Just a moment...
www.bleepingcomputer.com

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/20260243

Google Chrome warns uBlock Origin may soon be disabled

Google Chrome is now encouraging uBlock Origin users who have updated to the latest version to switch to other ad blockers before Manifest v2 extensions are disabled.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    11 months ago

    They didn’t really hide it, they just didn’t advertise it. It was in the release notes, hence why the media picked up on it. And on release, there was a checkbox in the normal settings to opt-out, so it’s honestly not that bad.

    FakeSpot

    That’s an opt-in extension, it’s not part of the core browser. I honestly don’t know much about it, and their privacy policy isn’t appealing, so I won’t use it. If it becomes part of Firefox by default, I’ll disable it.

    In what universe are advertisers going to use this instead of, not in addition to, other telemetry?

    What telemetry is this providing? AFAIK, Mozilla isn’t providing any kind of personalized info, it’s merely aggregated data.

    And the reason they’d pick this is to get access to privacy-minded people who would otherwise block their ads, but may choose to exempt these ads. Mozilla has some anti-tracking features, and there’s a significant subset of Firefox users that block ads out of principle of avoiding tracking. If websites want to get some of that advertising revenue, they’ll comply. That benefits all Firefox users, because some sites may choose to use this method of targeted ads, which still provides the site with ad revenue without providing the advertisers with details on their customers.

    That’s the idea here. It’s not going to happen on day 1, but having the capability means Mozilla can pilot it and see if websites are interested. And it’s possible Mozilla’s ads are more relevant because they have access to browsing history, not just whatever advertisers were able to figure out from their network of ads.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        11 months ago

        not given a label that hides the true intent of the data gathering

        I think it’s pretty clear, the checkbox reads: “Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement.” There’s also a link that explains what that means.

        The real issue is that there should’ve been an advertisement that the option exists. I found it by reading release notes (I’m a nerd and am interested), but as you said, a lot of people don’t read those. However, the impact here is also pretty low, since AFAIK companies aren’t actually using this ATM, and generally speaking the data should stay with Mozilla. The official doc says:

        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.

        I disagree that it should’ve been unchecked, because that completely kills the whole point of this pilot program. Perhaps it should only be there for people who have allow being part of surveys.

        When a company goes behind your back, gets caught, and then tells you to trust them, do you trust them?

        I don’t think they’ve done that. I don’t think there was anything malicious here, they just didn’t think it was relevant to inform all users about, probably because only a handful of sites are using it.

        So they haven’t lost my trust. I was much more frustrated with their Pocket rollout than this, because Pocket really felt like it should’ve been a separate, opt-in service.

        I will agree that Mozilla has made some questionable choices in the past, but this one doesn’t really stand out to me. Maybe I trust them too much when they say no personalized data leaves my machine (but I have yet to see any evidence that it does).

        It sells browsing and search history

        But only if you use the extension. Mozilla doesn’t collect that data w/o the extension being installed. If I opt-in (or not opt-out) to the PPA feature, that data will not go to that subsidiary, nor will it be associated with me in any way if it’s ever provided to third parties. At least that’s my understanding.

        If you trust the advertiser, they can do it on their own. If you don’t trust the advertiser, why would you trust them to partner with a data slurping company?

        Mozilla isn’t an advertiser. Google and Brave are. So Mozilla is far more likely to limit what access to data advertisers have, so I’ll trust them way more than Brave or Google.

        Instead of removing it, I think Mozilla should expose some tools so ad-blockers can optionally allow privacy-respecting ads with some metadata (maybe that exists?).

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            11 months ago

            I don’t even know if Mozilla considers Mozilla FakeSpot to even be a partner or just a core component of the company.

            I think it’s irrelevant provided the only data FakeSpot sends to advertisers comes from data it collects on its own, and not from data Mozilla has collected from other sources (e.g. PPA). Those should always be separate.

            Brave is one too.

            Well yeah, they have their own search engine, and they place ads on webpages, so they’re absolutely an ad company, since that’s their core revenue stream.

            With Mozilla, it’s a bit trickier because they don’t directly place ads, and the PPA feature is still in an evaluation phase. Pocket is certainly an ad-based product, and Fakespot definitely seems like one, so I guess there’s an argument there? But the vast majority of Mozilla’s money comes from Google for search. Is that advertising revenue? Kind of?

            Mozilla is a weird company. I’d rather them be an independent, privacy-focused ad company instead of reliant on search deals, provided they can handle ads in a privacy-friendly way. I’d prefer them to offer a replacement for ads, where users could pay whatever the ads are earning for the website instead of seeing the ads, and I see this as a step toward that. If Mozilla controls the data collection and potentially ad selection, they could also theoretically offer customers a way to pay to drop that nonsense. That’s my horse in this race.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                1·
                11 months ago

                Mozilla also runs the ad company Mozilla Anonym, and now they traffic in other people’s data.

                Huh, that’s a pretty recent acquisition. I guess we’ll see what they do with it.

                Mozilla sells geolocation and browsing data to ad companies.

                But isn’t this only if you opt-in to their extension? I don’t, have never, and probably will never use that extension.

                But I guess we’ll see if they’ll amend the privacy policy of FakeSpot and stop the sale of personal data to advertisers, which would be in-line with the privacy policy on the rest of their services. But that absolutely is my line in the sand. If they integrate FakeSpot with that terrible privacy policy into Firefox, I will leave to a different browser. I sincerely hope they just haven’t fully integrated the FakeSpot org into Mozilla, though their Privacy Policy was updated in Jan of this year, over 6 months after the acquisition.

                Maybe Mozilla won’t change. I don’t know. What I do know is they’re currently the best option for an open web. If they fumble that, I guess I’ll go try using something like Konqueror again. But until that happens, I’ll just avoid their services that violate my privacy.