Et Tu, Mozilla? Firefox 3 To Get Privacy Mode 326
CWmike writes "Mozilla will respond to Google's Chrome and Microsoft's IE8 with its own private-browsing, or 'porn' mode in Firefox, according to notes posted on its Web site, and is on track to deliver one in 3.1, the version that will likely go beta next month."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Not About Pornography (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets face it. Pornography has been around since the dawn of the internet and in all that time not one browser, newsreader or email client ever offered a "privacy mode" until recently. We're talking since BBS days here. Yes there are some people who would like to spin, or frame, these features as "porn mode". But this is a fairly transparent attempt to discredit what is an important, appropriate and yes disruptive new innovation.
And what has spurred this innovation? What necessity has been the mother of this invention? Porn? No. Thing far more unsettling than that. Phishers, fraudsters, malware have all played their part. People need more protection nowadays. But most of the reasons for privacy features can be summed up in one word.
Marketers.
Modern marketers are utterly relentless, completely amoral and without any scruple whatsoever. They are are with enormous databases, and the desire to fill them with as much data as they can lay their hands on. Tracking users and their habits online, and assaulting them with advertisements based on that data has become an industry in itself. Every social networking website, every online newspaper, every site that has any ability to track its users whatsoever is piping that data straight to an eager marketing department which presumably has some method concocted to throw ads back at users who would rather be left alone.
This is international information collection on an unprecedented scale in human history. To be sure, as of now this is only a practice of private enterprise, the current databases are disorganized and incompatible. But this is a new industry, essentially only a decade or so old. What will happen when its methods, theories and processes standardize? How dangerous will those databases be then?
Google is not blameless in this either. Remember that the company makes its money not on searches, but on advertisements that it offers on its search pages and on other sites. That company is tracking probably the majority of web user by now, and any site that you go to that is affiliated with Google (this includes Slashdot), dutifully makes sure that your presence their and what you are doing is made known to Seattle, so that they may better know your habits. You think they'll just sit on all that juicy marketing data till the end of time and forever "Do No Evil"? Get real. They are a private company and will do whatever they like as long as it is legal. Watch it happen.
So go ahead, call it a "porn" feature, but the reality is that those browsing for porn will probably not even bother to turn it on. It will only be used by those who understand just how dangerous so much personal data in private hands can be.
Make no mistake, this is a disruptive technology. Marketers will not like it. Webmasters will not like it. Google will not like it. So expect substantial mudslinging surrounding this issue in the months to come.
Irony at it's best (Score:4, Insightful)
Pr0n mode can kill free pr0n in theory.
Pretty much every single free porn site on the Internet makes money via affiliate programs. They offer free content in an attempt to sell you a membership to the pay site that the content comes from. The way the affiliate clicks are tracked is via cookies. If every web browser has an easy way to toggle cookie-saving while browsing porn then free porn sites could end up losing a ton of money. They'll go under if such browsing practices become the norm and affiliate programs can't figure out a better way to track than cookies. And avoiding tracking is one of the obvious purposes here.
So a tip to surfers. If you have absolutely no intention of purchasing a pay-site membership ever then leave the cookies off and don't sweat it. But if you purchase porn at all then you're not doing your favourite free site(s) any service by browsing with cookies off.
Re:Pivacy, Private, or Porn Mode (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a login on your computer right? So that other people can't see your files? That means they cannot see your browsing history either. The only reason for a 'stealth mode' is to keep the browsing history secret from *yourself*, so it doesn't helpfully autosuggest embarrassing sites when you start typing in the awesome bar.
Why a seperate mode? (Score:4, Insightful)
Specifically, the mode would:
* Discard all cookies acquired during the private session.
* Not record sites visited to the browser's history.
* Not autofill passwords, and not prompt the user to save passwords.
* Remove all downloads done during the session from the browser's download manager.
These are good web surfing practices to begin with. These seem more like bug fixes to me. Why not make them the default? Why would I ever want to browse without these safeguards?
The Invisible Hand of the REALLY Free Market (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply a case of competition driving another cycle of improvement. Those people who like to claim there's no reason for open source developers to improve and innovate often forget that your basic human being is a competitive critter at heart.
