7 ms·

Private Browsing 2.0

190 points by frizlab 2y ago

ranger_danger 2y ago
> Safari also brings a version of Web AdAttributionKit to Private Browsing This is like a bad dream.
- doublerabbit 2y ago
  And this is like an executives wet dream.
- 12_throw_away 2y ago
  Yeah that part stuck out to me too. Sigh. What if my browser just did nothing at all to help advertisers, because it's my browser running on my hardware? Even if it is totally privacy-preserving and completely transparent, why would my browser spend my processor cycles, network bandwidth, and electricity for the benefit of someone else's for-profit business? Really, just ... what if the software on my computer tried its best to do exactly what I asked it to do, and was not concerned with anyone else's problems? Anyway, here are the AdAtributionKit docs: - Technical / API: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/adattributionkit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/adattributionkit - High-level: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/ad-attribution/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/ad-attribution/
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - tomjen3 2y ago
      I buy Apple products. Believe me, I pay the full cost of those - but even if I didn't there are free browsers like Firefox and they are also playing with this.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      > then you'd likely need to pay a license fee so that the browser isn't getting its money from ads, or the browser isn't yours at all. It's Safari. You pay a lot of money for a machine and its bundled software, which includes this.
    - bangaladore 2y ago
      Then sell me the hardware at cost. They won't ever do that. Let's not kid ourselves.
  - drdaeman 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      You might be correct soon, but not quite yet. There are some positive things going on and the recent news about the EU, Apple and virtualisation is one example.
  - dash2 2y ago
    > why would my browser spend my processor cycles, network bandwidth, and electricity for the benefit of someone else's for-profit business? I think a reasonable answer is that you are using their website for your own purposes; that running a website has costs; and that many businesses choose to fund those costs by advertising. If you don't want to be advertised to, I would suggest paying a fee to use ad-free services.
    - throwawa14223 2y ago
      I wonder if it'd be possible to poison. If I have to send clicks I need to also send enough clicks to make it not worthwhile.
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      The time when you could reasonably expect paid services not to track you ended well over a decade ago. Apple specifically gets mentions as a website data sharing partner in the privacy policies of my health insurance, my dental insurance, and my mortgage provider. I can assure you that none of those companies are lacking for funds to run basic websites and equally that none of them have ways to pay to "opt out".
- klauserc 2y ago
  They present this like a smart solution for some sort of fundamental problem. It's really not a fundamental problem. Advertisement has worked and still works perfectly fine without attribution in TV, in magazines, on billboards. Adtech gaslights everyone into accepting that just because it is technically possible to perfectly track and personalize ads in digital media, that they have some sort of moral right to do it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
nashashmi 2y ago
> Block known trackers Is this a cat and mouse game? > Fingerprinting Does this prevent Google's cookieless tracking technology?
- sumtechguy 2y ago
  > Is this a cat and mouse game? In many ways it is. When I first started blocking using pac files. It was painfully obvious that samesite advertising is the harder thing to block. Luckily for the blockers most companies have been lazy about adverts and put them in known locations. Which works just as well for whole site blocking (known trackers). However, once the adverts are blended into the real data it becomes much harder. Such as what youtube is experimenting with (putting adverts right in the same data stream remuxed). As long as the adverts follow known patterns blocking works fairly easily. The next 'arms' race will be AI detection and block. It will only be a matter of time until someone comes up with a plugin that does exactly that. > Does this prevent Google's cookieless tracking technology? To a point. But you do not need much data to fingerprint. Think it is something like 12-13 bits plus your IP even with a VPN.
  - timeon 2y ago
    > Think it is something like 12-13 bits plus your IP even with a VPN. Is that legal under GDPR?
    - SSLy 2y ago
      No, but the enforcement has been fairly toothless. Hopefully same team that designed DMA will make a stronger variant of GDPR.
    - sumtechguy 2y ago
      dont know. legal does not have much to do with it. You just dont need that much info to identify someone. https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ I was wrong it is more like 20-30 bits you need. But those bits are fairly known how to get by the advertisers. The reality is most people do not known about or are resigned to it.
