Archive for Mozilla

Mozilla And Facebook Propose New Ad Tech That Preserves Your Privacy…. Think About That For A Moment

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on February 12, 2022 by itnerd

From the “I did not see this coming” department comes news that Meta/Facebook has teamed up with Mozilla to come up with new technology that can measure “conversions” from advertising while still preserving privacy. The proposed new technology is called Interoperable Private Attribution, or IPA:

IPA has two key privacy-preserving features. First, it uses Multi-Party Computation (MPC) to avoid allowing any single entity — websites, browser makers, or advertisers — to learn about user behavior. Mozilla has some experience with MPC systems as we’ve deployed Prio for privacy-preserving telemetry. Second, it is an aggregated system, which means that it produces results that cannot be linked to individual users. Together these features mean that IPA cannot be used to track or profile users.

IPA is designed to provide a lot of flexibility for advertising businesses in terms of how they use the system. Cross-device and cross-browser attribution options in IPA enable new and more robust attribution capabilities, while maintaining privacy. The IPA proposal aims to ensure that all sites benefit from these features with the match key concept, which allows smaller players to access the greater reach of entities to cross-device attribution.

My $0.02 worth goes something like this:

  1. if Facebook is involved at all then it’s going to be all shades of wrong.
  2. Mozilla is just part of this because Facebook has cash and name brand recognition.
  3. The invasive tactics by various companies to gather more and more data about me has really made me jaded about any proposal that any company has that claims to preserve my privacy. And when one of those proposals comes from Facebook. There’s zero chance that I would believe it seeing as Facebook’s whole business model is about invading your privacy so that they can make a buck.

As far as I am concerned, this proposal is DOA. And Mozilla’s involvement really makes me think not as highly about Mozilla as I once did. If I were them, I would rethink my involvement with Facebook as that smells like a deal with the Devil.

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Mozilla Is Going To Track Facebook Tracking You Via A Study With Journalists

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 12, 2022 by itnerd

This should be interesting.

Mozilla has announced that they are starting a study and it involves figuring out how Facebook tracks you:

In a collaboration between journalists at The Markup and Mozilla researchers, this study seeks to map Facebook’s pixel tracking network and understand the kinds of information it collects on sites across the web. The Markup will use the data collected in this study to create investigative journalism around the kinds of information Facebook collects about you, and where.

And:

According to its own privacy policy, Facebook may collect information about you across the web even if you don’t have a Facebook account. One way Facebook performs this tracking is through a network of “pixels” that may be installed on many of the sites you visit. By joining this study, you will help Rally and The Markup investigate and report on where Facebook is tracking you and what kind of information they are collecting.

Now this is going to be very interesting to see what data Facebook is actually collecting as I am pretty sure that they are likely not being truthful about that. But I guess we’re about to find out. If you want to participate, you will need to download Mozilla Rally which is a browser extension that will collect data sent out by Facebook’s pixels as you browse across the web. Aside from that data, the extension also keeps track of the time spent on different web pages, the URLs that the browser visits, and more. Mozilla was quick to note in its announcement that the only data being exported from the extension will be de-identified, and not shared with any third parties besides the Markup’s reporters. And I believe that as I have a lot more trust in Mozilla than I do in Facebook.

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PGP & S/MIME Email Vulnerable To Being Read By Third Parties Say Researchers

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on May 14, 2018 by itnerd

A group of European security researchers have released a warning about a set of vulnerabilities affecting users of PGP and S/MIME. These are standards that prevent people from reading your email by securing and encrypting it. Except the researchers have shown that people can still read your email. Here’s the details from the EFF:

A group of European security researchers have released a warning about a set of vulnerabilities affecting users of PGP and S/MIME. EFF has been in communication with the research team, and can confirm that these vulnerabilities pose an immediate risk to those using these tools for email communication, including the potential exposure of the contents of past messages.

And:

Our advice, which mirrors that of the researchers, is to immediately disable and/or uninstall tools that automatically decrypt PGP-encrypted email. Until the flaws described in the paper are more widely understood and fixed, users should arrange for the use of alternative end-to-end secure channels, such as Signal, and temporarily stop sending and especially reading PGP-encrypted email.

The flaws seem to affect Apple Mail with GPGTools, Mozilla Thunderbird with Engimail, and Outlook with Gpg4win. You’re going to note that all those email clients have to be used with a secondary application or plugin for PGP and S/MIME to work. That’s because the problem is in how email program plugins handle the mail after it’s been decrypted, not in the underlying PGP/SMIME code. And only for HTML emails, and only in the email clients noted above. So if you are using a different email client then you are fine. Probably. If you understand how PGP/SMIME works, and are willing to do some manula work, then you are still fine.

Well see what all the affected vendors do to address this as I suspect a response will be quick.

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BREAKING: Mozilla CEO Resigns [UPDATED]

Posted in Commentary with tags , on April 3, 2014 by itnerd

My post from this morning wondered aloud if the protest by OkCupid against the CEO of Mozilla Brendan Eich was over when they stopped blocking Firefox. Now I have my answer. It is over because Eich has resigned according to this Mozilla Blog post. I guess that OkCupid knew this was coming. You can also consider this a win for advocates of same sex marriage (and I count myself in that category).

This is a breaking story. Thus I will update this as I get more details.

UPDATE: News.com has much more on this story.

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OkCupid Stops Firefox Boycott… But Is This Over?

Posted in Commentary with tags , on April 3, 2014 by itnerd

Dating site OkCupid which was in the news earlier this week for protesting the CEO of Mozilla’s stance on same sex marriage by blocking the usage of Firefox on its site seems to have backed away from that according to news.com:

OKCupid has removed a letter that only Firefox users could see asking them to change browsers over the anti-gay marriage politics of Brendan Eich, Mozilla’s newly appointed CEO.