Brilliant! Re:Missed a trick (Score:1, Insightful)
What I would personally like is to be able to add certain sites to a password-protected "privacy list", so that visits to those sites would be stealthed, while visits to other sites would not. I don't want to have to start a special private session, which seems like a pretty lame way to do it. Mozilla should have looked at how to improve this feature by adding something like that, for example. Unfortunately it looks like Mozilla are just implementing the same thing as IE and Chrome, instead of looking to improve on it.
Let me be sure I've got this. Your proposal on how to keep from generating lists of sites you don't want people to know you visit, is to generate a list of sites you don't want people to know you visit.
Brilliant!
Re:Pivacy, Private, or Porn Mode (Score:3, Insightful)
By default I put my snail mail in envelopes (keep my correspondence private), by default I put on clothes (keep my privates... private), and by default I expect the police are not searching my house or tapping my phone (4th Amendment privacy).
That's not really a good analogy. It's not like your browser broadcasts its history. It's just there by default to anyone using your computer. Take your wife (or husband) for example. Just as she, by default, at your computer and logged in, has access to your history, she also has access to what snail mail you get and, with luck, those privates you mentioned.
Re:Pivacy, Private, or Porn Mode (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Missed a trick (Score:5, Insightful)
A list of "private" sites is a pretty convenient way for somebody to figure out what sites you're going to that you don't want people to know about.
The whole point of this is to *not* leave a trail.
Re:Not About Pornography (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern marketers are utterly relentless, completely amoral and without any scruple whatsoever. They are are with enormous databases, and the desire to fill them with as much data as they can lay their hands on.
Ok, settle down for a second and catch your breath. Good.
I work for a company that sells software and services that tracks user behavior as they travel through sites. It sees what you're clicking on, what you're searching on, how long you're taking between clicks, and a few other things. From that data, it tries to figure out what you'd be interested in purchasing. Our customers, mainly online retailers, are free to display this information and recommendations however they see fit. The default display is a simple set of static images and prices for items you might want to purchase. We don't invite users to "punch the monkey".
If you use "privacy mode", or otherwise blow your cookies away between sessions, we won't know who you are the next time you come to the site. So we have nothing to go on about who you are, so we'll probably end up showing you products that you probably aren't interested in.
In essence, I think it's an unfair assertion that marketers are, as you say, "relentless, completely amoral and without any scruple whatsoever." It's their job to try to get you to spend a little more money on their site. If you were planning on buying a $50 item, why not show you a $55 item that more people with browsing habits like you like you are buying anyway? Yes, some marketers can be pushy about that, but that has nothing to do with cookies and tracking.
Re:There have been plugins for this for a long tim (Score:3, Insightful)
The point of the privacy option is it makes it much easier to keep useful things like cookes and history for your day to day browsing while also allowing you to surf anonymously for your "private sites".
Re:IE8 = privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
With IE8 having the functionality to log keystrokes and send those back home the level of privacy is debatable.
From the IE8 Privacy statement, that almost no one will go though the trouble of reading:
"When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with some standard information from your computer such as IP address, browser type, regional and language settings,"
One of these things, is not like the other.
Re:Why a seperate mode? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because:
* I like to be identified automatically when I open slashdot or any community forum.
* I like to come back to the site I just found yesterday
* I don't like to enter passwords again an again
* When I download something, I usually intend to keep it for a while
Re:Why a seperate mode? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are those on by default? Because they are nice features! I like the fact that Firefox remembers the dozens (possibly hundreds) of stupid logins that I have to various sites. I like the fact that cookies allow the site to remember who I am or my preferences so I don't have to log in each time I go there. I occasionally use the history to look for a site I visited earlier and can't remember the address to.
In general, I use Firefox in my account, and no one (other than root) can get to any of that information. And that information can be very useful to me.
Now, on a public computer, making the privacy mode default does make a lot of sense. But there's no reason why it should be turned on for everyone all the time.
Re:Not About Pornography (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Realism (Score:5, Insightful)
I am willing to bet it doesn't stop Adobe Flash [epic.org] to store "cookies" on your PC. It's pretty useless for average Joes to hide their tracks surfing pr0n since they don't know how to disable flash cookies. Worse, they aren't even aware of the existence of these cookies.
