10 ms·

Stop Firefox leaking data about you

180 points by amq 11y ago

wodenokoto 11y ago
While visiting google every 30 minutes or so is a way of leaking, you aren't leaking much more than ip and the fact that this up is in Firefox. Isn't reader an offline functionality?
- pdkl95 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis You're leaking when your computer is on/active, with fine granularity. Pulling out reasonable estimation of your daily schedule from that data is easy.
- TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
  You're missing that any blacklist hits are rechecked against Google. So it leaks a heartbeat, and any hits against the blacklist.
  - wodenokoto 11y ago
    Is that new? Back when they started implementing they were saying that the did it as privately as possible, so that google couldn't track your browsing. It seems unnessecary. You do t get hits very often, so they could just redownload the entire list when there is a hit if they feel like double checking.
zbraniecki 11y ago
It would be awesome to turn it into an extension that makes it a single toggle.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  I wouldn't use it since it: - Disables the malware and phishing lists/warnings. - Disables HTML5-video DRM (even if this has nothing to do with leaking data). - Geo location already brings up a popup (and thus disabling it seems petty).
  - toxican 11y ago
    So we need a plugin where you can individually toggle each and every thing. (Just kidding)
    - LinuxBender 11y ago
      configuration mania is the name of it. It is missing a couple things, but most mentioned here are options.
  - pmontra 11y ago
    I never saw a warning for malware and phishing in the browser. I do receive phishing emails obviously, but they are easy to spot. I read mail with Thunderbird and sometimes I check the source just to see which strange URLs they're using this time :-) If you read mail in the browser maybe disabling those checks is not wise. Agreed. Disabling HTML5 video DRM could be annoying and geolocation is solved by the popup, as you say.
  - ljk 11y ago
    Aside from the things you listed, it's ok to disable the other things?
    - Someone1234 11y ago
      Maybe. Both several of the other things can be disabled via the normal settings UI, so disabling them via about:config seems unnecessarily indirect.
  - _lce0 11y ago
    >* - Disables HTML5-video DRM (even if this has nothing to do with leaking data).* I would rather live in a browser without video support, than with DRM
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Mozilla provides EME-free builds of Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534096
- tomc1985 11y ago
  So how about a checkbox for each setting?
- pseud 11y ago
  It could do with some updates (e.g. Pocket is missing), but most of these are set automatically (and can be toggled on/off en masse) by TinFoil: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/ https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil
salibhai 11y ago
Seems like a bad idea turning off phishing notifications and browser warnings http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.safebrowsing.enabled http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.safebrowsing.enabled Firefox 2.0 incorporates the Google Safe Browsing extension in its own Phishing Protection feature to detect and warn users of phishy web sites.
- cremno 11y ago
  I think using a blocker extension like uBlock Origin restores (at least partially) this functionality without involving Google.
  - scott_karana 11y ago
    Right, but then you're just changing who you leak data to, you're not stopping the leak. EDIT: wow, downvotes? Getting a list from EasyList is just as much a leak as getting a list from Google. Someone has your IP either way.
    - cremno 11y ago
      Yeah. I personally don't care if something is from Google but other people do. I'm quite surprised this stupid list that doesn't even explain what each setting actually does is on page 1. (Edit: Oh, it seems it was updated in the meantime.)
    - glass- 11y ago
      > Getting a list from EasyList is just as much a leak as getting a list from Google. Someone has your IP either way. The problem with SafeBrowsing isn't downloading the list, it's that it sends data back to Google if it finds a match. Malware lists with AdBlock plugins don't do this.
      - scott_karana 11y ago
        My understanding was that Google's malware list is a two prong approach: 1: An all-in-one lump download of blacklists 2: Optionally, "Enhanced" also sends hashed URLs to Google in case specific sub-pages aren't on the list, etc Easylist, of course, only offers #1. Firefox, by default, uses both, which is less private, but seemingly still configurable to use only #1. Citations: http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/faq.html http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/faq.html https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/firefox3_privacy_faq https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/firefox3_privacy... http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=124878.0 http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=124878.0
gruez 11y ago
How exactly does reader.parse-on-load.enabled leak privacy? Isn't everything parsed locally?
- scott_karana 11y ago
  I too am curious about this one.
tux 11y ago
Don't forget about this; "media.peerconnection.enabled = false" WebRTC leaks IP when you use TOR/VPN, test it with ipleak.net "beacon.enabled = false" Blocks https://w3c.github.io/beacon/ https://w3c.github.io/beacon/ analytics. Also recommend using plugins; uBlock, NoScript if you use VPN.
- DiThi 11y ago
  How can WebGL leak your IP? Did you confuse it with WebRTC?
  - tux 11y ago
    Yes sorry ^_^ I meant WebRTC :) Edited!
- x0x0 11y ago