yupyupyups 2y ago
> Proxying unencrypted HTTP. Any unencrypted HTTP resources loaded in Private Browsing will use the same multi-hop proxy network used to hide IP addresses from trackers. This ensures that attackers in the local network cannot see or modify the content of Private Browsing traffic. No thanks, Apple! I trust my ISP more than you. Multi-hop wont matter if all nodes are managed by you.
- piperswe 2y ago
  iCloud Private Relay uses one hop through Apple infrastructure, and one hop through third-party infrastructure. So, one node is managed by Apple and the other is managed by Cloudflare/Akamai/Fastly. The Apple node knows where the request comes from but not the contents, while the CF/Akamai/Fastly node knows the contents but not the source.
  - yupyupyups 2y ago
    This works as long as there is no one combining the information together, like Apple together with Cloudflare, or the US government. This is a concern, since both are under the same jurestiction and are bussiness partners. Contrast this model with Tor where you have 3 hops that are selected in such a way that there is a lower probability that logs from the node operators will be combined. If two nodes, let's say node 1 and 3 are coorporating, then the best that they can do is a correlation attack or other probabalistic methods. If two nodes (all of them) in WebKit are adverserial, then the content is linked back to your IP address with 100% probability.
    - Arnavion 2y ago
      To be clear, the only advantage of Tor wrt correlation is that it uses more hops, not anything related to how those hops are selected, right?
      - fragmede 2y ago
        How paranoid are you? If I were the US government and wanted a leg up on Internet meta data of people looking to avoid surveillance, I'd run a shitton of Tor exit nodes and log IP information on the off chance something useful comes of it.
lapcat 2y ago
Advanced tracking and fingerprinting protection breaks Safari extensions: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/6/5.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/6/5.html
- eproxus 2y ago
  It's very odd that Safari treats extension scripts as third-party, especially when they have been given permission to access all websites and data (sound like a bug almost?). I use and love StopTheMadness Pro. Do you know if it breaks the whole extension or only some parts of it? If so, which ones? (I don't use the copy URL shortcut for example).
  - lapcat 2y ago
    > sound like a bug almost? Yes, I assume it's a bug. > I use and love StopTheMadness Pro. Thanks! > Do you know if it breaks the whole extension or only some parts of it? If so, which ones? Not the whole extension, no, only the parts that depend specifically on the URL query.
    - gigatexal 2y ago
      How does the YouTube ads skip feature work? How does it know?
Vinnl 2y ago
Pretty off-topic, but: > When we invented Private Browsing back in 2005, our aim was to provide users with an easy way to keep their browsing private from anyone who shared the same device. I wonder if anyone actually involved 19 years ago was also involved in writing this piece, or if it just sounded reasonable to whoever drafted it up.
- nequo 2y ago
  I gather this sentence sounds unreasonable to you. Why? Were they not the first to ship private browsing mode?
  - Vinnl 2y ago
    Oh no, I didn't mean at all to say it was unreasonable. I meant that the paragraph claims to know what the aim was when introducing the feature, so I wondered if they actually knew that, or just guessed that that was the aim (because it sounds reasonable that it was).
    - nequo 2y ago
      Clearly I misunderstood you. Thanks for clarifying it!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- callalex 2y ago
  Apple has a corporate writing/speech style guide that they adhere to religiously. Anything done by anyone in the company present or past is always “we”. Notice how all their keynotes and product press releases almost always include the sentence “we think you’re gonna love it”?
  - Vinnl 2y ago
    Sorry, I was mostly referring to the fact that they claim to know what the aim was when introducing the feature, even though they might not have been there. Pure curiosity.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
My most-wanted feature in Safari (and Orion) is first-party website-data whitelisting. I have a limited number of sites whom I trust to store data. Everyone else should be a tabula rasa each visit.
- horeszko 2y ago
  I use the Cookie AutoDelete browser extension for this purpose, which besides the name handles more than just cookie data. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    Firefox has first-party whitelisting. Block all website data and then whitelist.
    - horeszko 2y ago
      Thanks for the tip! I didn't know it's built-in, I'll check it out.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      Does that let cookies exist temporarily? If so, when do they get purged?
      - ajot 2y ago
