10 ms·

Mozilla's page talking about privacy has Google analytics enabled

152 points by hippo8 11y ago

taspeotis 11y ago
Mozilla have a Google Analytics Premium account and they try to minimize the information they share [1]. Our Google Analytics premium account is set to opt-out on all of 3rd party uses of the data and the only people who have access to the anonymous aggregated data is Mozilla Employees. This is not the normal Google Analytics setup that most people use on other websites. Also, to increase privacy we flipped the anonymize flag in the Google Analytics request... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1122305#c8 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1122305#c8
- aw3c2 11y ago
  Good for them. They are still ratting out their visitors to Google.
  - donohoe 11y ago
    Such melodrama. As we speak police vans are en route to round up visitors to that Mozilla page, in co-ordination with Google's security division...
    - Sir_Substance 11y ago
      Such strawman, very shill, wow. The information google gathers will never go away. If google collapses, that data will be slurped up by governments and the private sector alike, and there's absolutely no way for you to predict how it will be used in 40 years time. The optimum strategy is to never let them get an ounce of information about you.
      - threeseed 11y ago
        And how is it different if Mozilla were to run their own stack ? Or are you suggesting that they should do no analytics at all.
        sp332 11y ago
        Data on Mozilla's servers can't be cross-referenced to add to the profiles of visitors and track them across the internet.
        madez 11y ago
        The point is not to centrally agregate data in the first place because the synergetic effect is too big. Knowing 24/7 where you are is one thing, and knowing everything you search is another, but if you combine these two, it already becomes very scary. Google knows so much more. It is a wet dream of spying agencies. What can we do about it? I think most people don't understand technology enough to see what happens, so education might be the first step. I personally avoid Google.
        Sir_Substance 11y ago
        If everyone on the internet created their own analytics stack, the data integration issues alone would prevent aggregation and abuse in 40 years time.
      - eternalban 11y ago
        You make excellent points. This problem needs to be addressed in the political space.
        c0achmcguirk 11y ago
        Please no. I think the web community can solve problems faster and more efficiently than governments. Remember the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003? Did it solve our spam problem or did your email provider do it?
        eternalban 11y ago
        It is a matter of constitutional law and civil rights, not technology. > .. "web" .. This is an issue that is not merely limited to networks, much less simply "web".
        Sir_Substance 11y ago
        I'm a big fan of the EU's "right to be forgotten". I never quite got how everyone decided that it was a tool for pedophiles. If it had been implemented in a robust way that required companies like google to remove all data about you, I'd be making an annual request, on general principals. Given unlimited political power, I'd probably boil it down to the trifecta of "collecting data about someone, even in anonymised form, constitutes opening an account for them. Accounts are always wholly owned by the person they are about. In the event of multiperson accounts each individual has controlling influence over the account's deletion (see rule three)", "when an account is created the owner or owners must be notified", "upon an account owners request, you must completely delete an account and all associated data, working in good faith to delete it as fast as possible, even if deleting that data will affect other accounts". It probably needs some refining, but the goal is to punish deliberately obfuscatory system designs where data or account information is deliberately entangled to make data deletion impractical, and give people control final control over the gathering of personal data about them. Ultimately, I really liked the Gevulot system from the quantum thief (really worth reading, it's an amazing series). It'd be nice to have an internet based version of the same system.
- vog 11y ago
  Why don't they simply analyze the log files on their own, without sharing that data with other companies? For example, running some log files offline through AWstats is not that hard, and the AWstats output is quite good for most purposes.
  - vdaniuk 11y ago
    >AWstats is not that hard, and the AWstats output is quite good for most purposes. You haven't done any serious web analytics at scale, have you?
    - cbd1984 11y ago
      You're missing the point so comprehensively I have to conclude it's deliberate.
      - vdaniuk 11y ago
        Huh, am I? Has anyone offended by this "transgression" of privacy by Mozilla thought this through to its logical conclusion? Let's see. 1. Mozilla is one of the good, independent orgs that don't have profit as their main goal. They do fight for the interests of the community at large. 2. If they remove third-party analytics from their web properties, Mozilla instantly loses valuable actionable insights that significantly increase their efficiency as an organization. Creating a viable alternative to Google Analytics is practically impossible for Mozilla due to lack of resources. 3. If Mozilla loses operational efficiency, Google/Microsoft becomes more powerful and are able to obtain more users for Chrome/IE. They use all analytics they need. Less users for Mozilla means less income from search engine deals and less influence. 4. No meaningful privacy increase for users is achieved, Google Analytics is now installed on (billions - 1) websites. So. You want a non-profit with proven track record of shipping great software and protecting the interests of individuals to take a significant hit in the name of hard-line ideological principle that won't really benefit the users. I guess I am missing the point.
        mattmanser 11y ago
- nodiscpls 11y ago
  What sort of analytics do Mozilla actually need?
  - threeseed 11y ago
    I could explain it but it's better to look at the websites of MixPanel, Google Analytics and KissMetrics. Those are three leading players for analytics IMHO. Web analytics for most serious sites are managed by dedicated marketing teams so features are to meet their requirements.
    - cbd1984 11y ago
