This gist misleads in a few ways by being so vague and seems to be more about disabling every somewhat useful feature that sounds bad for tinfoil hat enthusiasts. Still has useful things, like disabling Pocket if you don’t want it and forcing newer TLS versions. Others are silly (disabling things that already ask for your permission, like location), dangerous (disabling Google Safe Browsing), or already exposed in the settings UI anyway (DNT, tracking protection, telemetry). To each their own, use these if you think they’re important to you, but for most people it’s fear-mongering about nothing and enabling a few things in the privacy settings page is sufficient.
> for most people it’s fear-mongering about nothing
To be fair, a core argument in favor of Firefox is essentially fear-mongering about google and your personal data. It always struck me as odd that actions many people would call "shady" if google does it are condoned in FF because Mozilla.
I think maybe you misunderstood the point here. I agree Google is probably not directly selling your information it gathers to other people but instead is selling access to that information in the form of directed advertising.
Google's in the business of knowing EVERYTHING they can about you, so they can better sell "you" to their customers (advertisers). You are not a customer of Google, you are their product. Nestle, Exon, Ford, etc are the customers of Google.
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Google's data is a part of their offering, but that doesn't somehow make me as a person a "product".
Their products are AdWords and AdSense. These services network customers together who want to 1. make money from ads, and 2. advertise themselves.
Google mediates this exchange between both parties, and uses data from users to target their ads more accurately.
Calling the user a product is rather hyperbolic. The only interaction with a user is in choosing which ad to serve, and recording if they view or click the ad.
Maybe it is a bit hyperbolic, but their products are based almost entirely on the information they gather about you specifically(and everyone else they can).
Like you said "uses data from users to target their ads more accurately". exactly.
but when you say the only interaction with a user is in choosing which add to serve is misleading, at best. You can't currently say to google, I want this ad to be displayed to John Smith @ 1818 Mockingird lane. But you can buy ads saying this age group, in this city, interested in X and Y subject(s), which if you happen to also know about John Smith, will definitely reach him specifically (assuming John Smith sees a google delivered Ad, which is almost a certainty).
As a complete outsider to this conversation who has gotten caught up in the fearmongering mentioned, but who is too ignorant to really have strong opinions either way, thanks for having this conversation.
It's scary, being in the Too Much Information age. It feels so easy to be misled when it's hard to devote the time to properly understand complex topics like this.
I don't know if I feel any more confident in my browser choice (or anything else related to cybersecurity), but... thanks, still? Acknowledging how little I can know about any one thing feels so destabilizing... hoorah for existential crises?
Personally I do still believe privacy is very important. I often take up the devil's advocate position on Hacker News because there is a lot of groupthink on this site. The issues are rarely black and white, and almost never come down to "X is evil".
My advise is to stay aware of the issues, but don't get consumed by them. In almost all cases a site's privacy policy will tell you exactly what they collect, and you always maintain the power to block that at the browser level if you want to.
eg. I use an adblocker to remove social media widgets. I find them clutter and I don't care for the tracking. Otherwise though my settings are pretty light.
> windlep 0 minutes ago [-] I was under the impression the search deals are merely which engine are the default. How does having the default search be Google make the Mozilla corp beholden to Google?
Well, when someone pays your paycheck, that makes you beholden to them. Unless you don't want another paycheck.
The person that pays my paycheck tells me what to do. The only thing Mozilla was told to do in the contract with Google is to have them as the default search engine.
Besides for the search engine requirement per contract, how is Mozilla's product beholden to Google?
I'm somewhat surprised that was downvoted, as I thought people knew how these contracts were arranged and what they included. They're about the default search engine placement, that's it. Google obviously doesn't get to provide input/requirements into Mozilla product design, marketing, etc.
I was under the impression the search deals are merely which engine are the default. How does having the default search be Google make the Mozilla corp beholden to Google?
If Google is paying what Yahoo was, it's $300 million a year for the default search option on Firefox. Google pays Apple billions to stay the default on the iPhone as well.
Ok, so that makes Mozilla beholden to them how exactly? Is Google calling up Mozilla asking them to do them favors in the product? Are Mozilla engineers being asked to write in special features that Google asks for?
Yes, Google provides 90% of the revenue or somewhere around there. But I still haven't heard how exactly Mozilla is doing special favors to Google or is in some way beholden to it.
Mozilla has a contract with Google to be the default search provider for a set period of years. I have never heard of anything else being in there that allows Google to make any product requests on Mozilla.
How come no one wants to say how exactly Mozilla is doing what Google wants?
Mozilla’s bizarre stance on H264 coincidentally favored Google’s position. Mozilla’s anti-ad-tracking stuff was all switched off by default. They make their money from ads meaning their incentives parallel those of ad networks.
All ad supported products have bad incentives. It’s the same reason HBO and Nerflix produces great TV shows and ad based broadcast and cable networks mainly produce garbage.
search engines pay for 80% of mozilla's cheques, so search engines have 80% control over mozilla's income, which is a bit iffy, especially for something meant to be community controlled and directed (non profit open source right?)
What I don’t understand is why are there no paid browsers? I’d pay $xx(x?) for a browser where I’m the customer, not the product. Every open-source browser is either awful and outdated, or is beholden to outside interests, or internal monetization strategy.
Maybe for less money, then your colleagues will get fired and your salary will be cut etc.
Whenever your earnings depends on someone giving you money, whether it's through advertising or a grant, it's quite normal and common you'll be very careful not to upset them. At least you'll think twice before doing so.
Dangerous is a strong word here. Yes, this feature does make browsing the web safer, but I would stop short of inverting that statement to mean that disabling it makes the web dangerous. It primarily protects you from sites engaging in social engineering of some kind: these can admittedly be extremely sophisticated, to the point of fooling most very technical people, but generally speaking it's still mostly avoidable with some care.
I would recommend most people having a safe browsing feature enabled, but I wouldn't fear-monger those disabling it either.
It's also worth mentioning that Mozilla provide their own service here -- Shavar -- so one needn't use Goog
On the contrary. Maybe if you're on a hardwired desktop, but for everything else it is incredibly accurate. You don't even need to have GPS in your device -- WiFi is plenty.
Did you allow permission for location? Because if you did, it kind of defeats the purpose of showing that disabling this permission helps obscure your location to websites.. On my desktop, it asked for permission, and when denied it threw up its hands and said that it had no idea where I was.
Smartphone, it want to use GPS. That's kind of cheating, isn't it?
It is, but it also shows just how much information people could leak if they casually dismiss any permissions prompting with "allow" (or even worse, have such permissions be granted by default.)
