Mozilla plans to collect anonymous Firefox browsing data

[Matsuda]

 

Mozilla plans to collect browsing data from Firefox users in a "privacy preserving way" to help Firefox product teams improve the browser based on the data.

Mozilla's Georg Fritzsche published information on the plan to collect additional data yesterday on the Mozilla Governance group. In it, he describes the issue that Mozilla engineers face currently. While Firefox may collect the data when users opt-in, Mozilla believes that the data is biased and that only data collecting with opt-out would provide unbiased data that the engineers can work with.

Questions that this data may help answer include "which top sites are users visiting", "which sites using Flash does a user encounter", and "which sites does a user see heavy Jank on" according to Fritzsche.
 

The solution that Fritzsche proposes uses differential privacy and the open source RAPPOR project by Google. The key idea behind differential privacy is that any query against a set of data should not reveal whether a specific person or that person's data is present. This is done by introducing randomness to the data.
 

Mozilla plans to run a study on a subset of Firefox's release population to test the implementation. The organization plans to make this opt-out, which means that Firefox users need to disable this actively if they don't want their browsing data -- in anonymized form -- submitted to Mozilla.

 

What we plan to do now is run an opt-out SHIELD study [6] to validate our  implementation of RAPPOR. This study will collect the value for users’ home  page (eTLD+1) for a randomly selected group of our release population We  are hoping to launch this in mid-September.
 

This is not the type of data we have collected as opt-out in the past and  is a new approach for Mozilla. As such, we are still experimenting with the project and wanted to reach out for feedback.

 

The telemetry that Mozilla plans to collect will only collect the top level domain name, e.g. ghacks.net without subdomains or directories.
 

One objection that Firefox users had who replied to the post on Google Groups or elsewhere was that making the feature opt-out was anti-privacy no matter if the data that is collected cannot be traced back to a single user.

Others stated that Mozilla could some of the data otherwise, for instance by crawling sites to check if they still make use of Flash, or by using services to retrieve information on the top sites on the Web.


Source

[dcs18]

Unfortunately, those who monitor their Firefox would've noticed from past experience that Mozilla has been collecting anonymous browsing data even after one has opted-out and has disabled all the possible options WRT Firefox telemetry and analytics.

 

Fortunately, those who have the wherewithal, can still block the leak with one single rule.

[spudboy]

11 hours ago, dcs18 said:

Unfortunately, those who monitor their Firefox would've noticed from past experience that Mozilla has been collecting anonymous browsing data even after one has opted-out and has disabled all the possible options WRT Firefox telemetry and analytics.

 

Fortunately, those who have the wherewithal, can still block the leak with one single rule.

 

Please elaborate or link on how to completely stop it. Thanks.

[byntf]

On 8/23/2017 at 2:44 AM, dcs18 said:

those who have the wherewithal, can still block the leak with one single rule

I would be grateful if you would share that procedure with those of us who lack that knowledge.

[dcs18]

 

On 8/24/2017 at 0:49 AM, spudboy said:

On 8/23/2017 at 1:14 PM, dcs18 said:

Unfortunately, those who monitor their Firefox would've noticed from past experience that Mozilla has been collecting anonymous browsing data even after one has opted-out and has disabled all the possible options WRT Firefox telemetry and analytics.

 

Fortunately, those who have the wherewithal, can still block the leak with one single rule.

Please elaborate or link on how to completely stop it. Thanks.

 

Just now, byntf said:

On 8/23/2017 at 1:14 PM, dcs18 said:

those who have the wherewithal, can still block the leak with one single rule.

I would be grateful if you would share that procedure with those of us who lack that knowledge.

Please note, the following rule applies for those Users who have disabled all the possible options WRT Firefox to block telemetry and analytics:—

 

Spoiler

||safebrowsing.googleapis.com^

 

[spudboy]

On 8/24/2017 at 4:02 PM, dcs18 said:

 

 

Please note, the following rule applies for those Users who have disabled all the possible options WRT Firefox to block telemetry and analytics:—

 

  Hide contents

||safebrowsing.googleapis.com^

 

 

What is this? Block via host file entry? WRT? The router firmware? My router doesn't support WRT. If you're speaking something else you'll have to elaborate further. Can't this be stopped by unchecking the FF options under "Block dangerous and deceptive content"?

[dcs18]

Just now, spudboy said:

On 8/25/2017 at 2:32 AM, dcs18 said:

Please note, the following rule applies for those Users who have disabled all the possible options WRT Firefox to block telemetry and analytics:—

 

  Reveal hidden contents

||safebrowsing.googleapis.com^

 

What is this? Block via host file entry? WRT? The router firmware? My router doesn't support WRT. If you're speaking something else you'll have to elaborate further. Can't this be stopped by unchecking the FF options under "Block dangerous and deceptive content"?

It's the rule that needs to be entered into your ad. blocking filter.

[spudboy]

On 8/29/2017 at 0:12 PM, dcs18 said:

It's the rule that needs to be entered into your ad. blocking filter.

 

Gotcha. Although upon inspection, the rule already exists by default in uBlock Origin. Not sure if it already exists in any other ad-blockers.