
Changing Our Approach to Anti-Tracking - ronjouch
https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2018/08/30/changing-our-approach-to-anti-tracking/
======
kibwen
_> Blocking pop-up ads in the original Firefox release was the right move in
2004, because it didn’t just make Firefox users happier, it gave the
advertising platforms of the time a reason to care about their users’
experience._

Wow, I had completely forgotten about what a scourge pop-ups used to be, and
what a relief it was to finally be free of them. The fact that what used to be
such a prevalent scummy tactic could be completely abandoned due to pushback
from browser manufacturers gives me a tiny bit of hope that maybe pervasive
tracking isn't an irreparably permanent feature of the web after all.

~~~
ihuman
Too bad they've now been replaced popups that occur in the same window as the
website you're viewing. Is there a name for this new type of popup?

~~~
dblohm7
We're working on blocking those too. Feel free to install this addon to help
submit data on these:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/in-page-
pop-u...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/in-page-pop-up-
reporter/)

~~~
natch
Let me turn off Javascript more easily. And back on again easily. I usually
need it gone for like 5 seconds, and then I need it back on, each of which is
one key and one click in Safari and an entire journey to the moon and back in
Firefox.

~~~
NegativeLatency
It would be cool if I could enable js on a per site basis

~~~
Drdrdrq
One word: uMatrix. NoScript lacks control on per-site basis, but is still ok.

~~~
paulryanrogers
IIRC, Noscript had per-domain JS controls before Umatrix existed.

~~~
squarefoot
But lacked fine grained control, at least the last time I used it. With
uMatrix I can tell the browser to disable something
(cookies/script/frames/media etc.) here but keep it enabled else/everywhere
and the other way around. It gives the finest possible control but of course
requires some time to whitelist the good stuff on new pages. A minor annoyance
compared to the control it offers.

~~~
matheusmoreira
I wish it allowed for even finer control, though. What if it could prevent one
specific function from running? Or replace tracking functions with no-op ones?
Or hook into HTTP APIs in order to let you audit, modify or interrupt
communications?

~~~
Drdrdrq
I guess you could use GreaseMonkey for that, though I can't imagine how you
could keep track of everything. Might be useful for smallish modifications
though.

------
xfitm3
I’m a big fan of Mozilla, and I’m really glad to see them focusing on Firefox
instead of troubled projects like FirefoxOS.

While they are not immune from poor decisions I really believe they try to do
the right thing in the end. That’s more than I can say for many other
companies.

~~~
glogla
FirefoxOS was out last hope for good and accessible mobile operating system -
it was supposed to give people who can't afford iPhone something open, instead
of evil data-slurp that is Android.

Without it, billions of people in developing world are going to have every
every second of their lives snooped by Google.

It failed, but it was still a good idea.

~~~
alexkavon
Let’s not forget the upcoming mobile Purism OS coming with the Librem 5.[0]

I believe the development kit for apps is now available.

[0] [https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

~~~
guy98238710
Librem5 has iPhone class pricing. It's no alternative to FirefoxOS. I earn
decently, have mid-range need for security, and I won't buy iPhone nor
Librem5.

~~~
hegz
Its all open source so someone can get it running on a cheap android device if
they want.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Cheap android devices don't have free software drivers, and I thought some
connection between those drivers and Google is what holds back a free Android.

------
beat
I'm posting this from Firefox. I think this article, on top of other recent
efforts by Mozilla, is the final push to switch me from Chrome to Firefox. I
trust Mozilla a _lot_ more than I trust Google these days.

~~~
Someone1234
The thing that tipped it over for me was the Multi-Container Tabs[0] Mozilla
extension. Aside from being a fantastic privacy and security tool, it is also
wonderful for development.

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-
account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-
containers/)

~~~
Tomte
I stopped using them when I realized they can switch into a "Facebook"
container when I visit Facebook, bit they can't switch back out of it when I
subsequently visit another site.

This was a common feature request. Has it been implemented, yet?

~~~
floatingatoll
Seems high-risk to me: All Facebook needs to do is set up a redirector that
isn't at a domain considered "Facebook", and include a tracking ID in the
redirector URL, and they'll be able to try and de-anonymize your
non-"Facebook" container when your tracker-laden link opens in it.