  That is really disappointing. Particularly for firefox with their supposed focus on privacy, to enable a service that leaks ip when I run a vpn, contradicting the plain intention of the user, shocks me.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > That is really disappointing. Particularly for firefox with their supposed focus on privacy, to enable a service that leaks ip when I run a vpn, contradicting the plain intention of the user, shocks me. Firefox doesn't necessarily know that you're using a VPN, so it's not really contradicting "plain intention". The problem is the way that WebRTC works; it has to have access to this information in order to function. The real issue is that there should be a prompt guarding this information, the way there is when a website requests your location. Hopefully this can be fixed. Also, for what it's worth, Firefox lets you disable this, but I don't think Chrome/Chromium let you disable it at all: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF-yoG-Y https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF-...
    - x0x0 11y ago
MichaelCrawford 11y ago
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com 127.0.0.1 www.hosted-pixel.com The political candidates are the worst.
avian 11y ago
Another thing worth noting is that if you are using Debian-rebranded Firefox (Iceweasel), you have a very unique user agent that is easy to track. There is a bug opened (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=748897 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=748897), but as far as I know, no simple solution exists yet. You can change the user agent with an extension to keep it identical with the most popular Firefox version, but then you have to manually keep it up-to-date.
- RolloTom 11y ago
  If you don't want edit manually user agent, oscpu and platform in "about:config" then blender can do it for you: https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/blender-1/ https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/blender-1/ EDIT: seems that this extension need to be updated, sorry... But I don't know, if you allow javascript maybe you will leak your real user agent? I like to switch between iceweasel and seamonkey, and I'm "proud" of my different and unique user agent :) Speaking of privacy, actually I'm more concerned about referer, third-party sites, content delivery networks and so on.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    > But I don't know, if you allow javascript maybe you will leak your real user agent? The user-agent provided to JavaScript is the same one sent via HTTP.
    - RolloTom 11y ago
      Good to know, thank you!
chimeracoder 11y ago
Don't forget about WebRTC: https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc-ips https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc-ips If you have WebRTC enabled, any website can determine both your local IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.1) and your globally-addressable IP address. The combination of these is essentially unique, and can even be better than cookie tracking or browser fingerprinting. It's possible to disable WebRTC in Firefox, but AFAIK not in Chrome/Chromium[0]. As for Firefox Hello and Pocket integration, you can turn these off if you want, but I'm 99% certain that they don't actually send any data about you unless you actually use them. [0] https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF-yoG-Y https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF-...
- SapphireSun 11y ago
  You're really not going to like IPv6 are you?
dao- 11y ago
Seems like lots of FUD; how do Firefox Hello, Pocket and Geolocation "leak data about you" if you don't explicitly use them? How do DRM and Reader mode leak data at all? Also, Safe Browsing, DRM, Search suggestions, Telemetry and Health report can be disabled in the preferences UI. Don't need sensationalist about:config protips for that.
- amq 11y ago
  Many of it can be found in Firefox Preferences, but providing a list of about:config entries seems more convenient to me than describing a way of how to disable things in menus, which are in different languages and change with time.
- RexRollman 11y ago
  I would prefer it if they stripped out Hello and Pocket. They don't need to be there and their inclusion makes me wonder whay Mozilla's Firefox goals really are.
  - brador 11y ago
    Mozilla is reliant on the money integrations bring. The search engine integration alone brings in millions.
    - madez 11y ago
      That's the crux of this situation. Mozilla needs money. Unless they find another way to finance themselves, they will continue selling user data, directly or indirectly. This will not change however we cry out.
      - chimeracoder 11y ago
        > Mozilla needs money. Unless they find another way to finance themselves, Firefox Hello and Pocket are not attempts to "sell user data". In the case of the latter, Mozilla isn't even getting paid by Pocket, as they have said numerous times. But yes, Mozilla is dependent on money, like all corporations. If you want to ensure that their funding sources are never in conflict with what users want, there's a very easy solution to that: https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/contribute/givenow-seq https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/contribute/givenow-seq (If every Firefox user gave $2, they wouldn't need their partnerships with Yahoo/Google for search integration, which has been their primary funding source for years).
garrettr_ 11y ago