Re:Sod privacy! (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, someone in the same sorry state of affairs got mod points. Still, doesn't change that it's a poor way of living. Think about it.
Re:Sod privacy! (Score:1, Insightful)
"People having to hide pleasures from their wifes/SOs makes me sad (Y_Y)"
You sound like somebody without wife/SO
Re:Not About Pornography (Score:1, Insightful)
... Google will not like it. ...
1. Google Makes browser with feature it does not like.
2. Google pouts in a corner.
3. ???
4. Profit?
Get real people, databases like this thrive on IP address information. Sure, lack of cookies might do an extremely little bit for improving privacy, but IP data is several orders of magnitude more important for tracking user habits, and privacy mode cannot hide your IP address.
Webmasters will not like it
I have no problem with it, and many others won't either.
Re:Well technically (Score:3, Insightful)
The trouble with not allowing cookies in the current addons, Stealther for example, is that it blocks the cookies entirely, rather than simply sandboxing them. So reddit or many other sites, for example, keeps asking if you are over 18 and won't allow you past until you allow it to set a cookie. With a sandboxed approach, the site can set the cookie to its hearts content and you, the user, know that the sandbox will be wiped clean when you close the browser/tab.
Re:Irony at it's best (Score:3, Insightful)
Two points:
1) Cookies _are_ saved. Just not past the end of a session. If I click though an ad on a free porn (or any other type of) site to buy a subscription to a pay site, the pay site will still know where I clicked through from, unless there is some other workaround in place by the browser to hide it. All browsers already have a 'hide referrer' option.
2) It's trivially easy for referrers to hash their affiliate ID into the URL that is used to go from the free to the pay site. Cookies and referrer URLs from the browser are not necessary to convey this information through legitimate, prearranged affiliate links.
Re:Realism (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad that people don't have self control and allow themselves to be led around by their biological nature rather the logic nature we have inherited.
Why is your biological nature "wrong"? What compass are you using to tell you what's right and why is it better?
Re:Sod privacy! (Score:3, Insightful)
You sound like somebody without wife/SO
You sound like someone with limited life experience.
The thing Is, Firefox used to be realistic (Score:3, Insightful)
Back in the days of Firefox 2, you could surf with no worries. All you had to do was avoid typing the porn site into the address bar, and you left no noticeable traces. This meant that bookmarks and links (think search results) left virtually no traces.
If you screwed-up, you could easily erase your browsing history. If you were really paranoid, you could turn off cookies while you browsed as well.
Then, along came Firefox 3 with the Awfulbar(TM). Suddenly, your entire web access history plus bookmarks were laid bare, and suddenly there was a need for a privacy mode. I've personally managed to get around the whole annoyance by using "show only typed" with Oldbar (behaves like Firefox 2), but for most general users this is far too complicated.
Of course, they could just make us all entirely happy by removing the Awfulbar(TM), but I'm not expecting miracles.
Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Average Joe's big worry is that Average Jane will go to check her emails and as she types the hot in hotmail, hot-teen-pussy.com comes up in the drop-down box, or worse, hot-twinks.com
Re:Not About Pornography (Score:5, Insightful)
Google will not like it.
really? [google.com]
Google's browser is the first to include one.
Re:The thing Is, Firefox used to be realistic (Score:2, Insightful)
I see your point, but please stop complaining about free software.
I consider myself a press big fan of free software but this argument is crap. Firefox's purpose is to be a web browser that people want to use, not a 'take it or leave it' project. I don't see why something being free automatically nulls and voids someone being unsatisfied with it.
You can always use Firefox 2 if you really want to
Yeah that's why there is a constant nag screen to move up to Firefox 3.0. Firefox obviously gives a shit about what version people use, and does want people in fact to use their browser. It is in firefox's best interest to at least know their users feedback on different things, regardless if it is free or not.
Since when do you have a say in the direction Microsoft, Sun, or IBM go in since they do provide software you have to pay for. Unless you are a preferred valued customer, they will not listen to you.
you can write your own browser, possibly on top of the codebase for Firefox.
Actually most people can't, which is why we have programmers working on Firefox and we have users who run their software. This is also another crap argument. Not everyone is going to write their own. By your post I guess no one should file bug reports either, just fix them and release their own.