Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Backtracks On Third-Party Cookie Blocking
An anonymous reader writes "Remember when Mozilla announced that it would soon block third-party cookies by default? Not so fast. According to a new behind-the-scenes report in the San Francisco Chronicle, 'it's not clear when it will happen — or if it will at all.' Mozilla's leadership is apparently no longer committed to the feature, and the related Cookie Clearinghouse collaboration is delayed well into 2014. Who's to blame? According to Dan Auerbach, Staff Technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 'The ad industry has a ton of people, basically lobbyists, who spent a lot of time trying to convince Mozilla this was bad for the economy... I think they were somewhat successful.' Not a good showing for the purportedly pro-user organization."
Mozilla is not free, they get a boatloads of money from various organizations which depend on AD tracking.
Names should be named.
Internet sales and related advertising churn a hell of a lot of money through the world economy. I'm playing devil's advocate here, but is it possible that Mozilla saw that there was some merit to what these lobbyists were saying and made the decision based on the fact that as maker of one of the biggest browsers in the world their decisions really can affect economies on a global scale?
Maybe 'cause they get the majority of their money from Google.
And Google would never do evil....
Although a good idea in general, one totally not needed.
Turn on permanent private/incognito Browsing mode. Done.
I let sites I visit set whatever obnoxious privacy-stealing cookies they want - Because those cookies cease to exist outside the current tab.
Someone at the Mozilla Foundation must have found a horse's head in his bed.
Ahhh those "lobbyists" and their quirky italian accent... That'sa badda forr dee economee...
Nobody walks.
"purportedly pro-user organization"
Yeah right. Someone hasnt been paying attention to them for many years, it does appear.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Why should web marketers feel entitled to additional data just because of the media change. When I read a newspaper, marketers can't even tell I read an ad much less who I am or what I did before or after reading the ad. They have the ability to tell the browser requested the ad, that should be all info they get about anyone.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
All open source projects are heavily vulnerable to bribery; honesty alone triumphs.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4411077&cid=45334083
Ad industry goons have gazillions more cash to throw than ideologists in the open source world can say no to.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
As long as it is still an option in Preferences. The first thing I do when I install the browser is go to Preferences and disable third party cookies, choose delete cookies when I close the browser and auto updates. As long as these options are available I'll still use mozilla or a clone.
"pro-user organization"?
I think this could be said years ago, when they actually delivered a fairly stable browser, which did just that: Browse the internet.
Nowadays there's so much crud in each version, where my personal opinion is that most of the extra features should either be done through downloading plugins, or at least give me the option to disable some of it.
Dan Auerbach? That guy makes great music...
Time to fork Firefox and have a totally privacy minded browser , no advertisement , no user tracking possible and no third party cookies.
We need to be secure and free from the tyranny of advertisers and spying agencies. Time to make a browser that have OUR ( We the Users ) interests in mind.
It's time to make a fork and may the man who has the interests of the users in mind win .
Informed users have any number of plugins to ensure their privacy while browsing. I personally use ghostery (breaks a minimum of sites), Adblock (currently disabled, but doesn't reall break anything) and NoScript (which makes browsing hell, but does a damn good job). Plus I block third party cookies and clear all other cookies on browser restart, clear all flash cookies on restart via Ghostery (and store them in a ramdisk for good measure) and disable HTTP referers (depressingly spelled incorrectly). Nothing's more annoying than sites that use referers as a form of authentication, so I generally just sign on to those services less. Finally, I've started doing sensitive things (logging into email/banking) in a private tab, thanks to LinkedIn's kindly alerting us to how people may like to abuse your sessions on other sites. If I get really paranoid about this, then I'll just start doing this stuff in a VM instead. I'm sure that there's more that can be done, which I'll research in my spare time, but as long as I have control of my device (which you damn well better believe I do... I hope) then tracking is a game that's bent towards those being tracked, and we should be able to adapt to whatever they do.
But for those users who don't know/care, fine with me. Advertisers prey on the ignorant and they are the ones that make the market work. They're also the ones that make the market crash due to vulnerability to idiotic schemes like the sub-prime mortage crisis and ponzi schemes a la Madoff, but it's a valid trade-off.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
You suddenly find lots of things not working. Your credit card goes though the "verified by visa" then shows an error - leaving you unsure if the payment went (it didn't). The google login to other sites fail, facebook login fails all by itself. I tried it for a bit then gave up!
The real problem is that sites are starting to expect this behavior by default. Someone with a lot of clout needs to ship a browser with 3rd-party cookies disabled, so sites stop relying on it.
When did Mozilla enable 3rd-party cookies? The original Netscape cookie specification back in the 90s specifically stated rules to prevent 3rd-party cookie usage. Yet somehow today it is on by default in most browsers. How and why did that change? There's simply no reason for it.
