Mozilla Welcomes Anonym: Privacy Preserving Digital Advertising

i don't wanna see another ad on the web in my life, so i'll just keep on using ublock.

Yeah pretty much. The privacy invasion of ad companies is terrible for sure, but the whole seeing ads all over the damn place in the first place is also annoying enough that even if they were somehow completely tracker-free I would still block them.

This sounds a whole lot like privacy sandbox.
You know, Google Topics.
The thing nobody wanted.

And honestly, reading through the article here, I don't see many ways that it'll be much better. If advertisements are matched on your local machine, then data is still being amalgamated somewhere. This is similar to Google Topics and Microsoft Recall, two things people complain about. For good reason.

The online advertising industry is undergoing a significant transformation. With growing consumer concerns and increasing scrutiny from regulators, it’s evident that current data practices are excessive and unsustainable.

It's strange that Mozilla, a company that constantly positions itself as the ethical alternative to big tech, is saying "companies are being mandated out of unethical advertising."

Secure Environment: Data sets are matched in a highly secure environment

Without any further information, this means so very little. Is it done locally? On their servers? Who knows.

By combining Mozilla’s scale and trusted reputation with Anonym’s cutting-edge technology, we can enhance user privacy and advertising effectiveness, leveling the playing field for all stakeholders.

When advertising is the business, your attention is the product. Maybe I'm being too unkind to Mozilla here, but it's their press release and they can be as specific as they choose.

Anonym was founded with two core beliefs: First, that people have a fundamental right to privacy in online interactions...

This is the sort of meaningless fluff that you see at the front of every privacy policy, including that of the most invasive companies.

... and second, that digital advertising is critical for the sustainability of free content, services and experiences.

That's the only way to offer free services?! What about donation-based models? Maybe Mozilla could have set up something like what Brave has, except not based around a sketchy cryptocurrency.

In fact, GNU Taler exists for this very purpose.

Anonym was founded in 2022 by former Meta executives

Meta. The company known for loving user privacy.

I was hoping Mozilla would finally shut up about putting AI into everything, but in retrospect, maybe they should go back to that.

I'm reading through the Anonymco privacy policy. Some standouts:

We collect... IP address, social media user names, passwords and other security information,

Passwords?!

...your browsing and click history, including information about how you navigate within our Site and Services...

...We collect and verify resumes, employment eligibility, education, and employment history from job applicants. This includes information about your skills and qualifications for the position....

Okay, great, they know how employable you are

We may disclose Personal Information and any other information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties... to prevent or stop any illegal, unethical, or legally actionable activity...

They are leaving the door open to disclose your data to private mercenaries to prevent... Pre-crime, I think.

We use Google Analytics on the Site and Services to analyze how users use the Site and Services, and to provide advertisements to you on other websites.

THEY USE GOOGLE ON YOUR DATA.

This really sounds like Mozilla snapped up the first company with the right buzzwords that they could find, rather than looking for the best one. It sounds like a repeat of the OneRep privacy disaster, when they partnered with a corporation that sold people's data and used their ownership of it to basically demand ransom payments for its removal.

Passwords?!

Yeah, that and usernames are a big nope from me.

I'm not opposed to the idea of privacy-oriented advertising, but it needs to be:

local only - no service, including Mozilla, can correlate me to ads being shown; advertisers and Mozilla can only know broad stats

opt-in - ideally it would replace ads on websites, not add ads, and ad-block should continue to be effective; I'm willing to disable ad-block if a site opts-in to privacy-friendly ads (my concern is tracking, I don't mind them getting paid)

auditable - I should be able to see why certain ads are being shown, and verify that none of that metadata leaves my computer

THEY USE GOOGLE ON YOUR DATA.

Again, big nope from me. I hope Mozilla significantly changes how they operate and only uses their talent to build something actually privacy-focused. That's a pretty big ask, so I'm not optimistic.
- My hopes are not high. Right before FakeSpot got bought out by Mozilla, they changed their privacy policy to add a "we will sell your data if we get bought out" clause.
  
  (As a Mozilla product now, FakeSpot still retains private data and the right to sell it to advertising companies. So, at least to me, Mozilla has been an adtech company since 2023.)
It's so much worse than I thought, and I already hated it.
For a company who has a whole schtick going where they read and critique other companies' privacy policies, this is pretty ludicrous.
- All I can do is tap on the little graphic I made from their last buyout (that literally made Mozilla into an data broker):
  
  FakeSpot privacy lowlights (I can't tell if the image is linking correctly)
  
  The wing of Mozilla that puts out press releases about invasive car companies seems to have no influence on the wing of Mozilla acquiring and injecting random crap into Firefox.
Is it done locally? On their servers? Who knows.