Please for the love of god do not disable the Google SafeBrowsing preferences. SafeBrowsing protects you from a lot of malicious websites, and does not leak much information to Google. For most people the security benefits of SafeBrowsing far outweigh the privacy concerns. It is important to remember that malicious websites and malware in general may negatively impact your security and privacy in extremely harmful ways (malware compromises PII, website credentials, financial information, uses webcam and microphone to photograph/film/record you from blackmail/revenge porn purposes, ...) For context, please see these relevant Mozilla bugs about SafeBrowsing privacy concerns: [0], [1]. tl;dr Firefox must set a cookie for SafeBrowsing, but it uses a separate cookie jar for SafeBrowsing so Google cannot tie the Safebrowsing activity to anything else you do related to Google or their services (which is the biggest concern here). They can learn a limited profile of your browsing activity, along the lines of "Random user x often uses their browser between 9am and 5pm on M-F". The Safebrowsing implementation is specifically designed to be privacy-preserving. [2] It uses a Bloom filter to implement fast lookups in a minimally sized hash table of known malicious URL's. The only time a full URL (actually various hashes of multiple prefixes of the full URL, including the full URL) that you browse it sent to Google is when a prefix of it collides with a known malicious URL, in which case the URL must be sent to Google to resolve the question of whether the URL you are trying to visit is actually malicious or just a false positive from the Bloom Filter. Yes, the hashes are unsalted so it would be possible for Google to check if you were trying visit some pre-determined URL ("were they trying to visit www.thoughtcrime.org?") but only if it collided with a known malicious URL. It would be helpful to know what the average rates of collisions and false positives are to get a sense of how much of an average user's browsing history is leaked to Google through Safe Browsing - can anybody from Google comment? [0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255 [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=897516 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=897516 [2]: https://code.google.com/p/google-safe-browsing/wiki/SafeBrowsingDesign https://code.google.com/p/google-safe-browsing/wiki/SafeBrow...
- dec0dedab0de 11y ago
  Please for the love of god do not disable the Google SafeBrowsing preferences. SafeBrowsing protects you from a lot of malicious websites, and does not leak much information to Google. For most people the security benefits of SafeBrowsing far outweigh the privacy concerns. I would never disable it for my mom, or any non technical friends. But I would hope the majority of HN users are pretty good at spotting, and steering clear of malicious websites.
Animats 11y ago
Mozilla has an annoying pattern of removing items from the user preferences to "avoid user confusion", an excuse companies often use when deceiving customers. (Example: Microsoft dropping the "RT" designation. [1]) "Accept/reject third-party cookies", for example, doesn't always appear in the preferences any more. Mozilla's new "social" features don't have a turn-off option in the Preferences. You can disable them by going to "about:config", creating the tag "social.enabled" (it doesn't even exist by default) and it to False. Mozilla provides no easy way to do that. This add-on takes care of those convenient little omissions. Obviously, Mozilla is doing all this to tie users to their mothership and make it harder for them to leave. It's not like users were crying out for "Pocket" integration in the browser. [1] http://www.winbeta.org/news/surface-2-no-longer-has-rt-branding-attempt-avoid-customer-confusion http://www.winbeta.org/news/surface-2-no-longer-has-rt-brand...
- rcthompson 11y ago
  Mozilla is "obviously" trying to lock in their users with these tactics? There are Pocket add-ons for every browser and OS. How does Pocket integration represent lock-in? You can certainly argue that these additions are bad for users, but I don't see anything in that list that represents an attempt at lock-in.
- ep103 11y ago
  Yeah, Google never does this with their interfaces (/sarcasm)
  - driverdan 11y ago
    OP said nothing about Google. What Google does isn't necessarily relevant to what Mozilla does.
ossreality 11y ago
I hate that this exists.
fapjacks 11y ago
Wow. What the fuck, Mozilla? Here I was, really hopeful that you were actually serious about honoring user desire for privacy.
- m3Lith 11y ago
  Did you even check out the link? There is nothing sensational or exceptional about collecting/sending basic user data when using certain features, most of which can be easily disabled/not used.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    "Easily disabled" for example like tweaking about:config? Yeah, that's super easy and accessible for the average user!
    - gerv 11y ago
      The fact that he only lists the about:config way doesn't mean that this is the only way to do it. Many of these options have GUI prefs.
erikb 11y ago
I don't know but the DRM stuff is actually cool with me. I guess you can't convince the lawyers of nearly all media to turn on DRM for a few decades to come. But I still want to use things like Netflix. With the new DRM stuff you can at least have it running on a Linux instead of a Windows system. Step by step in the right direction, I'd say.
cedricbonhomme 11y ago
Maybe I'll update my Firefox configuration: https://bitbucket.org/snippets/cedricbonhomme/cbj6/firefox-configuration https://bitbucket.org/snippets/cedricbonhomme/cbj6/firefox-c...
pseud 11y ago
Most of these are enabled automatically with Tinfoil: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/ https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil
jaxb 11y ago
I guess there is a similar howto on various opt-out settings in Google account itself? https://history.google.com/history/ https://history.google.com/history/ and https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements etc.?
amq 11y ago
Important changes: - Reader mode is confirmed not leaking data. No need to disable it. - There is a way to stop leaking the browser history to Google while keeping Safe Browsing. * both tested using Fiddler
aorth 11y ago
Recommends turning on Firefox's built-in tracking protection[0] (which matured in Firefox 37 or so), but has anyone compared this to uBlock? I guess the first thing to measure would be number of trackers blocked, but then of course memory and CPU usage would be interesting as well. uBlock has done this comparison[1] against AdBlock Plus, Disconnect, etc, so it would be very interesting... [0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-fir... [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/#performance https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/#performance

