
Latest Firefox Brings Privacy Protections Front and Center - Vinnl
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/10/22/latest-firefox-brings-privacy-protections-front-and-center-letting-you-track-the-trackers/
======
AdmiralAsshat
The downside of all of this is that I feel like sites are now intentionally
being designed to break if this kind of stuff is blocked. I used to be able to
use Firefox Focus (which has tracking protection built-in) to pay most of my
bills. This was convenient because I would just open up the one site in FFF,
pay the bill, and then close it, with all browsing history automatically
deleted.

In the past month about 3 of my credit card sites stopped working on FFF, as
well as my ISP's site. Some would flat out reject the agent ("Your browser is
no longer supported"), others would let me log in but then immediately tell me
I had been logged out or redirect back to the home page. So now I'm forced to
open them back up in regular Firefox, history and tracking included.

It's one thing to say "Don't use sites that exploit your data", but it's not
like the average person really has a choice when it comes to paying utility
bills.

~~~
floatboth
That particular example is just extremely odd because… well, the business
model of the utilities whose bills you pay (nor the bank's) shouldn't be based
on advertising?? Maybe it's just a pile of web development fail, using 3rd
party cookies for no good reason..

~~~
joaobeno
Here is why they track and collect:

“Hiding within those mounds of data is knowledge that could change the life of
a patient, or change the world.” (Atul Butte, Stanford)

"Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion
engine” (Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President, Gartner)

“Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto
the web like deer on a freeway.” (Geoffrey Moore, author and consultant)

.

.

.

And the quotes go on and on...

~~~
ninjin
Right, but regardless of the factuality of these claims, remind me how we
continue to sidestep the issue of consent from those that are tracked?
“Privacy nuts” such as myself do not struggle to see upsides to say a global
DNA database with perfect coverage, it is the fact that we are very much aware
of the terrible potential downsides of a world where privacy and consent is
largely ignored that makes us concerned.

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sunasra
I love the way Firefox is putting their efforts towards the privacy. Each
releases increases my trust on them. Kudos to the team

~~~
m463
They report a lot of data by default back to mozilla though.

~~~
clairity
yah, i'd love to have a list of sites and what's being sent. for example, a
new one that popped up recently: private-network.firefox.com

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svnpenn
Honestly its getting out of hand. I have everything blocked I can think of
[1], and even browsing in private mode, I still sometimes get the "recommended
for you" on YouTube. Stop invading my privacy.

[1] [https://cup.github.io/rosso/youtube](https://cup.github.io/rosso/youtube)

~~~
c3534l
I looked up some DevOps stuff on reddit through a proxy with adblockers in
private mode and all of a sudden my front page was filled with posts about
depression, men asking advice about how to talk to women, and advice about
getting a job and moving out of your parents house. These were based on
sessions cookies, but I was still kinda offended it pegged me as a sad loser
just because I wanted to know more about NGINX and Heroku.

~~~
rchaud
There is almost no action you can take on Youtube without it recommending a
deluge of god-awful 'user generated content' videos on these topics. The only
solution is to frequently right click and select "Not Interested" and then
"Not interested in the channel: [channel name]".

The recs are poor enough that I don't mind blanket-banning an entire channel
from my feed. Youtubers so frequently "compete" by using clickbait titles and
thumbnails, I'm glad I at least have this method to punish that kind of
behaviour.

~~~
pzmarzly
Another solution - block the recommendations altogether. On PC, you can use
specialized extension, or just Stylus (the latter works especially well with
old Youtube layout). On Android, use NewPipe[0] or Youtube Vanced[1]. On iOS,
perhaps Ivory[2] will do. Or at least delete your watch & search history[3],
so the recommendations will be related only to the video you are currently
watching.

If you are subscribed to enough good channels, you won't notice anything aside
of suddenly having much more free time. And whenever you're bored, unlock
recommendations for a while to learn about new channels (I do it once every
few months).

[0]
[https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe](https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe)

[1] [https://vanced.app/](https://vanced.app/) , beware of scam sites

[2] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ivory-video-
player/id129434748...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ivory-video-
player/id1294347486)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/feed/history](https://www.youtube.com/feed/history)
(on old YT layout)

------
dajonker
I see one risk for Firefox: if they block all trackers, e.g. Google Analytics,
then it would appear to people viewing browser statistics in Google Analytics
that no-one is using Firefox, and thus the developers will be told they don't
need to test anything on Firefox.

~~~
zimbatm
Or just actively punishing Firefox because blocking tracking is also blocking
ads, which is their revenue model. Why spend money optimizing for a browser
that doesn't generate revenue?

If Firefox becomes the bastion of privacy sensitive people it will become more
and more like Tor users, all tainted with the same labels. I mean it's already
the case that recaptcha will more likely trigger on Firefox than Chrome,
asking for multiple rounds of checks. Like visitors existing Tor exit nodes,
in a bit less worse.

~~~
ric2b
> because blocking tracking is also blocking ads

It's not, the Internet is the only medium where it's assumed that
tracking/targeting is necessary for advertising. TV, Magazines, radio,
podcasts, cinema don't track users.

~~~
uoaei
Well, they do, but only in aggregate and pretty indirectly: surveys, focus
groups, requests for feedback, etc.

~~~
badrequest
Which are leagues more imprecise than the internet alternative.