      So they don't actually need analytics at all, it's just marketing people trying to preserve their jobs.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  Or so they claim. Is there any way for anyone else to verify that?
  - eli 11y ago
    That would be a really weird lie for no reason I can imagine.
    - cbd1984 11y ago
      The reason is to make it seem like they care about privacy more than they actually do. Obviously, people care how much they care, hence a reason to lie.
- lawl 11y ago
  Or they could just setup Piwik[0] or something like that... [0] https://piwik.org/ https://piwik.org/
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > Or they could just setup Piwik or something like that... They could, but honestly, it's questionable whether Piwik would even work for their use case & scale, and even if it does, it's debatable whether it would be the best use of their limited resources. This situation makes for a really catchy headline, but the page is primarily talking about privacy in the context of government surveillance. In that context, Piwik is just as vulnerable to NSLs (active surveillance) or NSA snooping (passive surveillance) as Google Analytics is. There is a marginal harm to using Google Analytics instead of a self-hosted service, but it's quite possible that the benefits (of being able to reach more people and better educate people about those evils) outweighs those harms, especially given that the target audience for this site is already being tracked by Google on the vast majority of their web browsing anyway[0][1]. Furthermore, we could just use this as an opportunity to underscore the importance of the problem itself: it's a rather damning statement about the effectiveness and pervasiveness of digital tracking that Mozilla feels that Google is its best (or only) option[1] for educating as many people as possible about the evils of online surveillance. [0] http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ta-googleanalytics/all/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ta-googleanalytics/a... [1] This isn't even counting the other ways that Google tracks web users: Google's CDNs for JQuery and web fonts, people who use Google's DNS servers, etc. [2] I'm making the assumption that someone at Mozilla has made this decision consciously, which is not an unreasonable assumption for this discussion - it's rather unlikely that the people building the website about digital surveillance and working at the company partnered with EFF and Tor are unaware that Google Analytics is digital surveillance.
kuschku 11y ago
This is completely inacceptable. Preaching water and drinking wine, eh? If they’d really want some kind of tracking, they could have used a locally installed system like piwik, as the largest issue with tracking comes when the data from many sites is combined.
- threeseed 11y ago
  Sure. They could've done that. But that would cost how much to install, manage and configure remembering that (a) Mozilla gets quite a bit of traffic and (b) that is money that could be better spent on their products.
bshimmin 11y ago
And they also include JavaScript from https://ethn.io/ https://ethn.io/, the relative privacy value of which you can judge for yourself, and whose parent company, I note in the footer, was bought by Facebook...
- yebyen 11y ago
  These people have a Del tha Funkee Homosapien reference right on their landing page. I therefore can't muster any hate onto them.
userbinator 11y ago
I've had GA's domains redirected to 0.0.0.0 in HOSTS ever since I knew of them. It's also another one of these single-page-apps that require JavaScript to display any content at all. I think with such a design they're clearly not targeting the sort of privacy levels that more users on HN than the Internet in general expect.
- Programmatic 11y ago
  Check out RequestPolicy sometime if you're concerned about GA and other tracking and went through the trouble to bit bucket it in hosts; it's really nice to be able to set which other sites any given site can contact, and I trust it more than the other curated options like Ghostery etc. since I can see for myself where each site is allowed to go.
  - Sir_Substance 11y ago
    check out noscript then!
    - sp332 11y ago
      RequestPolicy and other tools like HTTPS Switchboard or even Ghostery let you block all content from certain domains, not just JS. They won't even load a tracking pixel. RP is whitelist-based and it can take some time to enable all the domains you actually use. Ghostery is blacklist-based and targets known tracking domains.
      - gorhill 11y ago
        > other tools like HTTPS Switchboard I will take this opportunity to remind people that uMatrix is now available for Firefox (works on Nightly): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/
        shock 11y ago
aw3c2 11y ago
The website is totally broken for me: http://i.imgur.com/y01g1NG.png http://i.imgur.com/y01g1NG.png
- afandian 11y ago
  Me too, except I only get the dark section.
- 0xff00 11y ago
  You should mention which platform/browser/version you're running so they can fix it.
- userbinator 11y ago
  As they seem to be implicitly telling you to download Firefox, you're probably not using Firefox. There's a div that covers the whole page with class "modal--old-ie" which that download button is in, but I guess they don't want anyone using anything but Firefox, since I get that with Chromium too.
tombrossman 11y ago
Not only enabled, but in breach of the Google Analytics' Terms which state very clearly: "You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies that are used to collect data. You must disclose the use of Google Analytics, and how it collects and processes data. " See section 7 "Privacy" here for the full text. http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html
- userbinator 11y ago
  They do mention it here, so I don't think they violate GA ToS: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/websites/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/websites/ Third party Services We use third party services such as Google Analytics and Optimizely. They use cookies, IP addresses, and online data tools.
  - tombrossman 11y ago
    I see no privacy policy on the shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org site though you are correct that they do post that privacy policy on the completely different website www.mozilla.org. I suppose they would argue that's the same but I don't think it is good enough (especially for a site preaching privacy values). It should be down in the footer, or even better they should be using Piwik and skipping GA completely. To me, this feels like a website built by a pro-privacy team who had some marketing or PR person slap the GA code in there with no comprehension of irony at all. EDIT: Also to note that mozilla.org uses UA-36116321-1 tracking and shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org uses UA-49796218-22, which indicates to me that they are aware that these are two distinctly different sites.