        There's an option for "delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed", and you can allow sites to have persistent cookies. Also to block them from even use cookies, if that's your cup of tea, but I've found it works great this way: sites work but I don't keep logged in at every site all the time - after I close the browser window it's an instant log out for every site.
- rsolva 2y ago
  If you're willing to switch browsers, Firefox has this option built in. It flushes all cookies on exit, except from domains in the whitelist. Been using it for years!
kccqzy 2y ago
> Staying with the 2005 definition of private mode as only being ephemeral, such as Chrome’s Incognito Mode, simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Yes I cannot agree more. Personally this shift in people's expectations of Private Browsing or Incognito Browsing came in a way that felt sudden. The recent lawsuit about Google tracking you in Incognito mode was absolutely dumbfounding to me: of course websites can still track you! If only people still remembered the origins of this feature in 2005 (or 2008 in Chrome's case). But even on HN the opinion was pretty split. It is indeed clear that it is now time to change what private browsing means. However, I don't think this is going to stay this way for long. The word "private" when it comes to computing has many varied definitions and it all depends on who the information is made private to. In the extreme case, if your threat model is privacy from eavesdroppers on the network or the ISP, then a browser can easily claim any HTTPS connection is private enough; the majority of browsing is already private browsing. If it is privacy from others using the same machine, then this older private browsing already works. But I cannot help but feel that a few years down the road people are going to consciously or subconsciously substitute yet another definition of privacy.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  > substitute yet another definition I'm not entirely surprised they got this "wrong" given that the question was, "What should we call it?" Naming things (correctly, "future-proof"-ly) is hard.
  - Aachen 2y ago
    It's also not as if smart lamps have brains, as if "we use cookies" is about cookies (it's about agreeing to 178 privacy policies using localStorage and canvas fingerprinting unapologetically), as if cloud computing runs in the sky (ironically, in said clouds, you often can't use those services properly), as if a home button have something to do with your house, and so on and so forth. But, surprise: private navigation mode doesn't give you a free VPN or joins you to an onion routing dark web or something! Why would any consumer expects a computer term to be literally what it says, rather than being like the real-world thing they're named after Naming things may be hard, but in addition, this isn't even a bad name. The popular colloquial name at the time (porn hiding button, or maybe that was only because I was a student when it was introduced) could hardly be seriously used, of course it is called something related to not leaving traces on the computer you're using
wild_pointer 2y ago
That's good progress. How do these features compare to Brave, which has Brave Shields and [copy clean link](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Copy-clean-link https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Copy-clean-link)?
dash2 2y ago
My impression is: * These guys are truly working very hard at guaranteeing privacy; * That will probably break some websites (I'm trying out the advanced tracking protection in normal mode, we'll see). * It will also put them on collision with Google, which is essentially an advertising shop with a free browser frontend.
- lern_too_spel 2y ago
  From the article: > Alongside the new suite of enhanced privacy protections in Private Browsing, Safari also brings a version of Web AdAttributionKit to Private Browsing. This is worse for privacy. No other browser does this. No other browser even lets you opt in for this because it's so nonsensical.
  - nerdjon 2y ago
    > This is worse for privacy. That seems like an exaggeration? How could another solution possibly be worse for privacy than the open season it was previously... The worst it could be is the same. > No other browser even lets you opt in for this because it's so nonsensical. That also does not seem true Google has their topics API: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/new-in-chrome-115/#topics-api https://developer.chrome.com/blog/new-in-chrome-115/#topics-... and according to another poster here, Firefox added something similar. Don't get me wrong, I hate that they had to make these concessions, but what was their choice? If they did not give something (while giving users the ability to opt out) we would have seen browsers being blocked (and no way Google was going to not do something given their entire business is ads, so they could just keep saying use Chrome).
    - lern_too_spel 2y ago
