4 ms·

I justed visited https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ and browsed the source, and they still have the Google Analytics tracking crap on

I justed visited https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ and browsed the source, and they still have the Google Analytics tracking crap on their website. Strange for a company that claims to be "committed to your privacy."

alexgrist 11y ago
This again..
- throwaway425 11y ago
  It's a valid objection. GA at this point is on most websites you visit. The data is forwarded to Google where it's processed and stored forever. GA is one of the biggest threats to privacy on the web, and any company claiming to care about your privacy should not be using it.
  - throwthrwo 11y ago
    Another major one is Cloudflare. They mitm connections to many sites (with the sites' permission), meaning they cannot be blocked. HN is behind Cloudflare.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    I find it very, very hard to get outraged over analytics code on a web browser site. And as previously mentioned every time someone brings up this idiotic factoid, Mozilla's use of GA isn't exactly standard.
    - throwaway425 11y ago
      You find it very, very hard to get outraged because you either use GA yourself and do not wish to acknowledge your complicity in the matter or you've simply failed to make the obvious leap from analytics to clickstream data. Google wants to know what web pages you visit, when, and how often, and a GA beacon that phones home that information placed on every web page is the easiest way for them to do it. EDIT: there are either a lot of angry GA users in this thread or Google apologists. Either was, I do believe Google is now or will soon use GA for clickstream tracking. I also believe this is why they offer to host frequently requested assets like JQuery.
      - eps 11y ago
        > why they offer to host frequently requested assets like JQuery Let's not forget the Google Fonts, which exist to "make web beautiful". How adorable and altruistic. Yay! /throws-confetti
        lern_too_spel 11y ago
        Yes, let's not forget the fonts and js libraries served on cookie-less domains for speed. Surely, these are part of a plan to create a New World Order. https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#Privacy https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#Privacy
        throwaway425 11y ago
        Cookies don't matter when browser fingerprinting accomplishes the same task. Read the page you linked to: "We do log records of the CSS and the font file requests, and access to this data is on a need-to-know basis and kept secure." Just like every other Google Privacy Policy, it's insultingly disingenuous, couched in terms of protecting your privacy while actually reserving for themselves the right to violate it by collecting enough information on you for you to be uniquely identified and storing that information indefinitely.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        Okay, WTF? Name a web server out there that doesnt keep logs. Your constant projecting of ulterior motives, absent any evidence, on a throwaway account, is the very definition of worthless, gratuitously negative content. The guy upthread is complaining that requests are cached for a day. I'm sorry, would y'all prefer that they not be cached?
        throwaway425 11y ago
        Google's motive is to make money, and they do that largely through advertising. There's nothing ulterior about the motive I'm suggesting. More information on you means they can charge a higher price for the privilege of advertising certain products or services to you. Of course, the fact that the same information they sell to advertisers is also easily accessible by the government with a mere subpoena, if even that, is of little concern to Google, Eric Schmidt, or remarkably even to many HN posters in this thread.