    - nikolak 11y ago
      >I see no privacy policy on the shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org site though you are correct that they do post that privacy policy on the completely different website www.mozilla.org. It's on the same subdomain, and it includes link to mozilla.org which has link to privacy policy which also applies to shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org: >This privacy notice applies to Mozilla operated websites, which include the domains mozillians.org, mozilla.org, firefox.com, openbadges.org and webmaker.org. This includes, for example, bugzilla.mozilla.org, reps.mozilla.org, careers.mozilla.org, developers.mozilla.org, support.mozilla.org, addons.mozilla.org, and wiki.mozilla.org.
UserRights 11y ago
When you open a freshly installed Firefox on Ubuntu or Windows (that is where I checked) you will have a google cookie set right before the first usage, without any chance of opting out or being asked before. Yes, anybody can change the startpage, delete all cookies and restart the browser. How many users will do this? And does forcing every user into google surveillance comply with this privacy marketing of mozilla, or is it just a zynical fake campaign? There should be a startpage explaining what cookies are, describing the difference between temporary and permanent cookies and how these help to track your web usage, and provide one single, visible button to delete all cookies. After this I should be asked if I would like to help mozilla funding by redirecting me to a google web search which will set a permanent cookie.
- userbinator 11y ago
  Given how much they've lobotomised the interface over the years, I think it's very unlikely they'll make default such an easily accessible option to delete cookies; quite possibly the only reason some cookie management still remains is because it was there in the first place and the privacy advocates would scream very loudly if it was removed. Otherwise, I think web developers with their "appeal to stupidity" argument ("but it breaks my sites if users are allowed to do X!") have been quite successful at taking control away from the user.
  - halflings 11y ago
    What you call "lobotomised the interface" is what made so many people switch back to Firefox. That's the type of interface most people are looking for. I'll also add that there is a button that lets you delete all private info (cookies, history, etc.) acquired in a certain period of time: the Forget button [1]. If you're looking for something more advanced, you'll have to use something like this addon [2] [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forget-button-quickly-delete-your-browsing-history https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forget-button-quickly-d... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/selectivecookiedelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/selectivecook...
- robin_reala 11y ago
KraigWalker 11y ago
Next time you go to a movie theatre and there's someone standing there keeping count of how many people are going in - because it's there job or something - make sure to complain they're infringing on your right to privacy.
- weland 11y ago
  If Google Analytics provided nothing other than a counter, those simple CGI visitor count scripts we hacked up back in the 90s would have put Google out of business a long, long time ago.
- throwawayaway 11y ago
  do you really think that's all google analytics provides, a hit counter? you should really use it sometime, or at least familiarise yourself with its capabilites.
- bitJericho 11y ago
  I often pass by without handing him or her my ticket. Fight the power!
- MisterWebz 11y ago
  That same person is also standing at the entrance of almost every other building. To make his job easier he's also given you a unique identifier, so that he can notice when you enter a building he watches. I'm sure you've never noticed him, most people don't.
  - Drakim 11y ago
    And at the end of the day, he goes over hist list of what buildings you went into, to analyze what sort of things you like so he can show up at your door as a door salesman to sell you some product he believes you will be interested in.
  - JohnTHaller 11y ago
    He handed you a unique identifier. You're the one who is keeping it safe and showing it to him every time you see him. Unless you manage your cookies a bit better.
ChrisAntaki 11y ago
Mozilla tried to launch a site to help educate people while tracking engagement? This seems like a much bigger issue than the NSA copying entire datastreams from American internet hubs.
- sp332 11y ago
  I don't get your comment (even sarcastically). It's not that big, but it's still a problem. People who are trying to avoid being tracked would probably prefer not being tracked. The page is self-defeating.
  - hobs 11y ago
    Well I do! Complaining about a moz site having google analytics is 100% bike shedding, everyone has an opinion because they have no idea how to fix or address the bigger issues, so lets complain about a website, we all know how to do that! If we cannot pick our battles, then we will just lose because of the dissipation of all of our efforts across everything "that is still a problem". When I weigh out the benefits vs the costs, I dont see why moz would pick any other option, everything else is more work, and google already tracks you across most of the internet. Whether or not you showed up on a mozilla page is not going to change their understanding of your habits by much.
    - sp332 11y ago
      Mozilla isn't some bystander, they're a major player in the fight against mass surveillance. That's why it gets such a big reaction when they seem to be enabling it. People start doubting their whole commitment to the cause.
miji 11y ago
one of the prime reasons gnu forked firefox for icecat was google safebrowsing , besides that i dont think firefox really doesnt give a shit about your privacy and shit like that . their primary concern is to ship software , not code quality or issues of relevance to users .if the illusion can be maintained that it does care about your privacy then it works fine for them , it works fine for their major "donors".