------
TekMol
Uh oh, I just learned that Mozilla injects Google Analytics tracking code into
Firefox itself. When you go to about:addons, it sends tracking data to Googles
servers.

Is there a way to get rid of that? It seems to be not blocked by a default
umatrix for example.

I think we really need a browser by a more trustworthy party. Maybe Debian
could make a Firefox fork that is more user friendly in terms of privacy? Is
there a way for vote for this or sponsor such a development?

~~~
bopbop
Apparently it respects Do Not Track, according to some discussion above and at
[https://github.com/mozilla/addons-
frontend/issues/2785](https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785)

The link also seems to say you can block it in uMatrix, but it isn't by
default

~~~
TekMol
No, you cannot block it via umatrix or any other extension. If you read the
whole discussion you will see that this only was possible in the old extension
tech that Mozilla meanwhile replaced with webextension. And those can't.

They injected a non-removable external tracking system right into the browser
that they market as privacy focussed.

~~~
ColanR
Actually, if you read to the bottom of the discussion [0] you'll see that it
was fixed, and FF respects the Do Not Track setting.

In addition, they negotiated with google special terms for their analytics.
This is the description [1] and this is the resulting options they got [2].

[0] [https://github.com/mozilla/addons-
frontend/issues/2785#issue...](https://github.com/mozilla/addons-
frontend/issues/2785#issuecomment-315212909)

[1]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14)

[2]
[https://bug697436.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=73207...](https://bug697436.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=732070)

~~~
TekMol
It is _not_ fixed. You still cannot disable the tracking via an extension like
umatrix.

And no, I do not set the 'do not track' thing. Because that is one more bit of
data sent out. To _every_ website. Not just to Mozilla.

Actually more then a computer 'bit' by the way. What percentage of users use
the 'do not track' setting? Let's say 1%. Voila. Setting it is worth about 7
bits of data to identify you.

~~~
tonysdg
I don't mean to be rude, but if you're worried about the "do not track"
setting identifying, you honestly shouldn't be on the internet. Or you should
be using it like rms does [1] (scroll to "How I use the internet").

[1] [https://stallman.org/stallman-
computing.html](https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html)

------
bsdubernerd
I've been blocking 3rd-party cookies since a decade now. I have never
witnessed any website breaking. And I do regularly buy from online shops
(ebay, amazon, lots of others) _while_ blocking 3rd-party cookies.

I'd _really_ want to know which websites do break, and if they do, in which
fashion.

~~~
Mithriil
Do you use an add-on to block cookies? If not, how?

~~~
coolspot
I also recommend Cookie AutoDelete for firefox[1] and Chrome[2].

1 - [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-
autode...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/)

2 - [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cookie-
autodelete/...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cookie-
autodelete/fhcgjolkccmbidfldomjliifgaodjagh)

------
TekMol
This seems to be a blacklisting solution. Some third party code gets filtered.

I prefer a whitelisting solution. umatrix is a very elegant tool for this. You
can say

    
    
        On domain thisandthat.com allow scripts from domain
        soandso.com'
    

Or

    
    
       On domain funkycars.com allow images from
       domain carimageserver.com
    

That is exactly the level of whitelisting that feels logical to me.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/umatrix/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/umatrix/)

I wonder how closely Mozilla analyzes the addons they offer for download? Are
they as trustworthy as Firefox itself?

~~~
kemitche
Whitelisting while keeping every website moderately functional seems
impractical for the Mozilla team, which means the burden of choosing what to
allow falls on the end user.

