Firefox tracks you with “privacy preserving” feature

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https://noyb.eu/en/firefox-tracks-you-privacy-preserving-feature

Today, noyb (None Of Your Business) filed a complaint against Mozilla for quietly enabling a supposed “privacy feature” (called Privacy Preserving Attribution) in its Firefox browser. Contrary to its reassuring name, this technology allows Firefox to track user behavior on websites. In essence, the browser is now controlling the tracking, rather than individual websites. While this might be an improvement compared to even more invasive cookie tracking, the company never asked its users if they wanted to enable it. Instead, Mozilla decided to turn it on by default once people installed a recent software update…

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WCHS, Nibbled To Death By Ducks, lmacri, Cybertooth, NaNoNyMouse

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In my installation of Firefox (130.0.1) it’s there in Settings, but it’s greyed out and not checked

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The Mozilla support article Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA) says this is an experimental feature that shipped with Firefox 128.

If you have DISABLED the setting at Privacy & Security | Firefox Data Collection and Use | Allow Firefox to Install and Run Studies (which I have) I assume that is why our setting for PPA is disabled by default and can’t be enabled.
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Dell Inspiron 15 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.4894 * Firefox v130.0.1 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.24080.9-1.1.24080.9 * Malwarebytes Premium v5.1.10.127-1.0.5021 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7783

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Yep!

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Steve

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My Box WAS Chk’d but easily Un-Chkd. Below is Mozilla’s explanation of HOW their TEST model works, and it appears harmless as presented.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution?as=u&utm_source=inproduct#w_how-can-i-disable-ppa

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.

W10 Pro 22H2 / Hm-Stdnt Ofce '16 C2R / Macrium Pd vX / GP=2 + FtrU=Semi-Annual + Feature Defer = 1 + QU = 0

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WCHS, Alex5723

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Tracking is tracking is tracking…

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Hm! I’m running 115.15.0esr and I see no sign of this in any settings. Am I missing something?

Is this unpleasantness is in the non-esr desktop version of FF, or Android, or both?

(I currently run FF at Max security level with uBlockOrigin and  Privacy Badger. (…and Badger DOES find some stuff that uBlockOrigin didn’t block!)

The way I’ve beefed up FF is a bit like surfing the web in an M1 Abrams tank, but I think it’s still the best product out there, IMHO. But this news is a bit unsettling.

Money, money, money…

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
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"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks wrote:

I’m running 115.15.0esr

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution

In what conditions is privacy-preserving attribution used?

PPA is enabled in Firefox starting in version 128. A small number of sites are going to test this and provide feedback to inform our standardization plans, and help us understand if this is likely to gain traction.

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Thanks, Alex…glad I switched to the esr version!

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
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"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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Uh, @Nibbled-To-Death-By-Ducks , the only thing saving you from that feature is the fact that you’re running Windows 7 and the only version of Firefox that will run on Windows 7 is the 115ESR branch of it.

The “privacy preserving” (yeah, right) feature is only in versions 128 and above, per the link in Alex’s post just above.

So, if you don’t want to have to worry about turning off that feature, then stay on Windows 7. The moment you go to Windows 10, you’ll be prompted to go to FF128 (or higher) ESR and that will have the feature that you’ll have to shut off and keep an eye on to make sure it stays that way.

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Steve, Cybertooth, Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks wrote:

Thanks, Alex…glad I switched to the esr version!

This screen print is from my portable 128.2.0esr (64-bit).

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks

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Alex5723 wrote:

This screen print is from my portable 128.2.0esr (64-bit).

OK, then, you guys, I’m glad to have 115.15.0 esr, then!

(Seriously, I’m going to keep a death grip on this machine until I have a catastrophic hardware failure, 0Patch decides to throw 7 under the bus, or I can’t get any decent browser or AV software for it.)

FYI, Startpage is currently flogging their new just-out-of-beta Android browser, but I’m going nowhere near it for at least 6 months. They started some mudslinging recently with “Startpage isn’t tracking your searches, but Firefox might be,” on their site; I wrote someone at Mozilla about it, and within a VERY short time “Firefox” had been switched out for “Your Browser”

Privacy Wars: The Next Big Thing?

https://www.sjgames.com/svtarot/net/nextbigthing.html

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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Steve, Alex5723

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I’m not shocked that Mozilla has tried to come up with a (another?) compromise.

However, the way I see it, this new setting isn’t going to matter. Why? Firefox users concerned with privacy likely already have ad/script blockers, so they aren’t seeing or interacting with ads. Nothing for PPA to measure. Also, the same users probably turned off “Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla” eons ago, and thus received PPA already off and disabled.

If this does get off the ground and big ad tech starts using it, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s in addition to (not instead of) traditional tracking. It’s not like Mozilla has the power to force adoption.

Now, I’m not defending this new “feature” – I just think it’s going to prove pointless. I might be wrong, though, so I still made sure it is off.

As an aside, I’m curious if NOYB (linked by OP) issued any similar complaint against Apple (which rolled out their version of PPA about 3 years ago). I failed to find one. If they’re going to complain about something they don’t like, maybe they shouldn’t single out the little guy. Just sayin’.

(Apple’s PPA is, of course, on by default, with no parent setting to override that like Firefox has. Recently, they even buried it one screen deeper in iOS Settings.)

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Steve, Charlie, Cybertooth, windbg

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Beside that, you can simply uncheck the nice little box they provided for you and you’re not participating in it.  I’ve done this with a lot of other things I don’t want or need in Firefox.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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