this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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92
"Privacy-Preserving" Attribution: Mozilla Disappoints Us Yet Again (blog.privacyguides.org)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I think there is a big misunderstanding about this feature. People are throwing their arms up in disappointment but in reality this is a helpful feature for privacy.

This post doesn't even explain what the feature is or how it works. If you take the time to go read what the feature actually does, you'll see it's a good feature to have and it really does improve your privacy when you don't have an ad blocker.

Just because Meta participated doesn't mean it's bad. If they only participated as consultants to understand the advertisement system so they can better protect us against it, it's not bad.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (3 children)

From my understanding of their implementation, you have to give a Mozilla server all of your traffic history, and then they feed a curated, sanitize topic list of that activity to the advertisers.

So now we're trusting Mozilla with your full browsing history, that seems like a really bad idea. Even if I love and trust Mozilla, I don't want to add yet another thing to the critical path

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

PPA does not involve sending information about your browsing activities to anyone. This includes Mozilla and our DAP partner (ISRG). Advertisers only receive aggregate information that answers basic questions about the effectiveness of their advertising.

Source.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-ppm-dap#name-security-considerations

The explicitly say if the aggregator is controlled by hostile party, and in my scenario that would be Mozilla, they could have full access to the deanonymized data. It's out of scope for their protocol.

And while the DAP draft is nice, it doesn't change my threat model, it just introduces extra steps. As the absolute hunger of AI inputs for models have shown us, if a company has the capability to get data, they will. Mozilla has demonstrated they are hungry for data and money. I don't want to give them the capability

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If you have syncing on, you are already trusting Mozilla with your history.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Oh yeah, agreed, if your syncing then your security model doesn't include worrying about tracking.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Isn't Firefox sync E2E encrypted?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

All your data is encrypted on our servers so we can’t read it – only you can access it. We don’t sell your info to advertisers because that would go against our data privacy promise.

You are correct. My mistake.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/sync/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How are they different from any other VPN service or even uBlock? They all have access to your browsing info and can potentially use it for profit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

You think I don't know how a VPN works?

I think you misunderstood what I meant.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm not clear on how this system works, but I would like to know how it's supposedly better than Google's Topics. Especially if, as comments elsewhere in the thread suggest, Mozilla's solution involves potentially exposing your entire browsing history to someone. Topics doesn't do that, since it's entirely handled in your own browser and only sends vague categories. (And even fuzzes them by potentially sending a random category you didn't actually visit.)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

It's better because PPA isn't about targeting ads at all. It doesn't share any browsing history, topics, or any information for ad targeting to advertisers at all. What it does do is provide a way for a website to tell your browser which ads are relevant to an action you take - for example on a checkout confirmation screen the site may tell your browser "here's a list of ad IDs for the shop you just bought from". Your browser then checks if it's seen any of those ads, checking completely using local data that doesn't leave the browser, then to an aggregator it reports which ads possibly led to your purchase. The aggregator increments a counter for each ad in its database and relays the totals to the advertiser. There are no unique identifiers or any information about your habits or interests involved.

When I initially heard about PPA I also thought it was related to FLoC / topics, but it has nothing to do with ad targeting or sharing information about habits / interests, it's just a way to tell advertisers "Ad XYZ was effective and led to a sign up/purchase" without revealing who saw the ad or any personal information about them, just the total number of people.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Please explain to me how sending additional data from your private computer to Mozilla servers gives me more privacy and not less.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago

It's privacy preserving and you can turn it off. It's the best option for attribution we have yet.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

I don't care if it's "better" than the existing system, Mozilla should not be helping the advertising industry at all. They should be actively working to block any and all attempts to gain access to user data, flat out. They are not, and their acquisition of an ad company shows that their motives are not in line with what their users want. They're a company after money, no different than any other. Big fucking shame, but when you hire business people and operate as a business, you can't have true integrity no matter what your supposed mission is. Yes, Mozilla operates a nonprofit but they also operate a corporation, and the corporation exists to make money above all else which is why they've succumbed to this ad industry bullshit. I hope we see a viable third option for browser, but until then the best option is a Firefox fork that actually gives a damn about the user and not just their wallets. I've switched to using LibreWolf on all of my devices. Like Firefox, but without the anti-user, pro-ad-industry garbage turned on by default. I've been calling Firefox adware for years now ever since they started stuffing Mozilla VPN ads, sponsored link garbage, "Pocket recommendations" horseshit, and all the other paid/sponsored nonsense in users' faces without their permission but people were like "no no Mozilla is actually good"....cut it out, Mozilla has shown their hands very clearly now. They want the advertising $$$ and are willing to give up any respect and integrity they used to have for it. They aren't at the level of Chrome and Google, but they're inching closer every day and acquiring their own ad company certainly isn't going to help in that regard.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why Mozilla, Why??

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It turns out, if you hire executives to run your non-profit, they're just going to use it to further their own objectives. And they don't care about the mission.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Mozilla is not a non-profit. And if they were, they are legally bound to it. It's not optional to go by the mission if you're a non-profit.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yes, as I said. Mozilla is not a non-profit. Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit. But that was not mentioned. There is a clear distinction.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The Mozilla term is used to be ambiguous, I think deliberately so. So they get ZERO sympathy from critical readers when they do some BS under the auspice of "no, that wasn't the non-profit side". You have one reputation, you live and die by your behavior.

The Corporation / Foundation split is great for accounting and corporate structure, sure, but its not a shield against criticism of their behavior not matching their stated missions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

The Mozilla Foundation is a thin wrapper for the Mozilla Corporation, and it's run by the executives themselves.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Yet another reason to use a hardened fork like Arkenfox or Librewolf; I assume both will disable this by default