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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.
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.
I think making it an opt-out is sensible
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.
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 think making it an opt-out is sensible
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.
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?
including the option to not participate.
Which is useless if you’re not informed about it.
Here’s a take by a Mozilla employee :
- Mozilla has been ad funded since 2005
- Browser development is not sustainable by just donations
- Transparency is most important
Mozilla has been ad funded since 2005
It was funded through a deal with an ad company. It did not become an ad company itself until much more recently. jwz had a succinct and memorable response to the the absurd idea that really it’s been ad-funded all along and that this makes things okay:
You are just another of those so-predictable people saying, “The animal shelter has always had a kitten-meat deli, why are you surprised?”
Yes, Mozilla started making absolutely horrific funding and management decisions many years ago. Today, they have taken this subtext and turned it into the actual text.
Firefox has never tried to run on donations though.
« Ad funded » ? Don’t they mean « Google funded » ?
Oh shit. Now that I have checked, it was turned on by default on mine too.
What’s wrong with you mozilla ?? Firefox was supposed to be the alternative
They have gone corrupt, they’re full-on techbros now
Here’s the page about it:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution
Read that instead of someones rant about it, which imo seems a bit obtuse.
This sounds fine, I’ve no problem emitting telemetry as long as it is 100% anonymous and can’t be traced to individuals
Same, although I have lingering paranoia that any data recorded by this might be traced back to me by making inferences when combined with other data; however, unlike the OOP, I will say I don’t really know what I’m talking about.
I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s personally identifiable at all, just aggregate.
Noice
I guess librewolf is the future
Here’s the information about it. It’s anonymous and It can be turned off https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution?as=u&utm_source=inproduct
That somehow makes it better?
Edit typo
Yes. The problem with cookies was that they could be used to track and identify you. If this can’t do that, then what’s the issue?
Most data can be de-anonymized with some clever tricks. I don’t know about Mozilla but the others definitely try to keep it just anonymous enough to later be correlated with the rest of your profile.
Edit: typos
Also, it might be annonymized for this dataset, by adding more ‘annonymized’ datasets stuff can be correlated
Is it tracking you or tracking ads? If it was the latter and it is made public, that is information I’m sure we would all be interested in
Seems to be the latter.
This almost sounds like a hoax. But assuming it’s true… Install LibreWolf. It’s Firefox without the infuriating Mozilla stupid.
- sunzu ( @sunzu@kbin.run ) 9•9 months ago
Is google corrupting Mozilla?
No. This is a privacy-protecting option that gathers no additional information about you or your hardware.
The other link posted in reply is overblown fear-mongering from Mozilla’s single biggest hater because they bought an ad company.
- sunzu ( @sunzu@kbin.run ) 8•9 months ago
a privacy-protecting option that gathers no additional information about you or your hardware.
What information are they gathering then?
Then why aren’t they putting it up front and shouting from the rooftops about the new “privacy protecting feature”?
Literally every browser has this option, and it gives users a choice. If you use an ad blocker, it has this option as well and has had it for several years now.
Not this option, but generally I agree. Currently I don’t think this is bad, and in the longer term we will see if this leaks any identifyable data.
There are people that use Firefox who also get served ads?
- Main dev of open source Ladybird browser not liking homosexuals or whatever:
Community: Boo!
- Mozilla acquiring an ad tech company and implementing it now:
Community: well, they have to (and whatever).
I sense some mental dissonance.
I would call it a vocal minority
The community is VERY MUCH against the decline of Mozilla
And they wonder why their market share is decreasing.
The only major browser that actually seems to care about their users is Vivaldi, sadly.
Vivaldi is not private, or open source. It is also a fork of Chromium. If we are going to name forks, then Librewolf or GNU Icecat are better browsers by a mile.
Name anything Vivaldi specifically (not Chromium-wide) has done to screw over their users. I can’t name a single thing, while I can name many Anti-User things Firefox has done.
Unfortunately, open-source becomes nearly meaningless when the cost to produce a fork becomes so prohibitive and the open-source project starts acting like a for-profit company.
Here is some reading for you (if you want):
https://privacytests.org/vivaldi.html
https://avoidthehack.com/review-vivaldi-browserI can say the same thing about Librewolf, as they haven’t done anything to screw over their users either.
Vivaldi just does not have strong ad-blocking, fingerprinting protections, or privacy a preserving measures in general. Here is a comparison between some browsers: https://privacytests.org/