      > How could another solution possibly be worse for privacy than the open season it was previously... Previously, there was no ad tracking at all in private mode. > That also does not seem true No other browser enables any such tracking in private mode or incognito mode. https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/attribution-reporting#:~:text=The%20API%20is%20not%20active,third%2Dparty%20cookies%20are%20disabled https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/attr.... The Topics API you mentioned returns empty topics in incognito mode. https://clearcode.cc/blog/google-chrome-topics-explained/#:~:text=If%20a%20user%20is%20in,identified%2C%20especially%20across%20different%20websites https://clearcode.cc/blog/google-chrome-topics-explained/#:~.... > but what was their choice? Do what other browsers do. Don't enable ad tracking in private mode.
akersten 2y ago
> We also expanded Web AdAttributionKit (formerly Private Click Measurement) as a replacement for tracking parameters in URL to help developers understand the performance of their marketing campaigns even under Private Browsing. Without fail, the knee bends. This also just got quietly enabled by default in Firefox 128, go check and turn it off if you are so inclined.
- SkyMarshal 2y ago
  What's the key in Firefox about:config to turn this off?
  - akersten 2y ago
    It's not hidden in about:config thankfully. It's a checkbox in about:preferences labelled "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement"
  - sexy_seedbox 2y ago
    dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled
mappu 2y ago
Alternative take on the same news: ""Safari already contains ad tracking technology, and they’re now adding it to Safari’s Private Browsing mode, too"" - https://www.osnews.com/story/140252/safari-already-contains-ad-tracking-technology-and-theyre-now-adding-it-to-safaris-private-browsing-mode-too/ https://www.osnews.com/story/140252/safari-already-contains-...
- nwah1 2y ago
  This is the most important comment and needs more upvotes.
ku1ik 2y ago
You know what’s also cool about this announcement? How clean, lightweight and unobtrusive that blog page is.
Aachen 2y ago
TL;DR: - Blocking requests to known trackers - Remove utm_ and other such parameters from URLs - Fingerprinting resistance - Extension disabling - Cap third-party cookie lifetimes - Partitioning for sessionStorage and blob URLs - Proxying encrypted-to-the-resolver DNS traffic - Proxying HTTP, but only when it's unencrypted With a subscription, you also get per-tab sessions and a VPN --- The fingerprinting resistance is interesting as it claims to remove user behaviour characteristics like typing speed and how you move the cursor. Does it fire keyboard events with randomised delays and adds random offsets to mouse locations or how could this work? Games would be unplayable with mouse offsets and random input lag, but if that's not it, then the website gets the data so this has to be it right? For canvas specifically, they say there'll be small but probably visible artifacts from noise injections. So no web-based photo editing in private navigation? Curious how this'll work out in practice Also cool is that they offer an open platform (Mastodon) as a place where you can respond to the author!
- lapcat 2y ago
  > - Remove utm_ and other such parameters from URLs Incorrect. Safari does not remove utm_ parameters. See: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2023/6/2.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2023/6/2.html
  - Aachen 2y ago
    That article doesn't really say either way? It doesn't mention utm nor give a list of what's removed nor link to such a list (at least not the two links I tried). But if you found the list somewhere I'll take your word for it that utm isn't on there specifically; I should have used more generic phrasing though this did seem like an immediately recognisable "ah, that's what's meant" example
    - lapcat 2y ago
      The list is downloaded on disk to macOS. The article gives the location on disk, where Mac users can see it for themselves.
yencabulator 2y ago
> to implement ad attribution and click measurement in a privacy-preserving way What an oxymoron.
flumpcakes 2y ago
I moved from Android to Apple for only two reasons: 1. They started using USB Type C. 2. They are the only major manufacturer that appears to actually take privacy seriously. Even their AI endeavours look the most privacy focused that exists. I'm sure I could go buy some no-name brick and flash my own security focused OS and run my own relays and ... I don't want to do that. I want to buy something that everyone else uses and for it to respect me. So as much hate as Apple gets, they have my trust in good faith, for now.
- lern_too_spel 2y ago
  Apple is the only major manufacturer that makes phones that can't get their location or install an application without phoning home. The only appearance of privacy is in their marketing. Consider that Google did on-device voice-to-text long before Apple did, that Android lets you use a fully-offline app as your default maps app while iOS does not, and that Android lets you use real Firefox with real uBlock Origin. All out of the box on any Android phone from a reputable vendor. No flashing required. Apple's deceptive marketing has made me lose all trust in the company. It will take a lot more than USB-C for me to consider Apple for computing devices.
Jiahang 2y ago
I using private browsing in iPad all time. It is great to see update !

