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Removing registration on Hello servers and WebRTC altogether is not stupid if you give a shit about your privacy, look at the leaks WebRTC provides, local IPs w

Removing registration on Hello servers and WebRTC altogether is not stupid if you give a shit about your privacy, look at the leaks WebRTC provides, local IPs which are great for fingerprinting, real IPs from behind VPN, etc. It's one big gaping privacy nightmare so far, so it's pretty reasonable to have it disabled, until this gets sorted out at least. Fortunately it can be toggled off in about:config easily. Set loop.enabled = false to disable hello, set media.peerconnection.enabled = false to disable WebRTC. If you don't want pocket, set browser.pocket.enabled = false. You can even make yourself one big user.js file to fix the bad ideas that have been added to Firefox lately. Mozilla still has a good thing going for them, and that is user choice. However stupid the defaults get.

mhurron 11y ago
It is getting annoying to have to go into about:config with every release to turn things I don't want off. Off should be default. Let those that want to use these features turn them on if they want. Or better yet, ship a damn extension.
- ultramancool 11y ago
  It's a real pain, but they want the less sophisticated users to be able to take advantage of all the latest stuff and if Chrome or IE is shipping with it enabled, they have to compete. Well, that explains WebRTC at least. As for the other stuff... I'm a Pocket user, but I have no idea why that needed to be integrated into the browser, seems like an insane decision to me. I hope they got a good pay day out of that. Same as the history based advertising tiles. Sure, it's checked locally, it still seems creepy and annoying... but again, browser.newtabpage.enhanced = false. Unless we lose this level of user choice, I don't see a better alternative. It would be nice if someone would ship some tool to automatically update a user.js file, however, I think many of us have different opinions about what feature we do and do not want enabled in our browsers.
  - mhurron 11y ago
    Off by default lets everyone choose to turn it on if they're interested. It also might clue in Mozillas devs that if they want people to turn it on, a setting in about:config isn't the only place you should be putting the button. Off by default is neither removing user choice, nor is it preventing Mozilla from saying they ship with feature X. It is the right way to present it.
    - ultramancool 11y ago
      > Off by default lets everyone choose to turn it on if they're interested. It lets more sophisticated users choose. Less sophisticated users however will more likely switch to a different browser the moment a site doesn't work before poking through settings. I think a better way than a separate setting would be to go in the direction of many software firewalls and present it to the user as a choice when an application requests it as many browsers currently do with the location APIs. This would provide individual domain-level control over what permissions sites are granted by you. I don't know why this sort of policy seems to be restricted only to the location APIs...
      - mmcru 11y ago
        are there any popular sites that rely on Hello or Pocket to function?
    - greiskul 11y ago
      Off by default is simply off for 99% of users.
  - mlinksva 11y ago
    Mozilla got $0 from Pocket. Mindboggling. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885360
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Well, they kinda got money, in a different way: Before, mozilla was implementing their own pocket competitor. Switching to pocket, and existing solution, allowed them to save money.
- Animats 11y ago
  Right. It's like the "just hit delete" line from spammers, and the invisible "x" boxes to reject "shared" posts in Facebook. Firefox doesn't even predefine some of the things in "about:config" that need to be set to turn off some of these undesirable features. There's IceCat, a GNU fork of Firefox without all the proprietary extensions.[1] It may start getting more traction as Mozilla puts more junk in the browser. [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
- Manishearth 11y ago
  You don't have to. Drag it off using the customize button. These things are lazy loaded and wont run until you turn them on. No footprint when they're off the UI (minimal footprint when they are on)
pjc50 11y ago
Does Firefox Hello do registration if you never click the Hello button in a particular session?
- Manishearth 11y ago
  Hello does nothing until clicked
TD-Linux 11y ago
I agree with a lot of this, but not turning off WebRTC in general. Certainly you should turn it off (or force TURN only) if you're trying to hide your IP behind a VPN. But IPv6 already causes you to lose the same amount of privacy as exposing your IPv4 address behind a NAT, so it seems somewhat of a lost cause. I still think WebRTC enabling peer to peer connections is better than running all of your data through a third party server.
- ultramancool 11y ago
  > But IPv6 already causes you to lose the same amount of privacy as exposing your IPv4 address behind a NAT, so it seems somewhat of a lost cause. Extremely few people have active IPv6, it seems unlikely to catch on now. In addition to that, IPv6 privacy extensions may allow a solution to this problem for many users, but if their link local IPs are also published that may lead to further trouble, depending on configuration. Remember though, this leaks all interface IPs, I have many virtual machines installed with their own network adapters added to my system, VPN adapters, etc which also leaks data as all of those adapters will have v6LL IPs on them even if they're not in use. Additionally, this issue is already actively being used for fingerprinting. Not some exploit of tomorrow. There was a New York Times advertiser caught doing it a few days ago. > I still think WebRTC enabling peer to peer connections is better than running all of your data through a third party server. Yeah, which is why I encourage disabling it completely. Until either they fix the privacy issues or the value of using some WebRTC application appears to trump them to you.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - TD-Linux 11y ago
    >Extremely few people have active IPv6, it seems unlikely to catch on now. Except that over 20% of the United States has IPv6 connectivity. In fact, you might be using it without knowing (most mobile providers have it now, in fact some use IPv6->IPv4 translation methods) [1]. >Remember though, this leaks all interface IPs Does it? Maybe you should file a bug so that only routable interfaces and non-LL IPs are used. This does seem like a problem. [1] https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...

