How to Understand Firefox Testing a New Privacy Feature, Working with Meta:
Data privacy is one of the most hotly debated topics in the tech world. Firefox recently took to Reddit to announce that it is experimenting with a new privacy feature, which it developed in collaboration with Meta, aiming to balance user privacy with the ability to support advertising without collecting personal data.
Firefox’s Privacy Woes
Firefox needed to find a way to put itself back on the right side of public opinion. It appears to have found it. Initially, Mozilla released a prototype feature for Firefox 128 that was enabled by default. It used to collect personal data for advertisers. This followed Apple’s promise in ads not to collect data, while Google went back on its promise to eliminate third-party cookies for advertisers.
Bobby Holley, Firefox CTO, posted on Reddit to let users know that Firefox 128 isn’t as bad as it sounds.
The goal isn’t just to deliver your personal data to advertisers but to allow advertisers to get what they are looking for while also allowing you to keep your privacy. This is similar to Google’s reversal of its promise, with Google now claiming it is simply giving users a choice.
It will be up to users to decide whether Holley’s explanation reassures them that using Firefox will keep them and their data safe.
Firefox CTO’s Reddit Post
Holley did his best to cheerlead for Firefox. Admitting there was much discussion about Firefox 128, he feels they just weren’t clear enough about what the “private attribution prototype” actually entailed.
Solving the “massive web of surveillance” is the reason many people work for Mozilla, he stated. Their historical approach to surveillance has focused on browser-based anti-tracking features, he added. Although they have a good track record, he believes that this model faces “two inherent limitations.” Advertisers try to bypass the system, and some users simply accept the defaults they are given.
Firefox wants to design a system that doesn’t have those limitations. They are collaborating with Meta, believing that if both companies heavily invest in the new system’s outcome, they’ll have a better shot at achieving their goal.
The Private Advertising Technology Community Group has been working on this very issue. Holley noted that they released an experimental prototype of the concept in Firefox 128. He sees the prototype as “feature-wise quite bare-bones but uncompromising on the privacy front.”
The prototype implements a Multi-Party Computation system, DAP/Prio. Some of the best cryptographers have tested it. It’s a temporary prototype, and the expectation is for it to be low-volume. The goal is for it to inform the PATCG’s work and make it more successful. It’s not targeting users so much as measuring what they do on the Internet.
Holley feels that the prototype’s inner workings are stronger than those of others and meet the higher bar expected of it.Additionally, you can turn it off whenever you want.
He believes that if his company gets it right, they could eliminate the surveillance aspect of digital advertising. Holley added that a “truly private attribution mechanism would make it viable for businesses to stop tracking people and enable browsers and regulators to clamp down much more aggressively on those who continue to do so.”
If you’d rather stick with a browser with more of a promise of privacy, check out the top browsers with a focus on privacy.