152 points by hippo8 11y ago

Mozilla have a Google Analytics Premium account and they try to minimize the information they share [1]. Our Google Analytics premium account is set to opt-out on all of 3rd party uses of the data and the only people who have access to the anonymous aggregated data is Mozilla Employees. This is not the normal Google Analytics setup that most people use on other websites. Also, to increase privacy we flipped the anonymize flag in the Google Analytics request... [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1122305#c8 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1122305#c8

aw3c2 11y ago
Good for them. They are still ratting out their visitors to Google.
- donohoe 11y ago
  Such melodrama. As we speak police vans are en route to round up visitors to that Mozilla page, in co-ordination with Google's security division...
  - Sir_Substance 11y ago
    Such strawman, very shill, wow. The information google gathers will never go away. If google collapses, that data will be slurped up by governments and the private sector alike, and there's absolutely no way for you to predict how it will be used in 40 years time. The optimum strategy is to never let them get an ounce of information about you.
    - threeseed 11y ago
      And how is it different if Mozilla were to run their own stack ? Or are you suggesting that they should do no analytics at all.
      - sp332 11y ago
        Data on Mozilla's servers can't be cross-referenced to add to the profiles of visitors and track them across the internet.
      - madez 11y ago
        The point is not to centrally agregate data in the first place because the synergetic effect is too big. Knowing 24/7 where you are is one thing, and knowing everything you search is another, but if you combine these two, it already becomes very scary. Google knows so much more. It is a wet dream of spying agencies. What can we do about it? I think most people don't understand technology enough to see what happens, so education might be the first step. I personally avoid Google.
      - Sir_Substance 11y ago
        If everyone on the internet created their own analytics stack, the data integration issues alone would prevent aggregation and abuse in 40 years time.
    - eternalban 11y ago
      You make excellent points. This problem needs to be addressed in the political space.
      - c0achmcguirk 11y ago
        Please no. I think the web community can solve problems faster and more efficiently than governments. Remember the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003? Did it solve our spam problem or did your email provider do it?
        eternalban 11y ago
        It is a matter of constitutional law and civil rights, not technology. > .. "web" .. This is an issue that is not merely limited to networks, much less simply "web".
      - Sir_Substance 11y ago
        I'm a big fan of the EU's "right to be forgotten". I never quite got how everyone decided that it was a tool for pedophiles. If it had been implemented in a robust way that required companies like google to remove all data about you, I'd be making an annual request, on general principals. Given unlimited political power, I'd probably boil it down to the trifecta of "collecting data about someone, even in anonymised form, constitutes opening an account for them. Accounts are always wholly owned by the person they are about. In the event of multiperson accounts each individual has controlling influence over the account's deletion (see rule three)", "when an account is created the owner or owners must be notified", "upon an account owners request, you must completely delete an account and all associated data, working in good faith to delete it as fast as possible, even if deleting that data will affect other accounts". It probably needs some refining, but the goal is to punish deliberately obfuscatory system designs where data or account information is deliberately entangled to make data deletion impractical, and give people control final control over the gathering of personal data about them. Ultimately, I really liked the Gevulot system from the quantum thief (really worth reading, it's an amazing series). It'd be nice to have an internet based version of the same system.
vog 11y ago
Why don't they simply analyze the log files on their own, without sharing that data with other companies? For example, running some log files offline through AWstats is not that hard, and the AWstats output is quite good for most purposes.
- vdaniuk 11y ago