While that's a great approach for privacy, the usability loss would probably
drive the average person away from Firefox. I think the listed approach is
likely best for the average user, but I think it would be nice to have an
option for a power user to turn on a whitelist-only mode. (One could argue
that "install an extension" is an appropriate "option" for the power user, but
as you mention, it's nicer to not need to rely on third party extensions)

~~~
394549
> Whitelisting while keeping every website moderately functional seems
> impractical for the Mozilla team, which means the burden of choosing what to
> allow falls on the end user.

I've used NoScript for a long time, and the hardest thing is knowing what the
domain is doing so I can decide what to allow. It's hard to tell the
difference between opaquely named ad-networks and opaquely named media player
providers.

It would be nice if someone could start compiling a database that

1\. groups together the domains used by different sites and services (e.g.
website.com and website-images.com) and

2\. includes a brief description of their purpose or business.

So, doubleclick.com and doubleclick.net could be grouped and easily identified
as an ad network, google tag manager is a tracker, etc.

I doubt such a list would take any more effort to maintain than the current
ad-blocker lists.

------
stormbrew
I'm not entirely sure why the solution to the tracking problem isn't seen as
simply scoping cookies to the domain of the top level page. I'm dubious that
there's any value to cross site cookies that _isn 't_ in service of tracking,
since oauth-style flows provide a better and more open mechanism for providing
cross- or multi-site login mechanisms anyways.

Is there some value I'm missing? Why blacklist this? I'd rather whitelist it.

------
javery
This post has third party JS in it from Google Analytics that looks to be
accepting a bunch of fairly unique looking parameters.

~~~
firloop
However, Mozilla has a special agreement with Google Analytics that ensures
all data is anonymized.

Some discussion which mentions that here: [https://github.com/mozilla/addons-
frontend/issues/2785](https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785)

~~~
TekMol
Jesus, that is not about Google Analytics on Mozillas websites but on the
about:addons page of Firefox. That is terrifying.

~~~
ptr_void
See also about:telemetry to see if anything enabled. If enabled, they are
sending a bunch of information with unique id. Even if disabled, the telemetry
is still always being gathered, just not sent.

~~~
lucb1e
> If enabled, they are sending a bunch of information with unique id.

That is not the issue. The issue is when they send Firefox user's data _to
google_ of all places.

------
SimeVidas
The new options that are available in Firefox Nightly:
[https://i.imgur.com/GMHGDvy.png](https://i.imgur.com/GMHGDvy.png)

------
alphabettsy
I’m sure the ad industry will find new ways, but the speed increase was pretty
big for me after adding a Pi-Hole.

~~~
dddddaviddddd
Main difference is that browser makers (Mozilla, Apple, Google for non-Google
ads) are becoming hostile to ads and tracking rather than trying to be
neutral.

~~~
M2Ys4U
Why is that a _bad_ thing?

~~~
dddddaviddddd
It's a good thing! Browser makers being more adversarial will limit the
ability of tracking and advertising to 'find new ways'

------
amelius
Good news. They should also refine their approach of "containers", and I've
listed some ideas here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16866086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16866086)

(perhaps their new approach comes close to these ideas)

~~~
ronjouch
I think they are, slowly. See the Firefox Weekly 44 (
[https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2018/08/29/these-weeks-
in-f...](https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2018/08/29/these-weeks-in-firefox-
issue-44/) ) and search for "Contextual Feature Recommender": they're starting
by experimenting pushing their Facebook Container addon.

Screenshot:
[https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/files/2018/08/f712ffde-1c33...](https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/files/2018/08/f712ffde-1c33-441f-927b-3868b915923e.png)

~~~
daveFNbuck
The Facebook Container plugin has features that aren't available in the Multi-
Account Containers plugin, such as limiting the container to a domain so it
doesn't follow you when you click a link. Facebook containers should just be a
default/recommended setting for the core containers plugin rather than
something that requires its own special plugin.

------
natch
They should expose the switch to turn off Javascript... this should be table
stakes for any browser. Yes I realize it can be accessed by a series of steps
that include leaving the page you’re on, but there is too much friction in
that interaction flow.

------
mmebane
How will this interact with other privacy tools such as Privacy Badger? Are
they safe to use together? Will they negatively interact?

~~~
daveFNbuck
The most annoying thing from the current version is that when a site doesn't
work, even completely turning off your privacy plugins won't necessarily fix
it. You have to remember that this is another thing that you may have to
disable to use a site. Other than that, it should be fine.