  - calhoun137 11y ago
    I agree with you that it's a valid objection. I disagree however, when you say " any company claiming to care about your privacy should not be using it." That's an easy accusation to throw around, but what is hard to is come up with a better alternative. What is your suggestion, that they should abandon all analytics, or that they should build their own, or do you not have one? Are you willing to acknowledge that GA solves a real problem and provides valuable information? In my judgement, it makes a lot of sense that Mozilla would use GA. I want them to use it because I believe in their mission, and I'm sure in the balance of things, it helps them maintain a stronger position as an organization.
    - throwthrwo 11y ago
      The solution is to use a tracking library. The library should be hosted on your own server, and should not phone home.
    - teddyh 11y ago
      One obvious and easy alternative to Google Analytics is Piwik. You host it yourself. https://piwik.org/ https://piwik.org/
    - throwaway425 11y ago
      >What is your suggestion, that they should abandon all analytics Ideally, yes. Or at the very least don't use Google for it. Use something like Pwiki instead. Or perhaps try actually allowing your users to decide what if any information they feel comfortable sharing with you. There are other non-profits like the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive whose websites still somehow manage to function despite not triggering any of the multitude of filter rules that plugins like uBlock ship with.
      - magicalist 11y ago
        uBlock blocks Piwik, self-hosted or not.
        cptmashek 11y ago
callahad 11y ago
Mozilla has an enterprise agreement with Google that limits what data is collected through GA and how it can be used. Quote: 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 [...] and don't do any cross-domain cookies within Google Analytics. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1122305#c8 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1122305#c8
- throwaway425 11y ago
  If it's on Google's servers, then clearly Mozilla employees aren't the only ones with access to it, and the anonymization he's referring to is mere IP address anonymization, where the last octet of an IPv4 address is zeroed. The viability of browser fingerprinting as demonstrated by the EFF's Panopticlick shows cookies, cross-domain or otherwise, are no longer the only viable means to persistently tracking users.
  - throwawayaway 11y ago
    Google obviously have systems in place to allow employee access for absolute emergencies - but alarmed in case of unauthorised access. in any case, the analytics data is anonymised and as such cannot be used to identify you. google goes to huge lengths anonymising data to aggregate you as a user into groups of millions for advertisers to bid on, you are simply not a big enough fish for special treatment. edit: an explanation for downvoting is customary.
    - dangrossman 11y ago
      I didn't downvote you, but... > google goes to huge lengths anonymising data to aggregate you as a user into groups of millions for advertisers to bid on, you are simply not a big enough fish for special treatment You're mixing different products and people here. That may be true of Google Analytics data (I don't know either way), but it's not true for their advertising services. Google purposely tracks individual people in a non-anonymous way in order to sell remarketing products, to e.g. show a banner of items currently in your Amazon shopping cart alongside an article you're reading at CNN through their AdSense/DoubleClick platforms.
mbrubeck 11y ago
And in case anyone is wondering, turning on Firefox's experimental Tracking Protection feature does block Google Analytics on Mozilla's own web site.