  >AWstats is not that hard, and the AWstats output is quite good for most purposes. You haven't done any serious web analytics at scale, have you?
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    You're missing the point so comprehensively I have to conclude it's deliberate.
    - vdaniuk 11y ago
      Huh, am I? Has anyone offended by this "transgression" of privacy by Mozilla thought this through to its logical conclusion? Let's see. 1. Mozilla is one of the good, independent orgs that don't have profit as their main goal. They do fight for the interests of the community at large. 2. If they remove third-party analytics from their web properties, Mozilla instantly loses valuable actionable insights that significantly increase their efficiency as an organization. Creating a viable alternative to Google Analytics is practically impossible for Mozilla due to lack of resources. 3. If Mozilla loses operational efficiency, Google/Microsoft becomes more powerful and are able to obtain more users for Chrome/IE. They use all analytics they need. Less users for Mozilla means less income from search engine deals and less influence. 4. No meaningful privacy increase for users is achieved, Google Analytics is now installed on (billions - 1) websites. So. You want a non-profit with proven track record of shipping great software and protecting the interests of individuals to take a significant hit in the name of hard-line ideological principle that won't really benefit the users. I guess I am missing the point.
      - mattmanser 11y ago
nodiscpls 11y ago
What sort of analytics do Mozilla actually need?
- threeseed 11y ago
  I could explain it but it's better to look at the websites of MixPanel, Google Analytics and KissMetrics. Those are three leading players for analytics IMHO. Web analytics for most serious sites are managed by dedicated marketing teams so features are to meet their requirements.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    So they don't actually need analytics at all, it's just marketing people trying to preserve their jobs.
cbd1984 11y ago
Or so they claim. Is there any way for anyone else to verify that?
- eli 11y ago
  That would be a really weird lie for no reason I can imagine.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    The reason is to make it seem like they care about privacy more than they actually do. Obviously, people care how much they care, hence a reason to lie.
lawl 11y ago
Or they could just setup Piwik[0] or something like that... [0] https://piwik.org/ https://piwik.org/
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > Or they could just setup Piwik or something like that... They could, but honestly, it's questionable whether Piwik would even work for their use case & scale, and even if it does, it's debatable whether it would be the best use of their limited resources. This situation makes for a really catchy headline, but the page is primarily talking about privacy in the context of government surveillance. In that context, Piwik is just as vulnerable to NSLs (active surveillance) or NSA snooping (passive surveillance) as Google Analytics is. There is a marginal harm to using Google Analytics instead of a self-hosted service, but it's quite possible that the benefits (of being able to reach more people and better educate people about those evils) outweighs those harms, especially given that the target audience for this site is already being tracked by Google on the vast majority of their web browsing anyway[0][1]. Furthermore, we could just use this as an opportunity to underscore the importance of the problem itself: it's a rather damning statement about the effectiveness and pervasiveness of digital tracking that Mozilla feels that Google is its best (or only) option[1] for educating as many people as possible about the evils of online surveillance. [0] http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ta-googleanalytics/all/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ta-googleanalytics/a... [1] This isn't even counting the other ways that Google tracks web users: Google's CDNs for JQuery and web fonts, people who use Google's DNS servers, etc. [2] I'm making the assumption that someone at Mozilla has made this decision consciously, which is not an unreasonable assumption for this discussion - it's rather unlikely that the people building the website about digital surveillance and working at the company partnered with EFF and Tor are unaware that Google Analytics is digital surveillance.