~~~
iaskwhy
I use another browser for those sites. So Firefox with all the fancy add-ons
for 99% of my browsing and then Edge for those times I really can't have it
failing on me (any sort of payment, that's pretty much it).

~~~
johnpowell
I do the same. The Open With extension is nice.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-
with/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-with/)

[https://i.imgur.com/7roeIBf.png](https://i.imgur.com/7roeIBf.png)

------
jstanley
> Firefox will strip cookies and block storage access from third-party
> tracking content.

I'm curious how this will work with things like Google Hosted Libraries[1]
(for just one of countless examples)?

The site will stop working if you block the request, but the tracking will
keep working if you don't block the request.

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/](https://developers.google.com/speed/libraries/)

------
EGreg
_“Firefox will strip cookies and block storage access from third-party
tracking content.”_

This sounds ambiguous to me. Does it mean they won’t block third party cookies
for NON tracking content?

We rely on third party cookies for Single Sign On auth. The question is, how
will this continue to work?

Ideally, these browsers should finally allow access to client side
certificates functionality so you can authenticate with websites without being
tracked by the certificate’s issuer!

XAuth was a step in this direction. We need a place to store these certs or
private keys. But are all major browsers even close to supporting it?

Update: Firefox supports them but it’s so clunky. Focus on letting any site
install a certificate with the user’s permission, firefox!! Apple already
allows web based download of configuration profiles, which is far more
insecure:

[https://developer.apple.com/enterprise/documentation/Configu...](https://developer.apple.com/enterprise/documentation/Configuration-
Profile-Reference.pdf)

[https://medium.com/@sevcsik/authentication-using-https-
clien...](https://medium.com/@sevcsik/authentication-using-https-client-
certificates-3c9d270e8326)

~~~
testplzignore
I think this explains which cookies would be blocked:

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-
protection#w_b...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-
protection#w_block-lists-in-firefox)

------
herodotus
This is the control I would like (and maybe someone has tried it...): for a
given URL, I control which additional URLs I permit for that page. So, for
example, if I type "nytimes.com" as the top level URL, I might allow "nyt.com"
as well. The GET or POST for any other URLs on that page will not be sent by
my browser.

~~~
nathcd
Try uMatrix! That's almost exactly what it does. Further, it lets you control
requests by type, like stylesheets, images, scripts, XHRs, iframes, etc.

Its original name was HTTP Switchboard, which I thought was a great descriptor
for what it does (and for its interface).

~~~
herodotus
Fabulous! And informative! Just wish there was one for Safari... Thanks for
the lead.

------
KajMagnus
I'm developing an embedded commenting system that runs in an iframe. Each blog
has cookies at `blog-name.example.com` and one gets different cookies at
different blogs — there's no tracking.

Still Privacy Badger and apparently iPhone believes the cookies are tracking
cookies. Privacy Badger doesn't see the difference between unique cannot-track
cookies on `per-blog-sub-domain.example.com` and tracking cookies on
`example.com`.

If you have time: How will the new Firefox browser deal with such cookies?
(unique per blog cookies, different on each subdomain)

Maybe I'll have to make the commenting system work completely without cookies
in any case, because of iPhone and Privacy Badger.

------
te_chris
I recently started a new job and took a fresh laptop as as good an excuse as
any to switch to Firefox. It's great! It's fast, dev tools are good. I don't
miss anything from chrome apart from the automatic google translate - joys of
being in the EU.

------
skywhopper
Unclear from this article is how they determine what is a "tracker"? I assume
there'll be a curated block list, maybe based on anonymously collected data.
But that detail is key to whether this is a success or not.

~~~
kevsim
Yeah, I'm left wondering the same thing.

Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (version 2 of which will ship in
Safari/iOS 12 in September[0]) uses some sort of ML-based solution to decide
what is and what is not a tracker, blocks cookies from being sent to domains
that haven't been visited in a first party context, and has an explicit way
for the user to opt-in to cookies being sent upon interaction in an iframe
(e.g. the FB "like" button). Unclear how this Mozilla version stacks up.

0: [https://webkit.org/blog/8311/intelligent-tracking-
prevention...](https://webkit.org/blog/8311/intelligent-tracking-
prevention-2-0/)

~~~
nickvanhoog
Funny thought: Does ITP use ML to determine that googleadservices.com is a
"prevalent" domain?

