Firefox added ad tracking and has already turned it on without asking you

...... I don't know of this is satire or not.

• There is now a feature labeled "Privacy-preserving ad measurement" near the bottom of your Firefox Privacy settings. I recommend turning it off, or switching to a more privacy-conscious browser such as Google Chrome.

I haven’t looked into the technicals much further than the support page.

The way i read it, it sounds like the companies will get some general data if their ads work without a profile about you being created. I would be fine with that. What I don’t like is the lack of communication to users about it being enabled.

PPA does not involve websites tracking you. Instead, your browser is in control. This means strong privacy safeguards, including the option to not participate.

Privacy-preserving attribution works as follows:

1. Websites that show you ads can ask Firefox to remember these ads. When this happens, Firefox stores an “impression” which contains a little bit of information about the ad, including a destination website.
2. If you visit the destination website and do something that the website considers to be important enough to count (a “conversion”), that website can ask Firefox to generate a report. The destination website specifies what ads it is interested in.
3. Firefox creates a report based on what the website asks, but does not give the result to the website. Instead, Firefox encrypts the report and anonymously submits it using the Distributed Aggregation Protocol (DAP) to an “aggregation service”.
4. Your results are combined with many similar reports by the aggregation service. The destination website periodically receives a summary of the reports. The summary includes noise that provides differential privacy.

This approach has a lot of advantages over legacy attribution methods, which involve many companies learning a lot about what you do online.

PPA does not involve sending information about your browsing activities to anyone. This includes Mozilla and our DAP partner (ISRG). Advertisers only receive aggregate information that answers basic questions about the effectiveness of their advertising.

This all gets very technical, but we have additional reading for anyone interested in the details about how this works, like our announcement from February 2022 and this technical explainer.

Here's a take by a Mozilla employee :

• Mozilla has been ad funded since 2005
• Browser development is not sustainable by just donations
• Transparency is most important

https://fosstodon.org/@gabrielesvelto/112779506156690032

Oh shit. Now that I have checked, it was turned on by default on mine too.

What's wrong with you mozilla ?? Firefox was supposed to be the alternative

You can disable this "feature":

1. Visit about:config

2. Set "dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled" to false

"It's okay, we can enshitify a little." - the board at Mozilla probably.

librewolf ftw

Here's the page about it:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution

Read that instead of someones rant about it, which imo seems a bit obtuse.

Here's the information about it. It's anonymous and It can be turned off https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution?as=u&utm_source=inproduct

Noice

I guess librewolf is the future

I mean, it doesn't look like it's personally identifiable at all, just aggregate.

Is it tracking you or tracking ads? If it was the latter and it is made public, that is information I'm sure we would all be interested in

WTF... i thought this was just click bait but went to check on my phone as i am not at my PC right now

I see this as them giving companies a more privacy-preserving alternative to tracking. And just another privacy setting to opt out for us.

Instead of a reactive social media post, here's how it works.

The only real alternative to this conflict of interest between companies and customers is an independent browser.

weirdly if you search "website advertising preferences" in the firefox setting search bar nothing comes up, you have to manually scroll to find it

This almost sounds like a hoax. But assuming it's true... Install LibreWolf. It's Firefox without the infuriating Mozilla stupid.

Is google corrupting Mozilla?

Librewolf

There are people that use Firefox who also get served ads?

Literally every browser has this option, and it gives users a choice. If you use an ad blocker, it has this option as well and has had it for several years now.

In which version is this?

So.... finally Mozilla has slowly but surely going into the dark side huh...
I'm not surprised anymore, they even had telemetry code inside android apps from waaay back then (although seems for debugging purpose)

In the end I'm not justify all company bc they need money for survive & exist, although i don't like the way they do it

What’s the behavior before this option was added? Would websites track you or not?

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/p1m2bc/who_are_adjust_the_mobile_marketing_vendor_used/

Whatever it is, it's been around for at least 3 years.

They haven't added ad tracking. That's a fake news. You should read up on how it actually works.

Permanently Deleted

And they wonder why their market share is decreasing.

The only major browser that actually seems to care about their users is Vivaldi, sadly.

• Main dev of open source Ladybird browser not liking homosexuals or whatever:

Community: Boo!

• Mozilla acquiring an ad tech company and implementing it now:

Community: well, they have to (and whatever).

I sense some mental dissonance.