kuschku 11y ago

This is completely inacceptable. Preaching water and drinking wine, eh? If they’d really want some kind of tracking, they could have used a locally installed system like piwik, as the largest issue with tracking comes when the data from many sites is combined.

threeseed 11y ago
Sure. They could've done that. But that would cost how much to install, manage and configure remembering that (a) Mozilla gets quite a bit of traffic and (b) that is money that could be better spent on their products.

bshimmin 11y ago

And they also include JavaScript from https://ethn.io/ https://ethn.io/, the relative privacy value of which you can judge for yourself, and whose parent company, I note in the footer, was bought by Facebook...

yebyen 11y ago
These people have a Del tha Funkee Homosapien reference right on their landing page. I therefore can't muster any hate onto them.

userbinator 11y ago

I've had GA's domains redirected to 0.0.0.0 in HOSTS ever since I knew of them. It's also another one of these single-page-apps that require JavaScript to display any content at all. I think with such a design they're clearly not targeting the sort of privacy levels that more users on HN than the Internet in general expect.

Programmatic 11y ago
Check out RequestPolicy sometime if you're concerned about GA and other tracking and went through the trouble to bit bucket it in hosts; it's really nice to be able to set which other sites any given site can contact, and I trust it more than the other curated options like Ghostery etc. since I can see for myself where each site is allowed to go.
- Sir_Substance 11y ago
  check out noscript then!
  - sp332 11y ago
    RequestPolicy and other tools like HTTPS Switchboard or even Ghostery let you block all content from certain domains, not just JS. They won't even load a tracking pixel. RP is whitelist-based and it can take some time to enable all the domains you actually use. Ghostery is blacklist-based and targets known tracking domains.
    - gorhill 11y ago
      > other tools like HTTPS Switchboard I will take this opportunity to remind people that uMatrix is now available for Firefox (works on Nightly): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/
      - shock 11y ago

aw3c2 11y ago

The website is totally broken for me: http://i.imgur.com/y01g1NG.png http://i.imgur.com/y01g1NG.png

afandian 11y ago
Me too, except I only get the dark section.
0xff00 11y ago
You should mention which platform/browser/version you're running so they can fix it.
userbinator 11y ago
As they seem to be implicitly telling you to download Firefox, you're probably not using Firefox. There's a div that covers the whole page with class "modal--old-ie" which that download button is in, but I guess they don't want anyone using anything but Firefox, since I get that with Chromium too.

tombrossman 11y ago

Not only enabled, but in breach of the Google Analytics' Terms which state very clearly: "You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies that are used to collect data. You must disclose the use of Google Analytics, and how it collects and processes data. " See section 7 "Privacy" here for the full text. http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html http://www.google.com/analytics/terms/us.html

userbinator 11y ago
They do mention it here, so I don't think they violate GA ToS: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/websites/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/websites/ Third party Services We use third party services such as Google Analytics and Optimizely. They use cookies, IP addresses, and online data tools.
- tombrossman 11y ago
  I see no privacy policy on the shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org site though you are correct that they do post that privacy policy on the completely different website www.mozilla.org. I suppose they would argue that's the same but I don't think it is good enough (especially for a site preaching privacy values). It should be down in the footer, or even better they should be using Piwik and skipping GA completely. To me, this feels like a website built by a pro-privacy team who had some marketing or PR person slap the GA code in there with no comprehension of irony at all. EDIT: Also to note that mozilla.org uses UA-36116321-1 tracking and shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org uses UA-49796218-22, which indicates to me that they are aware that these are two distinctly different sites.
  - nikolak 11y ago
    >I see no privacy policy on the shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org site though you are correct that they do post that privacy policy on the completely different website www.mozilla.org. It's on the same subdomain, and it includes link to mozilla.org which has link to privacy policy which also applies to shapeoftheweb.mozilla.org: >This privacy notice applies to Mozilla operated websites, which include the domains mozillians.org, mozilla.org, firefox.com, openbadges.org and webmaker.org. This includes, for example, bugzilla.mozilla.org, reps.mozilla.org, careers.mozilla.org, developers.mozilla.org, support.mozilla.org, addons.mozilla.org, and wiki.mozilla.org.