190 points by frizlab 2y ago

ranger_danger 2y ago

> Safari also brings a version of Web AdAttributionKit to Private Browsing This is like a bad dream.

doublerabbit 2y ago
And this is like an executives wet dream.
12_throw_away 2y ago
Yeah that part stuck out to me too. Sigh. What if my browser just did nothing at all to help advertisers, because it's my browser running on my hardware? Even if it is totally privacy-preserving and completely transparent, why would my browser spend my processor cycles, network bandwidth, and electricity for the benefit of someone else's for-profit business? Really, just ... what if the software on my computer tried its best to do exactly what I asked it to do, and was not concerned with anyone else's problems? Anyway, here are the AdAtributionKit docs: - Technical / API: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/adattributionkit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/adattributionkit - High-level: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/ad-attribution/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/ad-attribution/
- dingnuts 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tomjen3 2y ago
    I buy Apple products. Believe me, I pay the full cost of those - but even if I didn't there are free browsers like Firefox and they are also playing with this.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    > then you'd likely need to pay a license fee so that the browser isn't getting its money from ads, or the browser isn't yours at all. It's Safari. You pay a lot of money for a machine and its bundled software, which includes this.
  - bangaladore 2y ago
    Then sell me the hardware at cost. They won't ever do that. Let's not kid ourselves.
- drdaeman 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    You might be correct soon, but not quite yet. There are some positive things going on and the recent news about the EU, Apple and virtualisation is one example.
- dash2 2y ago
  > why would my browser spend my processor cycles, network bandwidth, and electricity for the benefit of someone else's for-profit business? I think a reasonable answer is that you are using their website for your own purposes; that running a website has costs; and that many businesses choose to fund those costs by advertising. If you don't want to be advertised to, I would suggest paying a fee to use ad-free services.
  - throwawa14223 2y ago
    I wonder if it'd be possible to poison. If I have to send clicks I need to also send enough clicks to make it not worthwhile.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    The time when you could reasonably expect paid services not to track you ended well over a decade ago. Apple specifically gets mentions as a website data sharing partner in the privacy policies of my health insurance, my dental insurance, and my mortgage provider. I can assure you that none of those companies are lacking for funds to run basic websites and equally that none of them have ways to pay to "opt out".
klauserc 2y ago
They present this like a smart solution for some sort of fundamental problem. It's really not a fundamental problem. Advertisement has worked and still works perfectly fine without attribution in TV, in magazines, on billboards. Adtech gaslights everyone into accepting that just because it is technically possible to perfectly track and personalize ads in digital media, that they have some sort of moral right to do it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

nashashmi 2y ago

> Block known trackers Is this a cat and mouse game? > Fingerprinting Does this prevent Google's cookieless tracking technology?

sumtechguy 2y ago
> Is this a cat and mouse game? In many ways it is. When I first started blocking using pac files. It was painfully obvious that samesite advertising is the harder thing to block. Luckily for the blockers most companies have been lazy about adverts and put them in known locations. Which works just as well for whole site blocking (known trackers). However, once the adverts are blended into the real data it becomes much harder. Such as what youtube is experimenting with (putting adverts right in the same data stream remuxed). As long as the adverts follow known patterns blocking works fairly easily. The next 'arms' race will be AI detection and block. It will only be a matter of time until someone comes up with a plugin that does exactly that. > Does this prevent Google's cookieless tracking technology? To a point. But you do not need much data to fingerprint. Think it is something like 12-13 bits plus your IP even with a VPN.
- timeon 2y ago
  > Think it is something like 12-13 bits plus your IP even with a VPN. Is that legal under GDPR?
  - SSLy 2y ago
    No, but the enforcement has been fairly toothless. Hopefully same team that designed DMA will make a stronger variant of GDPR.
  - sumtechguy 2y ago
    dont know. legal does not have much to do with it. You just dont need that much info to identify someone. https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ I was wrong it is more like 20-30 bits you need. But those bits are fairly known how to get by the advertisers. The reality is most people do not known about or are resigned to it.

