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the_other

How do they decide which sponsored ad to show you?

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On your device: "Interests: Candles, Wooden Sculptures, Underwater Basket Weaving"

Advertiser: "Show this to users who like Candles."

Mozilla: "OK"

That's pretty standard and can be used to track people on the advertiser's side still, depending on how the ad itself is served and how clicks on the ad are processed.

Does Firefox download information about every ad that advertisers have paid for, and then match against local data to decide which ad to serve?

If not, when it queries to find out which ads to serve, what data does is sent with that query (or prior to that query)?

Firefox has done a lot of work on these problems. I don't have it in front of me, but they described in detail what they do.

I haven't been able to find any documentation of this, other than "we acquired Anonym, which claims to send the data to trusted execution environments".

They've been working on it since long before Anonym. First three links from my search:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/a...

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/principles/

I'm sure the internet police's thorough investigation into themselves has shown they are doing nothing wrong.

I don't know what that's based on or means, but they do have the mission of protecting privacy and this would be a core contribution to that:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/

Usually it's the sponsor who decides. Because, for example, it's pointless to show Walmart ads in North Korea. (I'm not a mz insider)

It's a great question, and that is the tech Mozilla / Firefox have been working on and using for years.

Advertising is, unfortunately, necessary to funding most of the web, and targeting is necessary to advertising. As a result, users are surveiled and tracked heavily.

But imagine if the targeting could be done without surveillance and tracking - then users could largely use the web in private. It would be revolutionary. That's what Firefox has figured out and is investing more in:

https://www.adexchanger.com/privacy/mozilla-acquires-anonym-...

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