mhurron 11y ago

It is getting annoying to have to go into about:config with every release to turn things I don't want off. Off should be default. Let those that want to use these features turn them on if they want. Or better yet, ship a damn extension.

ultramancool 11y ago
It's a real pain, but they want the less sophisticated users to be able to take advantage of all the latest stuff and if Chrome or IE is shipping with it enabled, they have to compete. Well, that explains WebRTC at least. As for the other stuff... I'm a Pocket user, but I have no idea why that needed to be integrated into the browser, seems like an insane decision to me. I hope they got a good pay day out of that. Same as the history based advertising tiles. Sure, it's checked locally, it still seems creepy and annoying... but again, browser.newtabpage.enhanced = false. Unless we lose this level of user choice, I don't see a better alternative. It would be nice if someone would ship some tool to automatically update a user.js file, however, I think many of us have different opinions about what feature we do and do not want enabled in our browsers.
- mhurron 11y ago
  Off by default lets everyone choose to turn it on if they're interested. It also might clue in Mozillas devs that if they want people to turn it on, a setting in about:config isn't the only place you should be putting the button. Off by default is neither removing user choice, nor is it preventing Mozilla from saying they ship with feature X. It is the right way to present it.
  - ultramancool 11y ago
    > Off by default lets everyone choose to turn it on if they're interested. It lets more sophisticated users choose. Less sophisticated users however will more likely switch to a different browser the moment a site doesn't work before poking through settings. I think a better way than a separate setting would be to go in the direction of many software firewalls and present it to the user as a choice when an application requests it as many browsers currently do with the location APIs. This would provide individual domain-level control over what permissions sites are granted by you. I don't know why this sort of policy seems to be restricted only to the location APIs...
    - mmcru 11y ago
      are there any popular sites that rely on Hello or Pocket to function?
  - greiskul 11y ago
    Off by default is simply off for 99% of users.
- mlinksva 11y ago
  Mozilla got $0 from Pocket. Mindboggling. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885360
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Well, they kinda got money, in a different way: Before, mozilla was implementing their own pocket competitor. Switching to pocket, and existing solution, allowed them to save money.
Animats 11y ago
Right. It's like the "just hit delete" line from spammers, and the invisible "x" boxes to reject "shared" posts in Facebook. Firefox doesn't even predefine some of the things in "about:config" that need to be set to turn off some of these undesirable features. There's IceCat, a GNU fork of Firefox without all the proprietary extensions.[1] It may start getting more traction as Mozilla puts more junk in the browser. [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/ http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
Manishearth 11y ago
You don't have to. Drag it off using the customize button. These things are lazy loaded and wont run until you turn them on. No footprint when they're off the UI (minimal footprint when they are on)

pjc50 11y ago

Does Firefox Hello do registration if you never click the Hello button in a particular session?

Manishearth 11y ago
Hello does nothing until clicked

TD-Linux 11y ago

I agree with a lot of this, but not turning off WebRTC in general. Certainly you should turn it off (or force TURN only) if you're trying to hide your IP behind a VPN. But IPv6 already causes you to lose the same amount of privacy as exposing your IPv4 address behind a NAT, so it seems somewhat of a lost cause. I still think WebRTC enabling peer to peer connections is better than running all of your data through a third party server.

ultramancool 11y ago
> But IPv6 already causes you to lose the same amount of privacy as exposing your IPv4 address behind a NAT, so it seems somewhat of a lost cause. Extremely few people have active IPv6, it seems unlikely to catch on now. In addition to that, IPv6 privacy extensions may allow a solution to this problem for many users, but if their link local IPs are also published that may lead to further trouble, depending on configuration. Remember though, this leaks all interface IPs, I have many virtual machines installed with their own network adapters added to my system, VPN adapters, etc which also leaks data as all of those adapters will have v6LL IPs on them even if they're not in use. Additionally, this issue is already actively being used for fingerprinting. Not some exploit of tomorrow. There was a New York Times advertiser caught doing it a few days ago. > I still think WebRTC enabling peer to peer connections is better than running all of your data through a third party server. Yeah, which is why I encourage disabling it completely. Until either they fix the privacy issues or the value of using some WebRTC application appears to trump them to you.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- TD-Linux 11y ago
  >Extremely few people have active IPv6, it seems unlikely to catch on now. Except that over 20% of the United States has IPv6 connectivity. In fact, you might be using it without knowing (most mobile providers have it now, in fact some use IPv6->IPv4 translation methods) [1]. >Remember though, this leaks all interface IPs Does it? Maybe you should file a bug so that only routable interfaces and non-LL IPs are used. This does seem like a problem. [1] https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-...