You know it's on their servers. 🙂 Otherwise they would be beating so much around the bush.
That’s the only way to offer free services?! What about donation-based models? Maybe Mozilla could have set up something like what Brave has, except not based around a sketchy cryptocurrency.

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but I thought Brave only gave donatable tokens to users as a reward for watching ads... ads which Brave curated for the user based on their activity. It's just targeted ad revenue with extra steps.

At first blush, it seems to me that both Brave and Anonym want to be the middleman for targeted advertising. What am I missing?
- I think you can add your own money into Brave to tip people extra.
  
  And the biggest difference is...
  
  Brave sold itself on this as a feature since day one
  
  Brave had the audience who wanted this
  
  The Brave software is a known factor; what's going to happen to Firefox is unknown.

I am a little disgusted by this because now both major browser engines are being developed by an advertising company, creating more incentives for future web technologies that strengthen tracking and undermine ad blocking.

From what I understand, this is an anonymized targeted ad company. In other words, ads are still targeted to the individual user, it is just harder for the advertiser to track (or profile) an individual user. Are there any companies still doing untargeted ads, ads where the advertiser might pick what site their ad goes on but cannot target a specific user demographic?

Stolen from r*ddit, this is what the option looks like in the config (already in beta/dev channel)

also stolen from r*ddit: "Anonym was founded in 2022 by former Meta executives Brad Smallwood and Graham Mudd."

Librewolf is the new Firefox

Change my mind
- I switched a few months back after using Firefox /w ArkenWolf for years.
  
  It's great having an out the box product I don't have to immediately tweak settings or install 3rd party tweaks & plugins to have a decent experience with.

I wonder if the process is open source or we just take their word that it's privacy preserving. Anyway, privacy is not the only problem with online advertising, so I'm not going to give up adblocking any time soon.

It's just an advertising company that knows to throw in some buzzwords.

Anonym was founded in 2022 by former Meta executives [...]. The company was backed by [various venture capital corporations and multiple] strategic individual investors.

For maximum humor, run the bullshit.js bookmarklet.

https://mourner.github.io/bullshit.js/
- Wow, lots of red on that page using that bookmarklet...
- Is there a way for one to use this on android FF?
  
  Edit:
  Found one. Bookmarking the following(got it from view-source:) worked:
  javascript:(function(){var d=document,s=d.createElement('script');s.crossOrigin='anonymous';s.src='https://unpkg.com/@mourner/bullshit@1.3.0/bullshit.js';d.body.appendChild(s);}())
  
  Websites that helped:
  https://paul.kinlan.me/use-bookmarklets-on-chrome-on-android/
  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63614702/bookmarklet-functionality-missing-in-firefox-android#63620174
  Thanks for sharing the link

Advertising can't be privacy preserving. What gives advertisement value is the fact that it's targeted.

Contextual ads can be privacy preserving. As in Netflix ads in a entertainment page. The problem is targeting the ad on people, and not on content.

Great

I love how Mozilla seems to be trying so hard to kill itself. You don't see Google marketing Chrome as the browser that serves you ads and sends back telemetry.

Not the first time Mozilla has done something like this. In 2017, Mozilla stealthily installed a tracking and advertising plugin called Cliqz on a small number of German user's computers, which provided users with targeted ads, with very similar language to what Mozilla is currently trying to incorporate with Anonym.
- Fun fact: Cliqz also developed a search engine, which later got purchased by Brave and renamed Brave Search.

Bollocks

for anybody that wants to disable it, go to the settings and search for "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement"

(or through the dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled flag in about:config)

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

This is why i am not giving another penny to Mozilla ever again

i really wish i could donate to just firefox and not mozilla, I just want firefox to be better and not to spend money on all these weird things.
- Don't worry, they can make plenty of money off of you (stock settings of course)

JS compatible browsers that actually respect your privacy:

Mozilla is not your friend, and they're not saving the web from Google

You forgot Librewolf and Waterfox
- why I didn't list librewolf or waterfox
The biggest problem with the alternative browsers I wanted to use is, that they are not managed by my distribution (repository).
- What distribution are you using? Every distro I've tried, even the more obscure ones (alpine, void, openbsd), package most of the webkit/webengine browsers.

Terrible news

good cop bad cop

bad cop worse cop