Windows 10: Firefox Changing Approach to Anti-tracking

Brink · Sep 3, 2018

Anyone who isn’t an expert on the internet would be hard-pressed to explain how tracking on the internet actually works. Some of the negative effects of unchecked tracking are easy to notice, namely eerily-specific targeted advertising and a loss of performance on the web. However, many of the harms of unchecked data collection are completely opaque to users and experts alike, only to be revealed piecemeal by major data breaches. In the near future, Firefox will — by default — protect users by blocking tracking while also offering a clear set of controls to give our users more choice over what information they share with sites.

Over the next few months, we plan to release a series of features that will put this new approach into practice through three key initiatives:

Improving page load performance

Tracking slows down the web. In a study by Ghostery, 55.4% of the total time required to load an average website was spent loading third party trackers. For users on slower networks the effect can be even worse.

Long page load times are detrimental to every user’s experience on the web. For that reason, we’ve added a new feature in Firefox Nightly that blocks trackers that slow down page loads. We will be testing this feature using a shield study in September. If we find that our approach performs well, we will start blocking slow-loading trackers by default in Firefox 63.

Removing cross-site tracking

In the physical world, users wouldn’t expect hundreds of vendors to follow them from store to store, spying on the products they look at or purchase. Users have the same expectations of privacy on the web, and yet in reality, they are tracked wherever they go. Most web browsers fail to help users get the level of privacy they expect and deserve.

In order to help give users the private web browsing experience they expect and deserve, Firefox will strip cookies and block storage access from third-party tracking content. We’ve already made this available for our Firefox Nightly users to try out, and will be running a shield study to test the experience with some of our beta users in September. We aim to bring this protection to all users in Firefox 65, and will continue to refine our approach to provide the strongest possible protection while preserving a smooth user experience.

Mitigating harmful practices

Deceptive practices that invisibly collect identifiable user information or degrade user experience are becoming more common. For example, some trackers fingerprint users — a technique that allows them to invisibly identify users by their device properties, and which users are unable to control. Other sites have deployed cryptomining scripts that silently mine cryptocurrencies on the user’s device. Practices like these make the web a more hostile place to be. Future versions of Firefox will block these practices by default.

Why are we doing this?

This is about more than protecting users — it’s about giving them a voice. Some sites will continue to want user data in exchange for content, but now they will have to ask for it, a positive change for people who up until now had no idea of the value exchange they were asked to make. Blocking pop-up ads in the original Firefox release was the right move in 2004, because it didn’t just make Firefox users happier, it gave the advertising platforms of the time a reason to care about their users’ experience. In 2018, we hope that our efforts to empower our users will have the same effect.

How to Manually Enable the Protections

Do you want to try out these protections in Firefox Nightly? You can control both features from the Control Center menu, accessible on the left-hand side of the address bar. In that menu you’ll see a new “Content Blocking” section. From there, you can:

Enable the blocking of slow-loading trackers or cross-site tracking through third-party cookies by clicking “Add Blocking…” next to the respective option.

In the “Content Blocking” preferences panel:

Click the checkbox next to “Slow-Loading Trackers” to improve page load performance.

Click the checkbox next to “Third-Party Cookies” and select “Trackers (recommended)” to block cross-site tracking cookies.

You can disable these protections by clicking the gear icon in the control center and unchecking the checkboxes next to “Slow-Loading Trackers” and “Third-party Cookies”.

Click to expand...

Source: Changing Our Approach to Anti-tracking - Future Releases

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Jonathan Power · Sep 3, 2018

Anti-tracking software for Windows Phone

Hi there, I am still wondering if anyone has recommendations for anti-tracking apps that can run on Windows Phone 8.1 so that Facebook etc can't track my web-surfing and other activities on the phone.

Surely someone has some suggestions!

Brink · Sep 3, 2018

An update on Microsoft’s approach to Do Not Track

As industry standards evolve, how we implement those standards evolve as well. So to reflect the current requirements of the privacy standard for tracking preferences, Microsoft is changing how Do Not Track (DNT) is implemented in future versions of our browsers: We will no longer enable it as the default state in Windows Express Settings.

While our implementation of DNT two years ago in Internet Explorer 10 (IE 10) was welcomed by many, others voiced concerns, especially given that discussions were underway at the time to establish an industrywide standard for user tracking preferences.

Since then, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has continued to refine language to address how users express a preference regarding tracking. The latest draft of the standard reads:

Key to that notion of expression is that the signal sent MUST reflect the user’s preference, not the choice of some vendor, institution, site, or network-imposed mechanism outside the user’s control; this applies equally to both the general preference and exceptions. The basic principle is that a tracking preference expression is only transmitted when it reflects a deliberate choice by the user. In the absence of user choice, there is no tracking preference expressed. (Emphasis added.)
Click to expand...

Put simply, we are updating our approach to DNT to eliminate any misunderstanding about whether our chosen implementation will comply with the W3C standard. Without this change, websites that receive a DNT signal from the new browsers could argue that it doesn’t reflect the users’ preference, and therefore, choose not to honor it.

As a result, DNT will not be the default state in Windows Express Settings moving forward, but we will provide customers with clear information on how to turn this feature on in the browser settings should they wish to do so. This change will apply when customers set up a new PC for the first time, as well as when they upgrade from a previous version of Windows or Internet Explorer.

We said in 2012 that browser vendors should clearly communicate to consumers whether the DNT signal is turned off or on, and make it easy for them to change the setting. We did that for IE 10 and IE 11. And we’re continuing to do so with future versions of our browsers. Source: An update on Microsoft's approach to Do Not Track - Microsoft on the Issues

Sasqui · Sep 3, 2018

Overclocking / Undervolting guide for Vega 56 or 64?

Here's a quick laundry list:

List of software to use for overclocking and testing
Examples:
Wattman (and how to find and use it, like an overview, including profiles)
Unigine Valley or Heaven (use this for quick testing while changing settings in Wattman and checking for stability / artifacts) ...just suggesting this
How to monitor cores / mem speeds and temps during testing (I've seen screen overlays, and others using GPUz)

Step-by step overclocking in Wattman
Fan speeds
Power limit
Temp limit
Voltages
Core speeds
Memory speeds

Windows 10: Firefox Changing Approach to Anti-tracking

Firefox Changing Approach to Anti-tracking

Firefox Changing Approach to Anti-tracking

Firefox Changing Approach to Anti-tracking

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