yupyupyups 2y ago

> Proxying unencrypted HTTP. Any unencrypted HTTP resources loaded in Private Browsing will use the same multi-hop proxy network used to hide IP addresses from trackers. This ensures that attackers in the local network cannot see or modify the content of Private Browsing traffic. No thanks, Apple! I trust my ISP more than you. Multi-hop wont matter if all nodes are managed by you.

piperswe 2y ago
iCloud Private Relay uses one hop through Apple infrastructure, and one hop through third-party infrastructure. So, one node is managed by Apple and the other is managed by Cloudflare/Akamai/Fastly. The Apple node knows where the request comes from but not the contents, while the CF/Akamai/Fastly node knows the contents but not the source.
- yupyupyups 2y ago
  This works as long as there is no one combining the information together, like Apple together with Cloudflare, or the US government. This is a concern, since both are under the same jurestiction and are bussiness partners. Contrast this model with Tor where you have 3 hops that are selected in such a way that there is a lower probability that logs from the node operators will be combined. If two nodes, let's say node 1 and 3 are coorporating, then the best that they can do is a correlation attack or other probabalistic methods. If two nodes (all of them) in WebKit are adverserial, then the content is linked back to your IP address with 100% probability.
  - Arnavion 2y ago
    To be clear, the only advantage of Tor wrt correlation is that it uses more hops, not anything related to how those hops are selected, right?
    - fragmede 2y ago
      How paranoid are you? If I were the US government and wanted a leg up on Internet meta data of people looking to avoid surveillance, I'd run a shitton of Tor exit nodes and log IP information on the off chance something useful comes of it.

lapcat 2y ago

Advanced tracking and fingerprinting protection breaks Safari extensions: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/6/5.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2024/6/5.html

eproxus 2y ago
It's very odd that Safari treats extension scripts as third-party, especially when they have been given permission to access all websites and data (sound like a bug almost?). I use and love StopTheMadness Pro. Do you know if it breaks the whole extension or only some parts of it? If so, which ones? (I don't use the copy URL shortcut for example).
- lapcat 2y ago
  > sound like a bug almost? Yes, I assume it's a bug. > I use and love StopTheMadness Pro. Thanks! > Do you know if it breaks the whole extension or only some parts of it? If so, which ones? Not the whole extension, no, only the parts that depend specifically on the URL query.
  - gigatexal 2y ago
    How does the YouTube ads skip feature work? How does it know?

Vinnl 2y ago

Pretty off-topic, but: > When we invented Private Browsing back in 2005, our aim was to provide users with an easy way to keep their browsing private from anyone who shared the same device. I wonder if anyone actually involved 19 years ago was also involved in writing this piece, or if it just sounded reasonable to whoever drafted it up.

nequo 2y ago
I gather this sentence sounds unreasonable to you. Why? Were they not the first to ship private browsing mode?
- Vinnl 2y ago
  Oh no, I didn't mean at all to say it was unreasonable. I meant that the paragraph claims to know what the aim was when introducing the feature, so I wondered if they actually knew that, or just guessed that that was the aim (because it sounds reasonable that it was).
  - nequo 2y ago
    Clearly I misunderstood you. Thanks for clarifying it!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
callalex 2y ago
Apple has a corporate writing/speech style guide that they adhere to religiously. Anything done by anyone in the company present or past is always “we”. Notice how all their keynotes and product press releases almost always include the sentence “we think you’re gonna love it”?
- Vinnl 2y ago
  Sorry, I was mostly referring to the fact that they claim to know what the aim was when introducing the feature, even though they might not have been there. Pure curiosity.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

My most-wanted feature in Safari (and Orion) is first-party website-data whitelisting. I have a limited number of sites whom I trust to store data. Everyone else should be a tabula rasa each visit.

horeszko 2y ago
I use the Cookie AutoDelete browser extension for this purpose, which besides the name handles more than just cookie data. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  Firefox has first-party whitelisting. Block all website data and then whitelist.
  - horeszko 2y ago
    Thanks for the tip! I didn't know it's built-in, I'll check it out.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Does that let cookies exist temporarily? If so, when do they get purged?
    - ajot 2y ago
      There's an option for "delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed", and you can allow sites to have persistent cookies. Also to block them from even use cookies, if that's your cup of tea, but I've found it works great this way: sites work but I don't keep logged in at every site all the time - after I close the browser window it's an instant log out for every site.
rsolva 2y ago
If you're willing to switch browsers, Firefox has this option built in. It flushes all cookies on exit, except from domains in the whitelist. Been using it for years!

