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So this, from Firefox, is fucking toxic: https://mstdn.social/@Lokjo/112772496939724214
You might be aware Chrome— a browser made by an ad company— has been trying to claw back the limitations recently placed on ad networks by the death of third-party cookies, and added new features that gather and report data directly to ad networks. You'd know this because Chrome displayed a popup.
If you're a Firefox user, what you probably don't know is Firefox added this feature and *has already turned it on without asking you*
I haven’t looked into the technicals much further than the support page.
The way i read it, it sounds like the companies will get some general data if their ads work without a profile about you being created. I would be fine with that. What I don’t like is the lack of communication to users about it being enabled.
PPA does not involve websites tracking you. Instead, your browser is in control. This means strong privacy safeguards, including the option to not participate.
Privacy-preserving attribution works as follows:
Websites that show you ads can ask Firefox to remember these ads. When this happens, Firefox stores an “impression” which contains a little bit of information about the ad, including a destination website.
If you visit the destination website and do something that the website considers to be important enough to count (a “conversion”), that website can ask Firefox to generate a report. The destination website specifies what ads it is interested in.
Firefox creates a report based on what the website asks, but does not give the result to the website. Instead, Firefox encrypts the report and anonymously submits it using the Distributed Aggregation Protocol (DAP) to an “aggregation service”.
Your results are combined with many similar reports by the aggregation service. The destination website periodically receives a summary of the reports. The summary includes noise that provides differential privacy.
This approach has a lot of advantages over legacy attribution methods, which involve many companies learning a lot about what you do online.
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.
This all gets very technical, but we have additional reading for anyone interested in the details about how this works, like our announcement from February 2022 and this technical explainer.
It appears in the release notes, though.
Previously you would have been tracked.
Now they try to anonymously return data to the tracker. So I do not see a reason to uncheck that flag.
Admittedly I am interpreting this feature from my gut. And you provide the sources I would have asked for.
Appreciated.
Given that it collects no additional user data, and the API in question is a new standard that will require sites to opt in, I think making it an opt-out is sensible. I guess they could make a popup about it, but I really think this concern is baseless FUD from people who haven’t read the details.
Let’s be real, there’s no way PPA is going to be as valuable as the data that can be gathered by state of the art ad tech. So the ad companies that adopt this will be making a compromise to do so. How is this tech making their lives easier?
Also they have no incentive to develop this tech, so why would they? It’s not like Mozilla is doing work for them that they would have done anyway. If anything they’re probably worried that the tech will take off and then legislation will follow to force them to use it.
I personally am fine with making it opt-out, but I think it should be handled differently. This technology requires users trust, to have any chance of being successful. Enabling it without informing the user is not the way to gain it.
I would have put a little pop up explaining that they are trying to create a privacy preserving technology to measure ads with the goal of replacing privacy invasive technology. If the user doesn’t like it, it can be disabled in the settings afterwards.
I agree with this. I understand that the majority of users also don’t read release notes and some don’t even install add-ons, with this being enabled by default this would provide them with a more anonymous ad experience.
I haven’t looked into the technicals much further than the support page.
The way i read it, it sounds like the companies will get some general data if their ads work without a profile about you being created. I would be fine with that. What I don’t like is the lack of communication to users about it being enabled.
It appears in the release notes, though. Previously you would have been tracked. Now they try to anonymously return data to the tracker. So I do not see a reason to uncheck that flag.
Admittedly I am interpreting this feature from my gut. And you provide the sources I would have asked for. Appreciated.
Given that it collects no additional user data, and the API in question is a new standard that will require sites to opt in, I think making it an opt-out is sensible. I guess they could make a popup about it, but I really think this concern is baseless FUD from people who haven’t read the details.
Why? I’m not in the business of making ad companies’ jobs easier.
Let’s be real, there’s no way PPA is going to be as valuable as the data that can be gathered by state of the art ad tech. So the ad companies that adopt this will be making a compromise to do so. How is this tech making their lives easier?
Also they have no incentive to develop this tech, so why would they? It’s not like Mozilla is doing work for them that they would have done anyway. If anything they’re probably worried that the tech will take off and then legislation will follow to force them to use it.
I personally am fine with making it opt-out, but I think it should be handled differently. This technology requires users trust, to have any chance of being successful. Enabling it without informing the user is not the way to gain it.
I would have put a little pop up explaining that they are trying to create a privacy preserving technology to measure ads with the goal of replacing privacy invasive technology. If the user doesn’t like it, it can be disabled in the settings afterwards.
The GDPR does not think so, does it?
No, I’m pretty sure this doesn’t trip GDPR because it’s not collecting any additional personal data.
I agree with this. I understand that the majority of users also don’t read release notes and some don’t even install add-ons, with this being enabled by default this would provide them with a more anonymous ad experience.
It looks it it would be fun to mock the report generation API, and returns tons of garbage data (possibly negative numbers).
At that point why not just mock google’s various data mining services’ APIs?
Which is useless if you’re not informed about it.