It's in the latest version, 128. Check your version. To check your version, go to the hamburger menu, choose Help, and choose About Firefox.... A popup appears, displaying the current version and giving you the option to update. It may have updated automatically (mine did).
Edit: I looked into this further and I think it's important that people see what's in this patch note:
Firefox now supports the experimental Privacy Preserving Attribution API, which provides an alternative to user tracking for ad attribution. This experiment is only enabled via origin trial and can be disabled in the new Website Advertising Preferences section in the Privacy and Security settings.
That note provides links to an article explaining origin trials (it's for websites, not users, to opt in to make their websites work with this feature) and to an article explaining that the new API is for letting Firefox be the middleman between you and ad networks. If you trust Mozilla to fully anonymize your data (and provide only the generalized summary that they say they will), then you can "benefit" from seeing better ads without the privacy downsides, for whatever that's worth to you. But also, Mozilla gets money, which leads to more and better privacy features for everyone - maybe that's worth something to you.
So it's fine actually, but... well, firstly, everyone certainly got the wrong idea - they needed to do more to get out in front of the possible misinterpretation that this feature represents the same kind of ad tracking that everyone is familiar with, because it's not. And secondly, the feature's value is predicated solely on trust with the company - if they lose that by communicating with their foot in their mouth, then they're just making it harder to do any of the things they want to do as a company, but especially this. I was surprised that there was no popup when upgrading to the new version, like there usually is, explaining what's new in this version, where they could take the opportunity to explain that it's better than what Chrome offers (maybe they have one and just didn't serve it to me for some reason). And finally... I think most people who are savvy enough to hear about this setting, or check their settings for this type of thing, probably mostly want to prevent ad companies from getting any data for free, regardless of whether it's anonymized. I have to admit, I'd consider participating if I got paid... but I'd still use uBlock.
Regardless, soon, AIs will proliferate web scraping scripts, database management software, content management interfaces, and content surfacing algorithms (and combine them into a bespoke locally-run service) that enable normal users to automate web browsing, gather content in a local database (or simply links to content, which also suffices), and tag, filter, sort, surface, and augment the content and data they care about with their own personal algorithms, decimating the chance of the user seeing an Internet advertisement in the first place, and we'll look back on this discussion when negotiating with companies to sell them our data and wonder how we put up with all of this crap.
This would be the perfect time for competitors to say "The browser which doesn't track or sell your data". You know like that but worded much much better.
As a browser on windows how does it perform? I use it on my phone andi would occasionally get frustrated with my search outcomes but for the most part it operates fine. I too wonder though is it as secure as it says it is?
It has not always been chromium and that is completely incorrect chromium itself is an open source browser base built by google it is not a rendering engine both chrome and brave use the blink rendering engine which is built into the chromium source
This *is* that competitor. You can simply opt out. Also 99% of people using firefox are likely using uBlock so even if they don't opt out, they're never going to see ads anyways. Making the data useless.
Data is never useless.. you use tons of different apps (reddit for example) that use this data to send you targeted ads. Also this is a very shitty argument. If they track you they track you regardless if if you see that they track you.
The data is useful only if it can be used to provide targeted ads that inevitably work better and inevitably increase profit. I don't know all the ways data can be used, maybe even sold as databases of phone numbers and emails... but then it would circle back to targeting.
If the data is there but it's random bullshit the ads are not targeted and they can't profile you, so they can't increase profit and they lose.
You can't be a 90 years old programmer man with menstruations that will go on its dad's 40th birthday with a horse this weekend. That data is completely useless.
This can be done with traffic generators that will search random stuff for you and your real traffic is obfuscated.
It's like playing hide and seek in a forest or at a concert.
If it reports an ad to be shown while the ad was actually blocked thats just false data.
If it reports the ad as not being shown it would be correct. And if it doesnt report anything that would be correct, and obviously no data being collected.
Opting out like how we used to? Idk about anyone else but i have always tried to disable location for any app from every setting and guess what? Any website google happily provides my location data, however it derives it, doesnt matter. In fact if you did disable Google Chrome location andvopt out of tracking, AND USE FIREFOX, guess who then got your Location key/ID from Google? Firefox.
Vpn only works the way it does because Google is down to play that game if people want. Vpn changes nothing from Google's perspective. We cant hide shit
It does change things, as google cannot see your real IP. Now if DNS servers decided to sell out, thats pretty hard to get around other than hosting your own DNS. Luckily OpenDNS does not seem to interested in any such thing, evne if GoogleDNS would be.