kccqzy 2y ago

> Staying with the 2005 definition of private mode as only being ephemeral, such as Chrome’s Incognito Mode, simply doesn’t cut it anymore. Yes I cannot agree more. Personally this shift in people's expectations of Private Browsing or Incognito Browsing came in a way that felt sudden. The recent lawsuit about Google tracking you in Incognito mode was absolutely dumbfounding to me: of course websites can still track you! If only people still remembered the origins of this feature in 2005 (or 2008 in Chrome's case). But even on HN the opinion was pretty split. It is indeed clear that it is now time to change what private browsing means. However, I don't think this is going to stay this way for long. The word "private" when it comes to computing has many varied definitions and it all depends on who the information is made private to. In the extreme case, if your threat model is privacy from eavesdroppers on the network or the ISP, then a browser can easily claim any HTTPS connection is private enough; the majority of browsing is already private browsing. If it is privacy from others using the same machine, then this older private browsing already works. But I cannot help but feel that a few years down the road people are going to consciously or subconsciously substitute yet another definition of privacy.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
> substitute yet another definition I'm not entirely surprised they got this "wrong" given that the question was, "What should we call it?" Naming things (correctly, "future-proof"-ly) is hard.
- Aachen 2y ago
  It's also not as if smart lamps have brains, as if "we use cookies" is about cookies (it's about agreeing to 178 privacy policies using localStorage and canvas fingerprinting unapologetically), as if cloud computing runs in the sky (ironically, in said clouds, you often can't use those services properly), as if a home button have something to do with your house, and so on and so forth. But, surprise: private navigation mode doesn't give you a free VPN or joins you to an onion routing dark web or something! Why would any consumer expects a computer term to be literally what it says, rather than being like the real-world thing they're named after Naming things may be hard, but in addition, this isn't even a bad name. The popular colloquial name at the time (porn hiding button, or maybe that was only because I was a student when it was introduced) could hardly be seriously used, of course it is called something related to not leaving traces on the computer you're using

wild_pointer 2y ago

That's good progress. How do these features compare to Brave, which has Brave Shields and [copy clean link](https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Copy-clean-link https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Copy-clean-link)?

dash2 2y ago

My impression is: * These guys are truly working very hard at guaranteeing privacy; * That will probably break some websites (I'm trying out the advanced tracking protection in normal mode, we'll see). * It will also put them on collision with Google, which is essentially an advertising shop with a free browser frontend.

lern_too_spel 2y ago
From the article: > Alongside the new suite of enhanced privacy protections in Private Browsing, Safari also brings a version of Web AdAttributionKit to Private Browsing. This is worse for privacy. No other browser does this. No other browser even lets you opt in for this because it's so nonsensical.
- nerdjon 2y ago
  > This is worse for privacy. That seems like an exaggeration? How could another solution possibly be worse for privacy than the open season it was previously... The worst it could be is the same. > No other browser even lets you opt in for this because it's so nonsensical. That also does not seem true Google has their topics API: https://developer.chrome.com/blog/new-in-chrome-115/#topics-api https://developer.chrome.com/blog/new-in-chrome-115/#topics-... and according to another poster here, Firefox added something similar. Don't get me wrong, I hate that they had to make these concessions, but what was their choice? If they did not give something (while giving users the ability to opt out) we would have seen browsers being blocked (and no way Google was going to not do something given their entire business is ads, so they could just keep saying use Chrome).
  - lern_too_spel 2y ago
    > How could another solution possibly be worse for privacy than the open season it was previously... Previously, there was no ad tracking at all in private mode. > That also does not seem true No other browser enables any such tracking in private mode or incognito mode. https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/attribution-reporting#:~:text=The%20API%20is%20not%20active,third%2Dparty%20cookies%20are%20disabled https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/relevance/attr.... The Topics API you mentioned returns empty topics in incognito mode. https://clearcode.cc/blog/google-chrome-topics-explained/#:~:text=If%20a%20user%20is%20in,identified%2C%20especially%20across%20different%20websites https://clearcode.cc/blog/google-chrome-topics-explained/#:~.... > but what was their choice? Do what other browsers do. Don't enable ad tracking in private mode.

akersten 2y ago

> We also expanded Web AdAttributionKit (formerly Private Click Measurement) as a replacement for tracking parameters in URL to help developers understand the performance of their marketing campaigns even under Private Browsing. Without fail, the knee bends. This also just got quietly enabled by default in Firefox 128, go check and turn it off if you are so inclined.

