said, we consider modal consent dialogs to be a user-hostile distraction from better defaults What a load of b** So THAT is why they turned a feature on by default that does not have any upside for the users? Why has blatant lying become acceptable for executives? Can't wait for Ladybird to become a viable alternative.

genezeta 2y ago
(after the uproar): > we consider modal consent dialogs to be a user-hostile distraction from better defaults, and do not believe such an experience would have been an improvement here. (before the uproar): > This feature will be enabled by default with an option to disable it. Having this enabled for more people ensures that there are more people contributing to aggregates, which in turn improves utility. So, yeah, bs excuse.
- hn92726819 2y ago
  Didn't they recently have a modal dialog to choose colors and download their mobile app too? Now it really doesn't make sense
  - bravetraveler 2y ago
    Yep, some weird 'express yourself with this limited selection of colors' thing. Keeping in mind we've been able to adjust that for as long as I can recall

dang 2y ago

Recent and related: Firefox 128 enables "privacy-preserving" ad measurements by default - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40966312 - July 2024 (190 comments) "Firefox added [ad tracking] and has already turned it on without asking you" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954535 - July 2024 (166 comments) Ad-tech setting 'Privacy-Preserving Attribution' is opt-out in Firefox 128 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40952330 - July 2024 (186 comments)

perihelions 2y ago

If anyone reading this was wondering, like me, "how can I automate diff'ing about:preferences to scan for new checkboxes that were inserted and opted-in without my knowledge?"—you can track the zip archive browser/omni.ja in the Firefox install root, and diff this specific file inside that archive (en-US for example), localization/en-US/browser/preferences/preferences.ftl Which is a plain-text localization file whose version diff will, in this example, contain: 1274,1282d1217 < website-advertising-header = Website Advertising Preferences < < website-advertising-private-attribution = < .label = Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement < .accesskey = a < < website-advertising-private-attribution-description = This helps sites understand how their ads perform without collecting data about you. < It might be pragmatic to run this as an OS hook of some kind! Pop a short warning dialog every time Firefox adds a checkbox. Probably much shorter than the complete patch notes.

anotherhue 2y ago
At what point do you admit this is a failed relationship?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
  I'm betting never. Some people want to keep letting the company do remote installation of code on their computers ("automatic updates") even when everyone knows the company is selling them out. "The fox guards our hen house. In return we let him eat all the chickens he wants." Mozilla has got you covered. Do Firefox users ever share patches to remove these undesirable "features". There are patched versions of Firefox with goofy names that claim privacy advantanges. But AFAICT always distributed in binary form.
  - MaxMatti 2y ago
    If Firefox is so bad then which better alternative do you propose? The one owned by the biggest advertising company? The one that is only available on Apple's devices? The one owned by the company that puts ads into the start menu of your OS? The one that injects its own affiliate ID into the websites you browse? The one that takes tens of seconds to load even the simplest website? One of those that don't support JavaScript and thus don't let you use 99% of the web?

freitasm 2y ago

I think he lost me on "working with Meta."

mardifoufs 2y ago

>The prototype is temporary, restricted to a handful of test sites Does that mean that there's only a few websites that can benefit from this data, and that there would be a list of websites that can profit from this or something like that in the future? Not sure if that's a good thing. I hate ads, and think that enabling this by default is still a super weird inversion of control (the user client should think about the user, not the websites that it browses). But I really wonder about who will gate keep the access to the aggregated data, and if that won't make the big players even more dominant in web advertising.

VariousPrograms 2y ago

Claiming modal consent dialogs are “user hostile” then making an obvious anti-feature silently opt-out is really insulting user intelligence. The browser is one of the most important tools and we’re stuck with no truly good options. I’m positive my terminal or image editor is never going to smuggle data to help ad companies out, but with browsers and operating systems those concerns are the norm now.

Yizahi 2y ago

So from his post I got that together with Meta at W3C PATGC in partnership with ISRG they have created a DAP/Prio which uses an MPC, which is pretty uncompromising on a privacy front. I guess all my concerns are alleviated now, sounds very authoritative.

yaris 2y ago

I'm sure I miss something, so could anyone from "privacy-protectionists" explain how they see Mozilla/Firefox surviving in the medium-to-long run, given that: - main source of income for Mozilla is an Ads Company - "ads industry is not going to pack up and leave" - ads industry has much deeper pockets than Mozilla (even if Mozilla replaces Google's money bags with someone else's money bags of equal size) - any step away from the extreme privacy-protecting position is seen as treason ?

account42 2y ago
Firefox survives because it is open source. Mozilla will hopefully not survive and make space for someone who actually cares about privacy. > main source of income for Mozilla is an Ads Company Yes, that is a big part of why Mozilla cannot be redeemed. > "ads industry is not going to pack up and leave" They have already been banished from all my devices. > ads industry has much deeper pockets than Mozilla (even if Mozilla replaces Google's money bags with someone else's money bags of equal size) So? That won't allow them to control what runs on my devices. > any step away from the extreme privacy-protecting position is seen as treason Yes, it is betraying the trust people have put in a self-proclaimed privacy champion.

nelgaard 2y ago

It seems to me that Mozilla is gambling with the privacy of their users. The gamble might be worth it, even though I do not think so. But even if it somehow was a good gamble, that it not how Free Software projects should work. Free software should prioritize the wishes of users. If a lot of firefox users collectively decided to give up some privacy to avoid loosing more privacy, that is their choice, but that is not what have been happening. Using this kind of defeatist arguments, there is no end to backdoors and compromises that can be defended. I would prefer Mozilla to fight in the arms race. I also wonder: what is the next step? I.e., why would advertizing trust firefox instances. It is tempting to create a fork of Firefox that use and manipulate this API in all kind of ways.

jeremayschm 2y ago

[flagged]

M95D 2y ago

Why is everybody concerned about FF adding an alternative to tracking (a good intention in my opinion) and why is nobody concerned about the technical details, especially the so-called "3rd party" that is supposed to aggregate and anonymize the data? That anonymizer can be corrupted, bought, hacked, etc.