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Key actionable info: use Firefox.

Completely immune from this and you don't need to worry that toggle will get mysteriously turn back on.

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> you don't need to worry that toggle will get mysteriously turn back on.

I will be caustious with such statement.

https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/ipa/

IPA now allows these companies to track users across multiple IP addresses, and regardless of the user's cookie settings, via a unique tracking identifier. It is also proposed that the operating system provides the unique tracking identifier which can then be used by all applications or browsers on a device, allowing different devices behind a single IP address to be distinguished.

Mozilla is one of the authors.

> IPA now allows

Any more info on IPA? That link doesn't even say what the acronym stands for. I couldn't figure out how it's supposed to work, too complicated. Wikipedia doesn't seem to have heard of it, and a cursory websearch didn't offer an explanation.

> Mozilla is one of the authors.

Mozilla as a company, or is it that there are Mozilla developers contributing? If Mozilla are planning to introduce a built-in tracking system to Firefox, doesn't that imply shooting off your one remaining foot?

They released a blog post about it with a little more info: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/privacy-preserving-attri...

I don't understand how this can work. What is to prevent combining the new ostensibly privacy-preserving attribution with existing tracking technology for enhanced identity tracking?

Thanks.

So it looks like Interoperable Private Attribution is mostly Meta people; there's one guy from Mozilla, Eric Rescorla. Eric is not notable for adtech achievements; he's notable for his contributions to internet privacy, and security and cryptography.

[Edit] More detail: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KpdSKD8-Rn0bWPTu4UtK54ks...

Apparently the proposal is to store the match key in browser local storage; which means that you can block it by setting local storage to zero, or by regularly cleaning-out local storage.

That article doesn't mention once the privileges that should be granted to the user. It does mention the powers of the user agent, but that really means the browser manufacturer.

Mozilla has disabled privacy controls in the past without informing users. For example, they removed the “prompt when setting a cookie” (so that you could reject/accept/accept for this session only) without a replacement. Newer versions just accepted all cookies as persistent, non-session cookies automatically. There are other examples like this.

It's difficult to deal with because as the code evolves, so do the configuration settings. The rate of change is high, and it's not always obvious what is relevant to users (and whether a new feature increases or decreases privacy!), so it's hard to communicate this in release notes.

Ding ding ding! Switch now. If you use Chrome, you are complicit in what Google is subjecting the entire world to.

This isn't iPhone vs Android. This isn't vim vs emacs. You can switch browsers in 5 minutes and never notice any meaningful difference.

Degoogle today.

ding ding ding.

switching to brave is no better

Why ?

Because you're still promoting the Chrome web monoculture by using the same rendering and JS engines.

I would argue that it is better, but not as much better as Firefox. The further you can get away from Google Chrome the better, but any distance is beneficial.

I think Brave hews closely enough to upstream that even if they leave out a feature like this, they still help enforce Google's control of the web by enforcing Chrome's status as "the standard," that many devs target.

But, otoh, maybe perfect is the enemy of good here.

Also because Brave is pretty sketchy, like promoting their own cryptocurrency, replacing sites' ads with their own ads, etc.

> ... you don't need to worry that toggle will get mysteriously turn back on.

Using Firefox Developer edition and toggle(s) will get mysteriously turned back on all the time. And Mozilla is not immune to this practice at all for standard Firefox.

Use chromium-ungoogled [1] if you want chrome(ium) without Google-specific stuff.

[1] https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

Using these sort of downstream patch set browsers is rarely a good idea. If it has multiple full-time developers from a respected org dedicated to it, then it can be justifiable (Tor Browser, Brave), but take a look at the gaps in time for these two pages:

https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/rel...

https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/c/ch...

There's often days you're going without security patches. If you want a browser without Google tracking, Firefox is a much better choice.

I don't understand why someone hasn't just setup an automated build system that patches out google/previously-unseen URLs in each new chromium release, and posts builds. That's all you really need to disable telemetry, surely?

I wouldn't call it completely immune, Fx is just better Chrome for time being. Tons of dark patterns and inner circle decision makings.

Okay - your solution? Safari? Edge?

I think Firefox is the least shitty option here.

What’s wrong with Safari in this regard? (except that one needs an Apple device to use it)

I use Safari all the time on my M1 Air but it’s definitely less capable than Firefox for adblocking. Firefox is the only browser that can run uBlock Origin or uMatrix.

AdGuard on Safari seems a reasonable replacement for uBlock Origin. I also recently learned about https://arc.net/ and https://browser.kagi.com/ as better alternatives, though I haven't tried them out and do not know how they compare in terms of tracking.

https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-viva...

Agreed, using Firefox more and more and assisting everyone you know on how to switch and make it default with it is key.

Show someone how to do it, and they can be asked to show someone else

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