SkyMarshal 2y ago
What's the key in Firefox about:config to turn this off?
- akersten 2y ago
  It's not hidden in about:config thankfully. It's a checkbox in about:preferences labelled "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement"
- sexy_seedbox 2y ago
  dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled

mappu 2y ago

Alternative take on the same news: ""Safari already contains ad tracking technology, and they’re now adding it to Safari’s Private Browsing mode, too"" - https://www.osnews.com/story/140252/safari-already-contains-ad-tracking-technology-and-theyre-now-adding-it-to-safaris-private-browsing-mode-too/ https://www.osnews.com/story/140252/safari-already-contains-...

nwah1 2y ago
This is the most important comment and needs more upvotes.

ku1ik 2y ago

You know what’s also cool about this announcement? How clean, lightweight and unobtrusive that blog page is.

Aachen 2y ago

TL;DR: - Blocking requests to known trackers - Remove utm_ and other such parameters from URLs - Fingerprinting resistance - Extension disabling - Cap third-party cookie lifetimes - Partitioning for sessionStorage and blob URLs - Proxying encrypted-to-the-resolver DNS traffic - Proxying HTTP, but only when it's unencrypted With a subscription, you also get per-tab sessions and a VPN --- The fingerprinting resistance is interesting as it claims to remove user behaviour characteristics like typing speed and how you move the cursor. Does it fire keyboard events with randomised delays and adds random offsets to mouse locations or how could this work? Games would be unplayable with mouse offsets and random input lag, but if that's not it, then the website gets the data so this has to be it right? For canvas specifically, they say there'll be small but probably visible artifacts from noise injections. So no web-based photo editing in private navigation? Curious how this'll work out in practice Also cool is that they offer an open platform (Mastodon) as a place where you can respond to the author!

lapcat 2y ago
> - Remove utm_ and other such parameters from URLs Incorrect. Safari does not remove utm_ parameters. See: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2023/6/2.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2023/6/2.html
- Aachen 2y ago
  That article doesn't really say either way? It doesn't mention utm nor give a list of what's removed nor link to such a list (at least not the two links I tried). But if you found the list somewhere I'll take your word for it that utm isn't on there specifically; I should have used more generic phrasing though this did seem like an immediately recognisable "ah, that's what's meant" example
  - lapcat 2y ago
    The list is downloaded on disk to macOS. The article gives the location on disk, where Mac users can see it for themselves.

yencabulator 2y ago

> to implement ad attribution and click measurement in a privacy-preserving way What an oxymoron.

flumpcakes 2y ago

I moved from Android to Apple for only two reasons: 1. They started using USB Type C. 2. They are the only major manufacturer that appears to actually take privacy seriously. Even their AI endeavours look the most privacy focused that exists. I'm sure I could go buy some no-name brick and flash my own security focused OS and run my own relays and ... I don't want to do that. I want to buy something that everyone else uses and for it to respect me. So as much hate as Apple gets, they have my trust in good faith, for now.

lern_too_spel 2y ago
Apple is the only major manufacturer that makes phones that can't get their location or install an application without phoning home. The only appearance of privacy is in their marketing. Consider that Google did on-device voice-to-text long before Apple did, that Android lets you use a fully-offline app as your default maps app while iOS does not, and that Android lets you use real Firefox with real uBlock Origin. All out of the box on any Android phone from a reputable vendor. No flashing required. Apple's deceptive marketing has made me lose all trust in the company. It will take a lot more than USB-C for me to consider Apple for computing devices.

Jiahang 2y ago

I using private browsing in iPad all time. It is great to see update !