180 points by amq 11y ago

While visiting google every 30 minutes or so is a way of leaking, you aren't leaking much more than ip and the fact that this up is in Firefox. Isn't reader an offline functionality?

pdkl95 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis You're leaking when your computer is on/active, with fine granularity. Pulling out reasonable estimation of your daily schedule from that data is easy.
TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
You're missing that any blacklist hits are rechecked against Google. So it leaks a heartbeat, and any hits against the blacklist.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  Is that new? Back when they started implementing they were saying that the did it as privately as possible, so that google couldn't track your browsing. It seems unnessecary. You do t get hits very often, so they could just redownload the entire list when there is a hit if they feel like double checking.

zbraniecki 11y ago

It would be awesome to turn it into an extension that makes it a single toggle.

Someone1234 11y ago
I wouldn't use it since it: - Disables the malware and phishing lists/warnings. - Disables HTML5-video DRM (even if this has nothing to do with leaking data). - Geo location already brings up a popup (and thus disabling it seems petty).
- toxican 11y ago
  So we need a plugin where you can individually toggle each and every thing. (Just kidding)
  - LinuxBender 11y ago
    configuration mania is the name of it. It is missing a couple things, but most mentioned here are options.
- pmontra 11y ago
  I never saw a warning for malware and phishing in the browser. I do receive phishing emails obviously, but they are easy to spot. I read mail with Thunderbird and sometimes I check the source just to see which strange URLs they're using this time :-) If you read mail in the browser maybe disabling those checks is not wise. Agreed. Disabling HTML5 video DRM could be annoying and geolocation is solved by the popup, as you say.
- ljk 11y ago
  Aside from the things you listed, it's ok to disable the other things?
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    Maybe. Both several of the other things can be disabled via the normal settings UI, so disabling them via about:config seems unnecessarily indirect.
- _lce0 11y ago
  >* - Disables HTML5-video DRM (even if this has nothing to do with leaking data).* I would rather live in a browser without video support, than with DRM
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Mozilla provides EME-free builds of Firefox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534096
tomc1985 11y ago
So how about a checkbox for each setting?
pseud 11y ago
It could do with some updates (e.g. Pocket is missing), but most of these are set automatically (and can be toggled on/off en masse) by TinFoil: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/ https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil

salibhai 11y ago

Seems like a bad idea turning off phishing notifications and browser warnings http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.safebrowsing.enabled http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.safebrowsing.enabled Firefox 2.0 incorporates the Google Safe Browsing extension in its own Phishing Protection feature to detect and warn users of phishy web sites.