alexgrist 11y ago

This again..

throwaway425 11y ago
It's a valid objection. GA at this point is on most websites you visit. The data is forwarded to Google where it's processed and stored forever. GA is one of the biggest threats to privacy on the web, and any company claiming to care about your privacy should not be using it.
- throwthrwo 11y ago
  Another major one is Cloudflare. They mitm connections to many sites (with the sites' permission), meaning they cannot be blocked. HN is behind Cloudflare.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  I find it very, very hard to get outraged over analytics code on a web browser site. And as previously mentioned every time someone brings up this idiotic factoid, Mozilla's use of GA isn't exactly standard.
  - throwaway425 11y ago
    You find it very, very hard to get outraged because you either use GA yourself and do not wish to acknowledge your complicity in the matter or you've simply failed to make the obvious leap from analytics to clickstream data. Google wants to know what web pages you visit, when, and how often, and a GA beacon that phones home that information placed on every web page is the easiest way for them to do it. EDIT: there are either a lot of angry GA users in this thread or Google apologists. Either was, I do believe Google is now or will soon use GA for clickstream tracking. I also believe this is why they offer to host frequently requested assets like JQuery.
    - eps 11y ago
      > why they offer to host frequently requested assets like JQuery Let's not forget the Google Fonts, which exist to "make web beautiful". How adorable and altruistic. Yay! /throws-confetti
      - lern_too_spel 11y ago
        Yes, let's not forget the fonts and js libraries served on cookie-less domains for speed. Surely, these are part of a plan to create a New World Order. https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#Privacy https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#Privacy
        throwaway425 11y ago
        Cookies don't matter when browser fingerprinting accomplishes the same task. Read the page you linked to: "We do log records of the CSS and the font file requests, and access to this data is on a need-to-know basis and kept secure." Just like every other Google Privacy Policy, it's insultingly disingenuous, couched in terms of protecting your privacy while actually reserving for themselves the right to violate it by collecting enough information on you for you to be uniquely identified and storing that information indefinitely.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        Okay, WTF? Name a web server out there that doesnt keep logs. Your constant projecting of ulterior motives, absent any evidence, on a throwaway account, is the very definition of worthless, gratuitously negative content. The guy upthread is complaining that requests are cached for a day. I'm sorry, would y'all prefer that they not be cached?
        throwaway425 11y ago
        Google's motive is to make money, and they do that largely through advertising. There's nothing ulterior about the motive I'm suggesting. More information on you means they can charge a higher price for the privilege of advertising certain products or services to you. Of course, the fact that the same information they sell to advertisers is also easily accessible by the government with a mere subpoena, if even that, is of little concern to Google, Eric Schmidt, or remarkably even to many HN posters in this thread.
- calhoun137 11y ago
  I agree with you that it's a valid objection. I disagree however, when you say " any company claiming to care about your privacy should not be using it." That's an easy accusation to throw around, but what is hard to is come up with a better alternative. What is your suggestion, that they should abandon all analytics, or that they should build their own, or do you not have one? Are you willing to acknowledge that GA solves a real problem and provides valuable information? In my judgement, it makes a lot of sense that Mozilla would use GA. I want them to use it because I believe in their mission, and I'm sure in the balance of things, it helps them maintain a stronger position as an organization.
  - throwthrwo 11y ago
    The solution is to use a tracking library. The library should be hosted on your own server, and should not phone home.
  - teddyh 11y ago
    One obvious and easy alternative to Google Analytics is Piwik. You host it yourself. https://piwik.org/ https://piwik.org/
  - throwaway425 11y ago
    >What is your suggestion, that they should abandon all analytics Ideally, yes. Or at the very least don't use Google for it. Use something like Pwiki instead. Or perhaps try actually allowing your users to decide what if any information they feel comfortable sharing with you. There are other non-profits like the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive whose websites still somehow manage to function despite not triggering any of the multitude of filter rules that plugins like uBlock ship with.
    - magicalist 11y ago
      uBlock blocks Piwik, self-hosted or not.
      - cptmashek 11y ago

callahad 11y ago

Mozilla has an enterprise agreement with Google that limits what data is collected through GA and how it can be used. Quote: 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 [...] and don't do any cross-domain cookies within Google Analytics. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1122305#c8 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1122305#c8

throwaway425 11y ago
If it's on Google's servers, then clearly Mozilla employees aren't the only ones with access to it, and the anonymization he's referring to is mere IP address anonymization, where the last octet of an IPv4 address is zeroed. The viability of browser fingerprinting as demonstrated by the EFF's Panopticlick shows cookies, cross-domain or otherwise, are no longer the only viable means to persistently tracking users.
- throwawayaway 11y ago
  Google obviously have systems in place to allow employee access for absolute emergencies - but alarmed in case of unauthorised access. in any case, the analytics data is anonymised and as such cannot be used to identify you. google goes to huge lengths anonymising data to aggregate you as a user into groups of millions for advertisers to bid on, you are simply not a big enough fish for special treatment. edit: an explanation for downvoting is customary.
  - dangrossman 11y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but... > google goes to huge lengths anonymising data to aggregate you as a user into groups of millions for advertisers to bid on, you are simply not a big enough fish for special treatment You're mixing different products and people here. That may be true of Google Analytics data (I don't know either way), but it's not true for their advertising services. Google purposely tracks individual people in a non-anonymous way in order to sell remarketing products, to e.g. show a banner of items currently in your Amazon shopping cart alongside an article you're reading at CNN through their AdSense/DoubleClick platforms.

mbrubeck 11y ago

And in case anyone is wondering, turning on Firefox's experimental Tracking Protection feature does block Google Analytics on Mozilla's own web site.