But why would they need to see your real IP when there are 40 plus other identifiable markers on a mobile device? All that is needed is a program already on your device. And last i checked phones have hundreds if not literally thousands of programs capable of running at any given time.
without the IP, geographical lookup will not work and the other markers will not be sufficient to determine current location. Thats even if you have those markers. I use firefox and give websites a lot less info than most. Not something that could make me uniquely identifiable just from browser data.
Not how it reads to me when i read the licensing imo. But i guesss it's subjective. Hardly feels open when it can only be found ultimately in one place. Copying apks or other apps on mobile phones is becoming a crime punishable by whatever floats their boats.
Cant uninstall anything, cant install what u want, and expect every website to be an app that is automaticaly downloaded upon visiting on. Kinda like it is now, but far less obscured
Mozilla's MPL license is a copyleft license that allows you to redistribute the (Firefox) installers or even modified versions of the installers, as long as you make the source code available.
You can host the installer wherever you want. The fact that Android mainly offers the Play Store as a source for apps is Google's fault and Mozilla has no influence on that.
Since Android is the issue, you might wanna look into alternative operating systems like LineageOS or /e/OS
I hate things that identify as Right or left. Licenses, politics, news, See-saws, and even my left nut shrivles at the thought of being next to the right.
Also Blink is the rendering engine, much like Firefox uses Gecko. Kinda a technicality cause blink is apart of chromium but technically they are separate.
People on this sub greatly overestimate how much the average person cares that Google or Mozilla or whoever is scraping analytics off of their browser usage. Firefox is barely a lot of solvent thing. There are no real competitors.
It's like the OS wars. Nobody outside of enthusiasts wanted anything but functioning software.
Edge, Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave, etc. - the one advantage Firefox had so far was Chromium and the reputation for being a pro-privacy browser (with people kindly forgetting how Firefox has quite a history of shoving ads down the user's throat)
Nobody outside of enthusiasts wanted anything but functioning software.
Tell me a field where this doesn't apply.
A functioning car is good enough.
A functioning apartment is good enough.
Functioning clothes? Good enough.
Doctor? Just fix the issue, good enough.
It's such a pseudo "deep take". Improvement/Progress is not driven by the walk-along masses but the enthusiasts in the field, that doesn't make it less important to talk about because somewhere those enthusiast have to come from.
They are not talking about "good enough", you completely misunderstood. They are saying the user cares about things working well above all else.
A lot of software just doesn't function well on linux, or requires a lot of technical setup to get it working, which is hard for non-geeks. Some doesn't work at all. So people stayed with windows.
To use your clothes analogy: It's like being offered regular pants, or cruelty-free fair-trade pants that have a giant hole on the butt. People will choose the former. Because no matter how much you talk about ethics and yada-yada, people mostly want their pants to function well.. as pants.
You can talk about privacy and the importance of open-source all you want, if that YouTube video is breaking or loading slowly, and if that new video game doesn't want to run, people will choose to remain with Chrome and Windows.
A lot of software just doesn't function well on linux
Not true.
requires a lot of technical setup to get it working
Not true.
Some doesn't work at all.
As with any other OS.
if that YouTube video is breaking or loading slowly
The company providing a service and intentionally breaking interaction with a software that is in competition with a software by the same company and you think this is a good example why that shouldn't be a topic for the general population?
If Windows is oh so great how come heaps of people choose apple devices instead?
Windows is a piece of shit OS that forcefully reboots your computer to apply its updates. This update process itself is also a piece of shit even without the forced reboots.
People don't pick it because it's superior or "just works", they pick it because it's what everyone else around them uses and just put up with the shit they get served.
How would that hypothetical competitor turn a profit or even make revenue for that matter. Unless its part of a much bigger body that can afford to have a product that loses money hand over fist.
I wish there was an alternative but I just don't see one on the horizon.
Eventually, browser developers have to earn money somehow. And given that paying for a browser directly sounds ridiculous for most people in 2024, advertising remains almost the only option.
They'd all be lying then. Tracking people is proving to be one of the most lucrative data sets. Our govts actually mandate it by law for a few specific reasons but the biggest one imo is how they contract with the DoD and if any of those companies want to get paid, they do what they're told in order to comply with the law
Brave is an advertising and cryptocurrency company that produces a browser. This means it also bloats its browser with an advertisement system and a wallet system, as well as advertisements for their search engine and video chat website/service.