cremno 11y ago
I think using a blocker extension like uBlock Origin restores (at least partially) this functionality without involving Google.
- scott_karana 11y ago
  Right, but then you're just changing who you leak data to, you're not stopping the leak. EDIT: wow, downvotes? Getting a list from EasyList is just as much a leak as getting a list from Google. Someone has your IP either way.
  - cremno 11y ago
    Yeah. I personally don't care if something is from Google but other people do. I'm quite surprised this stupid list that doesn't even explain what each setting actually does is on page 1. (Edit: Oh, it seems it was updated in the meantime.)
  - glass- 11y ago
    > Getting a list from EasyList is just as much a leak as getting a list from Google. Someone has your IP either way. The problem with SafeBrowsing isn't downloading the list, it's that it sends data back to Google if it finds a match. Malware lists with AdBlock plugins don't do this.
    - scott_karana 11y ago
      My understanding was that Google's malware list is a two prong approach: 1: An all-in-one lump download of blacklists 2: Optionally, "Enhanced" also sends hashed URLs to Google in case specific sub-pages aren't on the list, etc Easylist, of course, only offers #1. Firefox, by default, uses both, which is less private, but seemingly still configurable to use only #1. Citations: http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/faq.html http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/faq.html https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/firefox3_privacy_faq https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/firefox3_privacy... http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=124878.0 http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=124878.0

gruez 11y ago

How exactly does reader.parse-on-load.enabled leak privacy? Isn't everything parsed locally?

scott_karana 11y ago
I too am curious about this one.

tux 11y ago

Don't forget about this; "media.peerconnection.enabled = false" WebRTC leaks IP when you use TOR/VPN, test it with ipleak.net "beacon.enabled = false" Blocks https://w3c.github.io/beacon/ https://w3c.github.io/beacon/ analytics. Also recommend using plugins; uBlock, NoScript if you use VPN.

DiThi 11y ago
How can WebGL leak your IP? Did you confuse it with WebRTC?
- tux 11y ago
  Yes sorry ^_^ I meant WebRTC :) Edited!
x0x0 11y ago
That is really disappointing. Particularly for firefox with their supposed focus on privacy, to enable a service that leaks ip when I run a vpn, contradicting the plain intention of the user, shocks me.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > That is really disappointing. Particularly for firefox with their supposed focus on privacy, to enable a service that leaks ip when I run a vpn, contradicting the plain intention of the user, shocks me. Firefox doesn't necessarily know that you're using a VPN, so it's not really contradicting "plain intention". The problem is the way that WebRTC works; it has to have access to this information in order to function. The real issue is that there should be a prompt guarding this information, the way there is when a website requests your location. Hopefully this can be fixed. Also, for what it's worth, Firefox lets you disable this, but I don't think Chrome/Chromium let you disable it at all: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF-yoG-Y https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF-...
  - x0x0 11y ago

MichaelCrawford 11y ago

127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com 127.0.0.1 www.hosted-pixel.com The political candidates are the worst.

avian 11y ago

Another thing worth noting is that if you are using Debian-rebranded Firefox (Iceweasel), you have a very unique user agent that is easy to track. There is a bug opened (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=748897 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=748897), but as far as I know, no simple solution exists yet. You can change the user agent with an extension to keep it identical with the most popular Firefox version, but then you have to manually keep it up-to-date.

