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this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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Privacy
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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
As someone who works on data anonymization, I never trust anonymization.
It needs to be opt-in to be acceptable. Opt-out is not acceptable.
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?
The problem is supporting ad networks.
Edit: /s because apparently it wasn't obvious. Anonymous is obviously better.
Mozilla has to generate enough revenue to continue developing their products somehow. It would be nice if donations were enough to cover those development costs but that simply isn't the case. Because of this the ad networks are a necessary "evil".
The setting from the original post is for sites in general, it's not specifically about Mozilla sites. I'm not sure how having this option relates to their revenue, unless Google put it in their search contract with them?
Edit: Wait, I see people mentioning Mozilla acquired an ad company?
Yes. Yes, they did.
Jesus.
Supporting ad networks is not a 'necessary' evil. There are many not-for-profit organisations that do not use ads for revenue raising.
What would you suggest then? They've been unable to sustain themselves via donations alone.
Fire their ceo that they're paying 6 million a year
When writing my previous post I had started writing a list of suggested strategies; but I changed my mind about posting that. I'm not a member of Mozilla. I don't know what particular challenges they face, and my expertise are not in not-for-profit fundraising. So although I do have ideas, I don't really want to get into a trap of trying to defend my half-arse ideas against people picking them apart. It's beside the point. The point is just that it is achievable, as evidenced by other organisations achieving it.
I will say though that they could at least just mention on the Firefox 'successful update' page that Firefox is supported by donations, and give a link. A lot of people really like Firefox; and I think that if Firefox asked for donations, they would get more donations.
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
Anonymous data collection at scale is a myth.
Anonymous data collection on me when assembled will say that I'm a 40-49yo unmarried college-educated male working in one area in a certain industry and living in another area.
Only one person meets all those criteria, and it's me.
The issue is that I already knew about cookies. I don't want my browser to phone home (or anywhere else) without my consent.
Cookies are a non-issue. They store data only locally and can be edited and removed at will. With third party isolation on by default there's really no reason to worry about them much anymore. And if you do just install cookie auto-delete to clean things up.
This variant is definitely worse because the data is no longer just local.
That's part 2