UserRights 11y ago

When you open a freshly installed Firefox on Ubuntu or Windows (that is where I checked) you will have a google cookie set right before the first usage, without any chance of opting out or being asked before. Yes, anybody can change the startpage, delete all cookies and restart the browser. How many users will do this? And does forcing every user into google surveillance comply with this privacy marketing of mozilla, or is it just a zynical fake campaign? There should be a startpage explaining what cookies are, describing the difference between temporary and permanent cookies and how these help to track your web usage, and provide one single, visible button to delete all cookies. After this I should be asked if I would like to help mozilla funding by redirecting me to a google web search which will set a permanent cookie.

userbinator 11y ago
Given how much they've lobotomised the interface over the years, I think it's very unlikely they'll make default such an easily accessible option to delete cookies; quite possibly the only reason some cookie management still remains is because it was there in the first place and the privacy advocates would scream very loudly if it was removed. Otherwise, I think web developers with their "appeal to stupidity" argument ("but it breaks my sites if users are allowed to do X!") have been quite successful at taking control away from the user.
- halflings 11y ago
  What you call "lobotomised the interface" is what made so many people switch back to Firefox. That's the type of interface most people are looking for. I'll also add that there is a button that lets you delete all private info (cookies, history, etc.) acquired in a certain period of time: the Forget button [1]. If you're looking for something more advanced, you'll have to use something like this addon [2] [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forget-button-quickly-delete-your-browsing-history https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forget-button-quickly-d... [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/selectivecookiedelete/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/selectivecook...
robin_reala 11y ago

KraigWalker 11y ago

Next time you go to a movie theatre and there's someone standing there keeping count of how many people are going in - because it's there job or something - make sure to complain they're infringing on your right to privacy.

weland 11y ago
If Google Analytics provided nothing other than a counter, those simple CGI visitor count scripts we hacked up back in the 90s would have put Google out of business a long, long time ago.
throwawayaway 11y ago
do you really think that's all google analytics provides, a hit counter? you should really use it sometime, or at least familiarise yourself with its capabilites.
bitJericho 11y ago
I often pass by without handing him or her my ticket. Fight the power!
MisterWebz 11y ago
That same person is also standing at the entrance of almost every other building. To make his job easier he's also given you a unique identifier, so that he can notice when you enter a building he watches. I'm sure you've never noticed him, most people don't.
- Drakim 11y ago
  And at the end of the day, he goes over hist list of what buildings you went into, to analyze what sort of things you like so he can show up at your door as a door salesman to sell you some product he believes you will be interested in.
- JohnTHaller 11y ago
  He handed you a unique identifier. You're the one who is keeping it safe and showing it to him every time you see him. Unless you manage your cookies a bit better.

ChrisAntaki 11y ago

Mozilla tried to launch a site to help educate people while tracking engagement? This seems like a much bigger issue than the NSA copying entire datastreams from American internet hubs.

sp332 11y ago
I don't get your comment (even sarcastically). It's not that big, but it's still a problem. People who are trying to avoid being tracked would probably prefer not being tracked. The page is self-defeating.
- hobs 11y ago
  Well I do! Complaining about a moz site having google analytics is 100% bike shedding, everyone has an opinion because they have no idea how to fix or address the bigger issues, so lets complain about a website, we all know how to do that! If we cannot pick our battles, then we will just lose because of the dissipation of all of our efforts across everything "that is still a problem". When I weigh out the benefits vs the costs, I dont see why moz would pick any other option, everything else is more work, and google already tracks you across most of the internet. Whether or not you showed up on a mozilla page is not going to change their understanding of your habits by much.
  - sp332 11y ago
    Mozilla isn't some bystander, they're a major player in the fight against mass surveillance. That's why it gets such a big reaction when they seem to be enabling it. People start doubting their whole commitment to the cause.

miji 11y ago

one of the prime reasons gnu forked firefox for icecat was google safebrowsing , besides that i dont think firefox really doesnt give a shit about your privacy and shit like that . their primary concern is to ship software , not code quality or issues of relevance to users .if the illusion can be maintained that it does care about your privacy then it works fine for them , it works fine for their major "donors".