RolloTom 11y ago
If you don't want edit manually user agent, oscpu and platform in "about:config" then blender can do it for you: https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/blender-1/ https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/blender-1/ EDIT: seems that this extension need to be updated, sorry... But I don't know, if you allow javascript maybe you will leak your real user agent? I like to switch between iceweasel and seamonkey, and I'm "proud" of my different and unique user agent :) Speaking of privacy, actually I'm more concerned about referer, third-party sites, content delivery networks and so on.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  > But I don't know, if you allow javascript maybe you will leak your real user agent? The user-agent provided to JavaScript is the same one sent via HTTP.
  - RolloTom 11y ago
    Good to know, thank you!

chimeracoder 11y ago

Don't forget about WebRTC: https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc-ips https://github.com/diafygi/webrtc-ips If you have WebRTC enabled, any website can determine both your local IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.1) and your globally-addressable IP address. The combination of these is essentially unique, and can even be better than cookie tracking or browser fingerprinting. It's possible to disable WebRTC in Firefox, but AFAIK not in Chrome/Chromium[0]. As for Firefox Hello and Pocket integration, you can turn these off if you want, but I'm 99% certain that they don't actually send any data about you unless you actually use them. [0] https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF-yoG-Y https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/gJ8HF-...

SapphireSun 11y ago
You're really not going to like IPv6 are you?

dao- 11y ago

Seems like lots of FUD; how do Firefox Hello, Pocket and Geolocation "leak data about you" if you don't explicitly use them? How do DRM and Reader mode leak data at all? Also, Safe Browsing, DRM, Search suggestions, Telemetry and Health report can be disabled in the preferences UI. Don't need sensationalist about:config protips for that.

amq 11y ago
Many of it can be found in Firefox Preferences, but providing a list of about:config entries seems more convenient to me than describing a way of how to disable things in menus, which are in different languages and change with time.
RexRollman 11y ago
I would prefer it if they stripped out Hello and Pocket. They don't need to be there and their inclusion makes me wonder whay Mozilla's Firefox goals really are.
- brador 11y ago
  Mozilla is reliant on the money integrations bring. The search engine integration alone brings in millions.
  - madez 11y ago
    That's the crux of this situation. Mozilla needs money. Unless they find another way to finance themselves, they will continue selling user data, directly or indirectly. This will not change however we cry out.
    - chimeracoder 11y ago
      > Mozilla needs money. Unless they find another way to finance themselves, Firefox Hello and Pocket are not attempts to "sell user data". In the case of the latter, Mozilla isn't even getting paid by Pocket, as they have said numerous times. But yes, Mozilla is dependent on money, like all corporations. If you want to ensure that their funding sources are never in conflict with what users want, there's a very easy solution to that: https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/contribute/givenow-seq https://sendto.mozilla.org/page/contribute/givenow-seq (If every Firefox user gave $2, they wouldn't need their partnerships with Yahoo/Google for search integration, which has been their primary funding source for years).

garrettr_ 11y ago

Please for the love of god do not disable the Google SafeBrowsing preferences. SafeBrowsing protects you from a lot of malicious websites, and does not leak much information to Google. For most people the security benefits of SafeBrowsing far outweigh the privacy concerns. It is important to remember that malicious websites and malware in general may negatively impact your security and privacy in extremely harmful ways (malware compromises PII, website credentials, financial information, uses webcam and microphone to photograph/film/record you from blackmail/revenge porn purposes, ...) For context, please see these relevant Mozilla bugs about SafeBrowsing privacy concerns: [0], [1]. tl;dr Firefox must set a cookie for SafeBrowsing, but it uses a separate cookie jar for SafeBrowsing so Google cannot tie the Safebrowsing activity to anything else you do related to Google or their services (which is the biggest concern here). They can learn a limited profile of your browsing activity, along the lines of "Random user x often uses their browser between 9am and 5pm on M-F". The Safebrowsing implementation is specifically designed to be privacy-preserving. [2] It uses a Bloom filter to implement fast lookups in a minimally sized hash table of known malicious URL's. The only time a full URL (actually various hashes of multiple prefixes of the full URL, including the full URL) that you browse it sent to Google is when a prefix of it collides with a known malicious URL, in which case the URL must be sent to Google to resolve the question of whether the URL you are trying to visit is actually malicious or just a false positive from the Bloom Filter. Yes, the hashes are unsalted so it would be possible for Google to check if you were trying visit some pre-determined URL ("were they trying to visit www.thoughtcrime.org?") but only if it collided with a known malicious URL. It would be helpful to know what the average rates of collisions and false positives are to get a sense of how much of an average user's browsing history is leaked to Google through Safe Browsing - can anybody from Google comment? [0]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255 [1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=897516 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=897516 [2]: https://code.google.com/p/google-safe-browsing/wiki/SafeBrowsingDesign https://code.google.com/p/google-safe-browsing/wiki/SafeBrow...

