ᵗᵃᵏᵉ ᵇᵃᶜᵏ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵉᵇ

I think the article made a typo that claims GPC is the same as DNT.

When you enable the feature, the GPC sends a signal… This signal is sent via a special HTTP header called DNT: 1 (Do Not Track)

But the GPC spec does say it sends a new signal: Another header (like DNT) and a JavaScript variable the client would set. I don’t see why this couldn’t be used for tracking too.

A user agent MUST generate a Sec-GPC header

So if it generates a header, it can still be used for fingerprinting, but this header is actually less restrictive for what the receiver must do.

DNT was “do not track,” and GPC is "do not sell:

GPC is also not intended to limit a first party’s use of personal information within the first-party context (such as a publisher targeting ads to a user on its website based on that user’s previous activity on that same site).

That’s an interesting detail!

I’m not surprised this tagging system is imperfect, but in a broader context – that a company like Google probably has something a hundred times more powerful and more accurate, and it’s scanning through people’s whole photo libraries, really adds to their creepy factor.

Well, was the picture at least taken on a Xiaomi? Or is the AI hallucinating metadata now too

Set up a new email on Gmail or Proton Mail

Two words. They could have removed two words and made the instructions infinitely better.

And this is on the web page where, if you tap on it three times, it instantly exits out and goes to DuckDuckGo. Which is pretty neat.

No argument from me there. I didn’t mean to come across this argumentative, I just wanted to point it out here because of the context of this post (someone looking to move away from Firefox). And because, to me, ad telemetry still is a black box.

Mozilla is adopting a ton of the things that were wrong with Brave. Recently, Brave criticized Mozilla’s PPA data collection for being too centralized, which implies to me that otherwise, there’s a lot of overlap between the two allegedly “private” systems. I don’t trust Brave telemetry, but it seems not even they can come up with many ways to differentiate themselves from Mozilla.

If they’re different somehow, I would love to know how.

In a way other than accrued trust or distrust, that is. At this point, I don’t think Mozilla is owed any inherent trust.

How worried should people be if they are on the latest version of Fennec, which was last updated for 129.0.2 a couple months ago? (For anyone who isn’t keeping track: that’s not ESR (128 is), and it’s two major versions behind Firefox Release).

I wasn’t going to make a generic comment about how cryptocurrency is only worth money to people if they can convince other people to also purchase the cryptocurrency…

… But then I looked at your post history, and it’s like a week of pivoting conversations to be about Monero.

• New GPU released? Perfect for mining Monero.
• FBI made fake cryptocurrency? Monero isn’t fake.
• People shouldn’t store your information, so use Monero
• Taylor Swift donates for hurricane victims? Monero is worth more than her!

Edit: oh god it was worse than I thought

• All cryptocurrency is good… JK just Monero
• Good YouTube video? They should accept Monero.
• Good nudes? (NSFW) Take my Monero
  (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
  (probably more, but mods removed many)
• Their phone wallpaper? Anime girl Monero

Basically. Insultingly, it was built alongside, and in some collaborative measure with, Google. (A bunch of companies bigger than Mozilla, and a bunch of ad networks, are all teaming up for the PATCG).

You:

What is transmitted is not user activity.

Mozilla:

When a user interacts with an ad or advertiser, a record of that interaction…

User interactions are not user activities to you?

You said

All user activity remains local in the browser

The pertinent information is that you were incorrect. That should be a big enough red flag for you to reevaluate how safe and secure you think PPA is.

When a user interacts with an ad or advertiser, a record of that interaction is… sent to two independently operated services.

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/08/22/ppa-update/

How about Reddit or DeviantArt? I’ve noticed issues with each of those

You’re 100% right about Brave being scummy.

And I hope my point didn’t come across as a defensd of Brave, but rather, “how is it that Mozilla is doing this thing in a worse way than a company that is infamously disreputable?”

You haven’t heard about the Brave ads that let you slowly accumulate tokens that you can then use to tip creators or websites? I’m not saying it was a good plan, or an ethical plan, but it was… You know, something.

Unlike what Mozilla did, Brave didn’t enable this by default, but they heavily marketed it as a feature.

If Mozilla implemented some kind of tipping system, that could be interesting. Apparently, such a system already could exist under GNU Taler too.

If a company is unethical, they will ignore the Mozilla standard. If a company is ethical, they don’t need the Mozilla standard, as they can adopt their own tracking-free methods of serving ads.

I have been told repeatedly by Firefox advertisement advocates that PPA only affects people that don’t use ad blockers, so it allegedly only affects people that are already blasted by tracking networks to the fullest extent possible, while people who use ad blockers wouldn’t see the supposedly less invasive ads anyway. So it’s either 100% tracking to 110% tracking, or 0% tracking to 0% tracking. Seems like a lose-lose scenario for both sides of the equation.

Would you look at that, privacy preserving advertisement!

Let’s take it one step further and go really crazy with a/b testing

<a href="company_url/campaign1"><img src="funny_picture.gif"></a>

<a href="company_url/campaign2"><img src="different_picture.gif"></a>

disingeneous to call it adding ads

Who called it adding

Well, I don’t foresee any downsides. Hopefully they can continue making an incredible browser and operating system respectively.