------
gnicholas
I'm curious to see how the blocking of slow-loading trackers will affect
browsing ability. I put a pi-hole on my network and have found that some sites
become extraordinarily slow to load (like more than 20x as slow as without the
pi-hole), presumably because there's something being blocked that prevents the
rest of the site from being loaded. Needless to say, this makes the pi-hole a
win-some-lose-some proposition.

Hopefully Firefox's implementation will avoid this pitfall!

~~~
rasz
sounds like your setup simply blackholes instead of returning blank resources,
this might lead to retries and waiting for timeouts

~~~
gnicholas
That sounds about right. Anyone have tips for how to improve performance on a
pi-hole? I’ve googled but not found anything that looked spot-on.

------
euske
Dear Mozilla: I hope your browser have all the internal data flows accounted,
i.e. how much of your cookie, location, keystrokes, files goes to each site
should be presented to a user. This can be complicated due to cross-site login
credentials and whatnot, but it can be visualized nicely in a graph format.
This would probably require engine-related changes and affect the performance,
but definitely a direction I'd like to see in future.

------
iamleppert
What's going to happen is they will just change their code to use postMessage
or similar to facilitate the tracking. It's really not hard to persist a UUID
across many different TLD's using techniques other than tracking cookies.

I'm sorry but this isn't going to help motivated companies who have businesses
and teams of engineers. It's just going to be some JIRA ticket that says "fix
tracking for firefox users".

------
QuadrupleA
Shameless plug - for browsers that don't yet block trackers, I have a little
social sharing buttons project that cuts out all the usual cookie and http-
request garbage you usually get from social icons:

[https://github.com/QuadrupleA/private-secure-sharing-
buttons](https://github.com/QuadrupleA/private-secure-sharing-buttons)

------
singularity2001
> select “Trackers (recommended)” to block cross-site tracking cookies.

What exactly is it they are blocking? Do they have a black list of sorts, or a
heuristic?

------
unwabuisi
As a Web Dev I am split on a movement like this. I understand the need for
users to control what data they allow companies to have on them, but if other
browsers do not follow suit, what will that mean for deployment and making
sites consistent across browsers? If Firefox is blocking popular libraries or
scripts that end up breaking some webpages the user experience still suffers

~~~
wfleming
I think that's effectively already the world we live in. As a uBlock user I
occasionally run into sites that are broken because they wrote code assuming
that some function provided by an analytics library would exist, and it
doesn't because that library got blocked. I file bug reports when I can, and
I'm concientous about handling these cases in my own code.

Writing code to handle the failure to load of third party scripts like this
should really be a best practice anyway. Even if you use subresource integrity
checks on all the external scripts you load, what if some analytics provider's
site is down for a while? Do you want your site to still work? I do.
(Obviously this does not apply to scripts that are actually necessary for the
core functionality of your site, but that doesn't really apply to
analytics/tracking tools for the most part.)

Making this the default behavior of FF will make this sort of breakage more
visible to more people, it's true. If anything maybe this will encourage sites
to write their code to handle failure more elegantly and I'll spend less time
annoyed. One can dream.

------
auslander
Right thing, but why it took that long? Safari made ITP enabled by default
year ago, and upgraded it to ITP 2.

[https://webkit.org/blog/8311/intelligent-tracking-
prevention...](https://webkit.org/blog/8311/intelligent-tracking-
prevention-2-0/)

------
EastSmith
What about evercookies?

Why a website needs to know what fonts I have installed?

Why a website needs to know my plugins?

Why a website need to know the gazzilion of data points tools like evercookie
are uaing to fingerprint users.

I asked for a website. Just give it to me. I will render it if I can. If I can
not - too bad for the website.

~~~
SquareWheel
>Why a website needs to know what fonts I have installed?

So it can render the website in an appropriate font, while avoiding
unnecessary network downloads.

>Why a website needs to know my plugins?

Plugins used to be used for rendering applets. It made sense to see if you had
Flash/Java installed before trying to insert one.

Thankfully, plugins are now going away.

~~~
hegz
You can set a list of fonts to use and the browser will keep trying until it
finds one that is installed. Usually the last one in your list is serif or
sans-serif that always works.