------
alexfromapex
The new weapon to fight back against the extreme invasion of privacy is
exposing the companies and making them accountable. I love this along with the
bluetooth warnings on iOS 13.

~~~
dylan604
I never realized how many apps were trying to use bluetooth until these new
notifications started to pop up. I appreciate this update as well.

------
Gondolin
It would be nice to know the priority of blocking elements between firefox
default anti-tracker list, ublock origin, and privacy badger.

When I see a tracker hit ublock origin does it mean that it bypassed firefox
anti-tracker blocking, or is it the reverse?

Having three anti-trackers installed is also a bit inconvenient when this
breaks a site, I have to disable each one successively to try to make it work
again...

~~~
angott
Based on my experience, uBlock Origin has priority over the built-in blocker.

~~~
beckler
I'm seeing the same thing, my report doesn't have a ton of data (~10 blocks a
day on average), and the only other blocker I have is uBlock.

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p7IDD243
It's a noble effort, the amount of tracking going on is just digusting, I have
1.9k blocked trackers in just the past week and I visit a small set of
websites.

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MikusR
Do they include also the google analytics that are built into firefox addons
page?

~~~
akerro
No, these cannot be skipped without external request blocking, like on DNS
level. Even µblock won't block GA built-in in Firefox.

~~~
purple_ducks
uMatrix defaults to blocking GA and indeed blocks the request for analytics.js
on that page.

~~~
catalogia
Really? I thought no extensions are permitted to run on that page.

~~~
purple_ducks
i now realise you/parent were talking about the about:addons page, not the
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/) web page.

------
lprd
This is great! On another note, I'm wondering when I can remove uBlock Origin?

~~~
newscracker
I don’t think Firefox will get into complete built-in ad blocking, like Brave
does. But the days (or years) of uBlock Origin seem to be numbered because of
the approach proposed by Chrome (called Manifest V3) to prevent extensions
from modifying network requests, and being limited to just providing a block
list of URLs for the browser engine to block (this design has been the case
with Safari’s built-in content blocking).

~~~
ric2b
> But the days (or years) of uBlock Origin seem to be numbered because of the
> approach proposed by Chrome (called Manifest V3) to prevent extensions from
> modifying network requests

Numbered on Chrome, you mean.

~~~
GuB-42
Firefox tends to follow Chrome closely. And as time goes on, they limit
extensions more and more. The latest preview of Firefox Mobile doesn't support
them at all. Hopefully, it is just temporary but it used to be the killer
feature of Firefox mobile.

It is not pure evil, there are security reasons behind that. Manifest V3 is
also a security improvement so I wouldn't put it passed Mozilla to implement
it.

~~~
newscracker
Mozilla has officially said [1] that it has no immediate plans to implement
this kind of content blocking and removing the requests API for extensions,
but I think it’s a matter of time before this is done. Mozilla’s FAQ on this
[1] is extensive enough for the moment.

[1]: [https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/09/03/mozillas-
manifest...](https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/09/03/mozillas-
manifest-v3-faq/)

------
sucrose
The inactive CSS feature is great, I've spent a lot of time cleaning up global
stylesheets for my employer recently, and it's a big task. Even though I doubt
it catches CSS toggled by Javascript, I'm excited to use it.

------
fencepost
It's interesting to contemplate that some of the features Firefox now has
built in (bookmark sync, password sync, dark web monitoring) overlap with
things that are or have been available as paid services as well.

~~~
isostatic
Web Browsers were paid for at one time, as were operating systems.

------
brynjolf
Still wonder why they have multiple backdoor into their own browser and
several layers of analytics included. Including when you start the browser for
the first time. Feels hypocritical.

------
Kaiyou
Meanwhile, Firefox won't selectively delete hundreds of cookies, despite all
the options indicating that it would be possible. Instead, it hangs and fails
to delete selected cookies.

~~~
dhimes
But it also doesn't delete my passwords, like Chrome does every single damn
update I think. It's been an issue for 10 years. [And don't start with me
about lastpass, etc. ...]

~~~
Kaiyou
I agree that it is the least worse browser, hence I'm using it. Though, that
will change once Addon support is added to qutebrowser.

------
Animats
Can you remove Pocket yet?

~~~
0xdeadb00f
You can through an about:config/user.js flag:

    
    
        user_pref("extensions.pocket.enabled", false);

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ntxy
must be a joke since this link gets eaten by privacy badger. Full of trackers.

edit: originally referred to blog.mozilla.com

~~~
sp332
Privacy Badger gave me one hit, netdna-ssl, at the "Blocked Cookies" level. No
hits on uBlock or the new enhanced tracking protection thing. What trackers
are you seeing?

~~~
ntxy
Oh, I meant the OPs Link to the Blog Post. I suspect the 5 trackers of post
are from the youtube embed. Anyways, my point still stands.

------
orenak
this will make me switch to firefox, only feature I needed as multi lingual
user

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Bantros
Too little, too late

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
So, FireFox or Brave? I'm currently using Brave and very happy with it.

~~~
bn7t
There are good reasons not to use brave:

\- received venture capital from Peter Thiel (Chairman of Palantir)

\- BAT tokens aren't backed by any real value

\- [https://jlelse.blog/posts/ditch-chrome/](https://jlelse.blog/posts/ditch-
chrome/)

More reasons:
[https://twitter.com/corbindavenport/status/11341432093896663...](https://twitter.com/corbindavenport/status/1134143209389666305)

~~~
floatboth
IIRC they even collected the tokens on behalf of sites that didn't sign up,
creating a quite weird and rather unethical "you basically have to sign up
now" situation for publishers.