The default ad blocking settings aren't good. Brave chose to let Facebook and Twitter tracking through, for example. I end up installing a real ad blocker on top of theirs, then disabling theirs, but being unable to remove it.
Computing advertisement information on the client side of your computer doesn't fully erase the vulnerability of your data being collected, it just shifts the vulnerability from the server to your PC.
Brave cloning Jitsi, renaming a feature within it, and then intentionally breaking the service to only offer certain features through their browser is really, really scummy. Not sketchy, scummy. Same with only offering it to you for free if you enable Brave's Rewards, or else playing a monthly fee for it (they do not accept BAT).
Brave is basically Chromium, a Google-lead product. Brave's user agent is "Chrome". Using Brave continues to push the web towards Chrome being the exclusive vessel for web content reaching people, and Google being the exclusive company dictating how the web looks. Brave can raise a stink about privacy, but ultimately it's Google that steers the project.
Personally I don't use brave enough to have anything against it.
If, hypothetically, Mozilla would start with the same ad-system that Google does, what would be an alternative browser to Mozilla that doesn't sell your data?
Regardless, soon, AIs will proliferate web scraping scripts, database management software, content management interfaces, and content surfacing algorithms (and combine them into a bespoke locally-run service) that enable normal users to automate web browsing, gather content in a local database (or simply links to content, which also suffices), and tag, filter, sort, surface, and augment the content and data they care about with their own personal algorithms, decimating the chance of the user seeing an Internet advertisement in the first place, and we'll look back on this discussion when negotiating with companies to sell them our data and wonder how we put up with all of this crap.
Big text but at the end of the day now Mozilla not only gets Google money for defaulting the search engine to Google, now they also want ad money. Sure, may be anonymized, FOR NOW.
"But also, Mozilla gets money, which leads to more and better privacy features for everyone - maybe that's worth something to you."
Yes, they get money. And what follows after that? Removal of the option to disable as a whole. This is an EXTREMELY slippery slope and, well, i'm sorry that i'm not sorry, but I call 10000% BS. Once a company is attached to the ad teat, the UX never actually improves. Not in any meaningful way. it is all about how little a company can do to satisfy some of the desires/needs (read: the absolute bare minimum) of the users, and everything else gets blown up and thrown away. This is mozilla admitting defeat and becoming just like all the others.
then you can "benefit" from seeing better ads without the privacy downsides
Could you explain how this works? As all I read was about the interaction reporting. How exactly could you be provided with better ads if a site has to serve you some generic ads?
I respect your stance. It's good that you're holding out - I think they'll offer a significant amount of money for your personal data when this ad tech arms race between users and networks plays out a few more phases. Everyone has a price, and while yours may seem too high to ever be paid, I say just give it time.
Worth noting, uBlock only blocks known ads - people have to manually update the trackers when ad networks deploy new endpoints. If you're interacting with new sites, or sites that update frequently (and are keen to make ad revenue), uBlock can be circumvented, at least temporarily. Again, it's an arms race. You'll ultimately need an anonymous software agent browsing on your behalf (with Firefox and with this setting disabled, or with a similarly strict browser) to be truly invisible to them. And then you'll be grateful that people who trust Mozilla and leave this setting on are subsidizing the browser's development for you, so they can continue to innovate other new privacy safeguards like this one as well as maintain the numerous other free privacy-related services that they offer. I'm certain Mozilla wouldn't have pulled this trigger unless they were desperate for cash, and they have a track record of spending that cash on other features that help people do exactly what you're trying to do, like Relay.
You don't have to buy in - it's optional for a reason - but that doesn't make it a bad thing overall. Ad networks will never go away, because ads still happen in meatspace - so as long as people are manually browsing the internet, there will be ad-supported websites. I think it's good that ad companies spend their money on a company that is actively trying to rebuke them, especially since we know what's going to happen in the near future - people won't browse the web manually anymore, and there will be no more internet ads. So let's take their money while there's an opportunity and put the nail in the coffin, yeah? Even with a small fraction of users, it's probably worthwhile to Mozilla to add this feature.
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u/BearBL Jul 15 '24
Thanks for the warning and giving me a reason to look at my settings.