~~~
SquareWheel
That's true, but my comment goes further than that. Webfonts require network
requests if they aren't available locally. It might make sense to scan the
available font list for similar fonts before initiating a download.

~~~
ddebernardy
Couldn't a browser do that without necessarily revealing the list of fonts?

    
    
        if (!isFontAvailable(font)) {
          downloadFont(font);
        }
    

It's not like a tracking script is going to try to iterate over every single
existing font out in the wild for finger printing purposes. Doing so would be
too easy to detect and block at the browser level. In the meanwhile, a script
can get the list of fonts directly.

------
alien1993
That's great news, will this be on par with Ghostery features wise or will it
be less granular?

------
have_faith
What are the requirements for what gets blocked and what doesn't get blocked?
Is there a heuristics based approach to tracking blocking or is it all still
cat and mouse with block lists? I'm not up to speed on any breakthroughs in
that regard.

------
zn44
It’s a great initiative but I am afraid it will only change business mode of
tracking providers to offer self hosted software that will no longer be 3rd
party ...

~~~
dangrossman
That would achieve the stated goal of removing cross-site tracking.

~~~
zn44
I imagine self hosted solution would still forward the information to the
third party in the backend

~~~
dangrossman
That alone doesn't allow cross-site tracking. You need a way to identify that
the person on one site is the same person on another site, which is the role
the third-party cookie plays. Firefox is eliminating the third-party cookie,
and working to eliminate cookie-less fingerprinting techniques as well. Who
hosts the information is not the concern.

~~~
zn44
Good point, that’s a great improvement. I just believe you would still be able
to identify and fingerprint individuals across sites if you simply pass data
through self hosted solution to 3rd part aggregate

------
ilovecaching
What's worse, knowing you have no privacy, or having the illusion that you
have privacy? Companies with deep pockets and skin in the advertising game can
still track you. Anytime a defense is put up, they just pivot to another
method of tracking. When you have an army of the world's best engineers and
unlimited resources a way will be found. We need to start living with the
reality that privacy is already dead. Weep if you will, but at least accept
the truth that Mozilla can't protect you, and that your data IS out there
somewhere.

~~~
unethical_ban
No.

This is a fatalist attitude that ignores things like ethics still remaining in
developers, the fact that the cat-and-mouse means the defenses ARE working,
and the fact that the engineers you are so awed by aren't really magicians.

Yes, there are data breaches and tracking, and it will continue. But the fight
has moral and practical value, and I appreciate Mozilla for continuing it.

------
singularity2001
Keep in mind that mozilla is financed by google.

Which means they might always find loopholes like these to track you:

[https://github.com/mozilla/addons-
frontend/issues/2785](https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785)

Search 'telemetry' and 'tracking' under about:config .

Set all true to false where appropriate.

search for google and mozilla, remove all url entries.

or just wildcard-block them via dnsmask.

~~~
codazoda
I was going to say that they aren't financed by Google, there's just a search
contract, but I found this tidbit online...

"Historically, search engine royalties have been the main revenue driver for
Mozilla. Back in 2014, the last year of the Google deal, that agreement
brought in $323 million of the foundation’s $330 million in total revenue."

The default search contract went to Yahoo between 2014 and 2017 then back to
Google after that. Looks like they do get most of their money from Google.

~~~
singularity2001
thanks for confirming (and data)

------
interatx
Maybe I missed in the article but how does a browser block cryptomining
scripts? Same goes for fingerprints.

~~~
groovecoder
There are known trackers involved with non-consensual crypto-jacking, and
fingerprinting. Those domains can be blocked completely.

------
BadassFractal
How does Brave's approach compare to Mozilla's in this area? Are they about
comparable?

------
misterbowfinger
_Firefox will [...] block storage access from third-party tracking content._

Is that an impact on LocalStorage?

------
besieged
While I applaud this, Firefox is consistently the slowest browser or both
Android and MacOS.

------
internet_user
..How can anyone protect you against html5 canvas hashes? Seems like an
impossible task.

~~~
falcolas
The TOR browser simply blocks access to the canvas itself. Seems like a good
addition to the "would you like to grant access to" list.

~~~
jerheinze
The patch for that has been already uplifted to Firefox and is behind the pref
"privacy.resistFingerprinting":
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=967895](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=967895)

By the way it's spelled "Tor" ;)

~~~
falcolas
Tangentially, that's bothered me since it's "The Onion Router", and such
abbreviations are typically capitalized.