dec0dedab0de 11y ago
Please for the love of god do not disable the Google SafeBrowsing preferences. SafeBrowsing protects you from a lot of malicious websites, and does not leak much information to Google. For most people the security benefits of SafeBrowsing far outweigh the privacy concerns. I would never disable it for my mom, or any non technical friends. But I would hope the majority of HN users are pretty good at spotting, and steering clear of malicious websites.

Animats 11y ago

Mozilla has an annoying pattern of removing items from the user preferences to "avoid user confusion", an excuse companies often use when deceiving customers. (Example: Microsoft dropping the "RT" designation. [1]) "Accept/reject third-party cookies", for example, doesn't always appear in the preferences any more. Mozilla's new "social" features don't have a turn-off option in the Preferences. You can disable them by going to "about:config", creating the tag "social.enabled" (it doesn't even exist by default) and it to False. Mozilla provides no easy way to do that. This add-on takes care of those convenient little omissions. Obviously, Mozilla is doing all this to tie users to their mothership and make it harder for them to leave. It's not like users were crying out for "Pocket" integration in the browser. [1] http://www.winbeta.org/news/surface-2-no-longer-has-rt-branding-attempt-avoid-customer-confusion http://www.winbeta.org/news/surface-2-no-longer-has-rt-brand...

rcthompson 11y ago
Mozilla is "obviously" trying to lock in their users with these tactics? There are Pocket add-ons for every browser and OS. How does Pocket integration represent lock-in? You can certainly argue that these additions are bad for users, but I don't see anything in that list that represents an attempt at lock-in.
ep103 11y ago
Yeah, Google never does this with their interfaces (/sarcasm)
- driverdan 11y ago
  OP said nothing about Google. What Google does isn't necessarily relevant to what Mozilla does.

ossreality 11y ago

I hate that this exists.

fapjacks 11y ago

Wow. What the fuck, Mozilla? Here I was, really hopeful that you were actually serious about honoring user desire for privacy.

m3Lith 11y ago
Did you even check out the link? There is nothing sensational or exceptional about collecting/sending basic user data when using certain features, most of which can be easily disabled/not used.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  "Easily disabled" for example like tweaking about:config? Yeah, that's super easy and accessible for the average user!
  - gerv 11y ago
    The fact that he only lists the about:config way doesn't mean that this is the only way to do it. Many of these options have GUI prefs.

erikb 11y ago

I don't know but the DRM stuff is actually cool with me. I guess you can't convince the lawyers of nearly all media to turn on DRM for a few decades to come. But I still want to use things like Netflix. With the new DRM stuff you can at least have it running on a Linux instead of a Windows system. Step by step in the right direction, I'd say.

cedricbonhomme 11y ago

Maybe I'll update my Firefox configuration: https://bitbucket.org/snippets/cedricbonhomme/cbj6/firefox-configuration https://bitbucket.org/snippets/cedricbonhomme/cbj6/firefox-c...

pseud 11y ago

Most of these are enabled automatically with Tinfoil: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tinfoil/ https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil https://github.com/cohjam/tinfoil

jaxb 11y ago

I guess there is a similar howto on various opt-out settings in Google account itself? https://history.google.com/history/ https://history.google.com/history/ and https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements etc.?

amq 11y ago

Important changes: - Reader mode is confirmed not leaking data. No need to disable it. - There is a way to stop leaking the browser history to Google while keeping Safe Browsing. * both tested using Fiddler

aorth 11y ago

Recommends turning on Firefox's built-in tracking protection[0] (which matured in Firefox 37 or so), but has anyone compared this to uBlock? I guess the first thing to measure would be number of trackers blocked, but then of course memory and CPU usage would be interesting as well. uBlock has done this comparison[1] against AdBlock Plus, Disconnect, etc, so it would be very interesting... [0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-firefox https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-fir... [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/#performance https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/#performance