Mozilla jumped the shark long, long ago. It stopped being the browser to "take back the web" and became a bloat fest of crapulent features. The latest moves such as not being able to block javascript, and now now not block cookies, show how badly it has failed. Ho hum, fork and forget.
Google pays their bills after all.
The organization I most expected to be working towards our privacy and telling lobbyists to piss off has now sold out, apparently.
Do you have any idea how many metrics and tracking companies have their shit on pages? Do you think that we want all of that crap so that some marketing asshole can know everything we do and monetize it?
Apple is apparently incompetent at blocking 3rd party cookies in Safari (because it doesn't work), and now Mozilla is deciding not to do it. I doubt very much Google is going to do anything in Chrome which would cut into their revenues.
So, I have to conclude that Mozilla has decided they no longer want to be the ones to champion our privacy and keep the ugly bits of the internet at bay.
On behalf of your users, let me say: you suck, and you've sold out.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The internet runs on advertising (youtube, google, gmail, twitter, facebook, etc...) and 3rd cookies are a HUGE part of tracking profitability for all online advertisers.
If you're buying ad's and cannot track your ROI your SCREWED. Thus companies can't pay for their servers, programmers it snowballs the entire web.
You want a free & open internet? Remove you ad blocker & help pay for the services you use for free.
Concerned about your privacy with ads? Wait till everyone starts "pay-walling" their websites (eg WSJ, NYT etc) and you have to shell out cash AND give up your credit card.
Apple's Safari already blocks third party cookies by default, and it is the number one browser on mobile devices. So why is the advertising industry is fighting hard to prevent Mozilla from blocking third party cookies by default while keeping quiet about Apple's Safari browser? Something is wrong here!
...about an setting that takes me seconds to adjust?
Every single time something sh#tty happens which adversely affects the common population, there is a lobbyist. Has anything 'good' ever happened when these people were involved?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
They don't feel entitled; they simply want it, so they're fighting to get it. And they want it more than you want it not, so they have worked hard to persuade Mozilla to keep Firefox lame. What did you do, to try to persuade Mozilla to publish a not-lame browser? (Did you pay more? Did you pay at all?)
They win, because they care more than you do. That's also why Republicans and Democrats are in power; people don't care about governing, as they prove every two years.
As usual.
If someone is trying to stop being tracked, then the response is NOT "Find other ways to track them", but to realise that anything you get from them will only cause them to get pissed off at you even more.
And what do you think pissing people off when you want something from them does?
That's right: means they won't cooperate or even deliberately sabotage your efforts.
So how about, you know, respecting that some people do not want to be tracked and that any data you may get will be essentially worthless anyway and, well, stop trying to track them.
If you want to put stuff on there I didn't ask for, then pay for my computer.
Since when if Mozilla pro-user? They made Firefox, second only to Chrome in disregarding what the user wants. It's the developers pet project.
The only reason we are reading about the dissolution or blocking of cookies is b/c they are NO LONGER NECESSARY! Unique metrics and collaboration/collusion behind the scenes have made tracking a user across a multitude of sites without using cookies a reality, hence the "olive branch" from the marketeers & their ilk. These red-herring news stories are all we get anymore, welcome to the New Dark Age.... it's blindingly bright.
' Not a good showing for the purportedly pro-Google organization'.
FTFY
Here's an extension that works, it just toggles the cookie pref globally, and does not re-enable 3rd party cookies when clicked on.
Actually, use it in Safari, too... https://www.abine.com/dntdetail.php
Aside from the advertising issue, blocking third party cookies could break behaviour that the user is expecting
Blocking third party cookies is the Safari default. If the site works for Mac and iOS users, it'll work for Firefox users too.
IIRC, fewer than 10% of Safari users have gone and turned on third-party cookies.
Good point, but Safari will still fetch web bugs and run any 3rd-party code.
Mozilla's "threat" is just tweaking the edges of the problem. Anti-tracking needs to be comprehensive and implemented fully on the client by an independent coder (the 'other' anti-tracking addon is in partnership with the ad industry).
You'd be an idiot to block all 3rd party cookies. It'd be like deciding to only eat local organic no matter what.
The point is not that we are left with options to block tracking. The point is that Mozilla made a big announcement that they were going to do something that was, IMHO, the morally right thing to do, but then they changed their mind as soon as evil people with money showed up. The point is that it was a publicity stunt that just shows that Mozilla doesn't actually give a shit. Fuck the advertising companies! The world has enough commercials as it is. I wish that an organization big enough to be noticed would make an example and tell the ad companies to shove their money up their ass. It is bad enough that evil people with money get their way, but what really pisses me off is someone acting like they care and are gonna do something about it, only to use it as a bait and switch.