------
billysielu
So is this "First Party Isolation on by default", or something else?

------
HIPisTheAnswer
Turn off JS - Done!

------
jaisfj
From reading the title, I thought Mozilla were going to set telemetry, Cliqz
spyware, Pocket ads, etc. as opt-in. Sad that I was wrong :(

------
pmfgpmfg
performance is the wrong motivation behind blocking trackers. they should be
blocked because they're wrong, not because they slow website load pages.

~~~
CaptSpify
Why not both? I agree with you that they should be blocked because they are
wrong, but I'd also agree that they should be blocked because they are slow.

------
jasonkostempski
This is the wrong angle to take. Plugins are the correct solutions to these
problems. A browser should implement the standards. Period. If this breaks a
site users want or need, they will go to another browser. If Mozilla wants to
fix things, they should be fighting for new standards. Start with a standard
that says all third-party content requires a user prompt to enable, always, no
whitelist, no blacklist, no way to disable the prompt. Same with all JS
hardware API calls. That's how it should have been from the start. Any browser
vendor that goes against the standard would be forced to admit they're
enabling gapping vulnerabilities.

~~~
unethical_ban
There is no web standard for ethical tracking. Web standards are rendering
video, images and text, processing JavaScript, interpreting CSS, and so on.

~~~
jasonkostempski
Maybe your right. I looked quickly but didn't find anything. Is there no
standard out there stating, for example, that JavaScript MUST NOT be allowed
unrestricted access to local storage or that the location API MUST request
permission? These are just accepted as obvious best practices?

------
0xmohit

      In the near future, Firefox will — by default — protect users
      by blocking tracking while also offering a clear set of
      controls to give our users more choice over what information
      they share with sites.
    

Sounds promising. However, having Google as the default search engine is a
good enough reason to discourage one from using Firefox. Wonder if it would
ever change.

~~~
TheRealPomax
And what would you suggest as alternative, given that normal users (e.g.
people who've never even heard of HN and make up the majority of browser
users) expect to search with Google?

As far as I recall, the Google search is part of the funding agreement
(because Mozilla is still a non-profit, the money has to come from _somewhere_
and we, the users of the browser, sure aren't paying them?) with the explicit
agreement that it is trivial to change the default search engine for people
who don't want to search with Google.

Click on the drop-down on the left of the search field in the browser, you
click "change search settings", you pick your preferred search (options for
which include "duck duck go" these days) and you're done forever. That...
feels like a perfectly fine way to go about offering people what they want:
make what the majority wants the default, and make it trivial to change for
people with different wants or needs.

~~~
ptr_void
What about no default ? Just Prompt user after installation which search
engine they want to set as default.

HN users will switch to something they prefer, normal users wouldn't know
there exists anything other than google. By making what you think majority
wants as default, you are forcing something on people who doesn't know any
better.

~~~
tyleraldrich
Google pays Mozilla a bunch of money to be the default search engine, and
Mozilla needs the money as they are a non-profit.

If somebody cares about their online privacy, they can change the default
search engine very easily - I think what we should be doing is teaching the
average web browser what kind of tracking goes on so that more people are
willing to switch to things like Firefox/DDG.

~~~
0xmohit
So Mozilla should clearly state that being a non-profit they need funds and
that they are willing to compromise the privacy of their users.

~~~
TheRealPomax
No need to lie just to make a point. Firefox does not "compromise the privacy
of their users" by using google.com as default search engine. You're going to
have write quite the detailed explanation if you want to make that case and
make a credible claim at the same time.

------
throwawaysso
So if our SaaS service relies heavily on third-party cookies for single sign-
on, how does this impact us? Is there some kind of whitelist we need to apply
for, or do we need to completely rethink our product?

------
ssothrowaway
So if our SaaS service uses third-party cookies to do single sign-on, what
does this mean for us? Can we apply for some kind of whitelist somewhere, or
do we need to rethink how our entire product works? We aren't using third-
party cookies for advertising purposes.