When asked for comment, here’s what the dating site said:

OKCupid declined to comment, saying only that the company would issue a statement in “the next few days.” A call placed to co-founder Christian Rudder was not immediately returned.

So, does this mean the protest over? Or is there something else coming? I suggest watching this story for further developments as I suspect that there are some coming.

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OkCupid Takes Shot At Mozilla CEO By Banning Firefox

Posted in Commentary with tags , on April 2, 2014 by itnerd

The same sex marriage debate is something that is a hot button issue. Companies have often gotten involved in the debate, but I haven’t heard of anything like this. Dating site OkCupid has decided to ban the Firefox browser because the dating site doesn’t like the views of the new CEO of Mozilla. Here’s the details from CNN:

When OkCupid members navigate to the site on a Firefox browser, they are met with a message encouraging them to use an alternative browser to access the site, including Google Chrome, Opera, Safari and the amusingly misspelled Internet Exploder.

“Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure,” reads the message.

The page points out that 8% of the matches made on OkCupid are between same-sex couples.

Now what could the CEO of Mozilla have possibly done to earn this sort of treatment. How about this?:

Last week, Mozilla promoted [Brendan] Eich, a longtime employee who was previously the company’s chief technology officer, to the position of CEO. The move prompted renewed outrage by third-party developers and employees. Eich donated $1,000 to support Propostion 8 in 2008. The California ballot initiative sought to ban same-sex marriage in the state. The donation was made public in 2012 but Eich held onto his job.

I can see why that might tick some people off. And Eich tried to put this to rest:

Eich posted a blog on his personal site last week addressing the backlash. He outlined his plan to support LGBT-friendly policies at Mozilla and expressed “sorrow at having caused pain.”

“I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone,” he said.

But it hasn’t put the controversy to rest. Clearly.

So, do you think that companies should do these sorts of things in the interest of being good corporate citizens? Or should they stay out of politics and focus on making a buck? Please share your thoughts and please keep it civil.

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Hey Mozilla! Stop Rolling Out Frequent Major Firefox Updates!

Posted in Commentary with tags , on September 29, 2011 by itnerd

Is it just me, or every couple of months there’s a new major release of Firefox? Version 7 of the open source browser has just hitting the streets this week. For those of you keeping score, here’s the release schedule for all the major versions of Firefox:

  • Firefox 6 was released on August 16, 2011
  • Firefox 5 was released on June 21, 2011
  • Firefox 4 was released on March 18, 2011
  • Firefox 3 was released on June 17, 2008
  • Firefox 2 was released on October 24, 2006
  • Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004

So. after Firefox 4 hit the streets, it’s been a release every two or three months. This is insane. Developer are going to get run ragged testing their web apps with each new release of the browser. Not to mention that enterprises who may want to use Firefox would run into the same issue.

The problem is that it may get worse.

The word on the street is that updates may become even more frequent:

“Yes, I absolutely think in the future we will shorten the cycle – releases. “We have some work to do to make 6 weeks smooth from a process, tool, and product side. When we get 6 weeks down to a science we can shorten as needed.”

Lovely.

My advice to Mozilla. Stop the insanity. Releasing major Firefox updates weeks apart is insane. Slow down and allow users to actually adopt the browser and only release bug and security fixes when needed. That I think would help you to gain marketshre. After all, most users don’t see the benefit of shoving all these updates down their throats so frequently as they only surf the net with a browser and watch YouTube videos. You might want to keep that in mind.

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Mozilla CEO On Chrome: “No Real Surprise”

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on September 2, 2008 by itnerd

Mozilla CEO John Lily cannot be a happy camper, but he tried his best to put a positive spin on Google’s announcement of their Chrome web browser via his blog today:

“Competition often results in innovation of one sort or another — in the browser you can see that this is true in spades this year, with huge Javascript performance increases, security process advances, and user interface breakthroughs. I’d expect that to continue now that Google has thrown their hat in the ring.”

That’s a good point. Competition is good for innovation. Perhaps someone should point that out to Microsoft. But I digress.  He goes on to say:

“Mozilla and Google have always been different organizations, with different missions, reasons for existing, and ways of doing things. I think both organizations have done much over the last few years to improve and open the Web, and we’ve had very good collaborations that include the technical, product, and financial. On the technical side of things, we’ve collaborated most recently on Breakpad, the system we use for crash reports — stuff like that will continue. On the product front, we’ve worked with them to implement best-in-class anti-phishing and anti-malware that we’ve built into Firefox, and looks like they’re building into Chrome. On the financial front, as has been reported lately, we’ve just renewed our economic arrangement with them through November 2011, which means a lot for our ability to continue to invest in Firefox and in new things like mobile and services.”

That means the gravy train financial support for the Mozilla project will continue for some time to come. Google is the default search engine on the Mozilla Firefox browser. That nets Mozilla significant amounts of cash. For example, Google revenues were $56 million of the $66 million that Mozilla Corp. made in 2006. Not exactly chump change.

I suppose at the end of the day he has no choice but to spin the positive and hope that a competitive landscape helps Firefox survive at the end of the day. I’m not saying that Firefox is doomed or anything, but Chrome is a 700 pound gorilla that’s going to be tough to ignore.

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Firefox 3.0 To Be Released Next Tuesday!

Posted in Commentary with tags , on June 12, 2008 by itnerd

According to the Mozilla Developer blog, the long awaited Firefox 3.0 will be released on Tuesday, June 17, 2008:

“After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.”

They’re also trying to organize release parties all over the world in addition to attempt to set the world download record. Mark your calendars and get ready to download!

UPDATE: If you can’t wait to get your hands on this, Mozilla kicked the latest release candidate out to the world. The usual warnings about running pre-release software apply.

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