from the but-you-might-not-be-able-to-tell dept.
After years of talk, Tor may finally be integrated with the main Firefox browser soon:
The Tor Project announced that it's working with Mozilla to integrate Tor into Firefox. Eventually, this should completely eliminate the need for the Tor Browser, as most of its features would be merged into Firefox's new "super-private mode."
The Tor Browser is based on the Extended Support Release (ESR) version of Firefox, because it's a more stable development cycle that only patches bugs and doesn't add new features for 11 months or so. This means it doesn't disrupt how the Tor Browser works too much, and the Tor Project developers don't have to integrate many new features into their browser every few weeks.
Despite this, the Tor Project developers said that it takes a lot of time to rebase Tor Browser patches to new versions of Firefox. This is why Mozilla has started integrating Tor's patches into Firefox on its own through the "Tor Uplift Project."
Firefox has also adopted new security features from the Tor Browser such as first party isolation (which prevents cookies from tracking you across domains) and fingerprint resistance (which blocks user tracking through canvas elements). However, first party isolation is off by default in Firefox and fingerprint resistance can break some websites. You can enable first party isolation in about:config or by installing this add-on for it.
[...] The developers said all these features would enable a "real" private mode in Firefox, which could completely replace the need for the Tor Browser to exist. This "super-private mode" could be used by hundreds of millions of users eventually, which is why Mozilla first needs to ensure that the Tor network can scale with such usage. That means more people will need to run Tor relays. Mozilla may be able to help here by donating money to nonprofits that can run Tor relays.
Could this be the way to get Firefox above 10% market share (except that if it's done correctly, nobody will be able to measure it)?
Related Stories
The Daily Dot has a story about a browser vendor who wants to package Tor as part of its private browsing mode. From the article:
Several major tech firms are in talks with Tor to include the software in products that can potentially reach over 500 million Internet users around the world. One particular firm wants to include Tor as a “private browsing mode” in a mainstream Web browser, allowing users to easily toggle connectivity to the Tor anonymity network on and off.
“They very much like Tor Browser and would like to ship it to their customer base,” Tor executive director Andrew Lewman wrote, explaining the discussions but declining to name the specific company. “Their product is 10-20 percent of the global market, this is of roughly 2.8 billion global Internet users.”
The author elaborates:
The product that best fits Lewman’s description by our estimation is Mozilla Firefox, the third-most popular Web browser online today and home to, you guessed it, 10 to 20 percent of global Internet users.
The story appears to have gleaned most of its information from a tor-dev mailing list post. An interesting reply from Tor developer Mike Perry explains how Tor can be modified so that the network can handle the extra load.
If you've used Tor, you've probably used Tor Browser, and if you've used Tor Browser you've used Firefox. By lines of code, Tor Browser is mostly Firefox -- there are some modifications and some additions, but around 95% of the code in Tor Browser comes from Firefox. The Firefox and Tor Browser teams have collaborated for a long time, but in 2016, we started to take it to the next level, bringing Firefox and Tor Browser closer together than ever before. With closer collaboration, we're enabling the Tor Browser team to do their jobs more easily, adding more privacy options for Firefox users, and making both browsers more secure.
[...] In 2016, we started an effort to take the Tor Browser patches and "uplift" them to Firefox. When a patch gets uplifted, we take the change that Tor Browser needs and we add it to Firefox in such a way that it's disabled by default, but can be enabled by changing a preference value. That saves the Tor Browser team work, since they can just change preferences instead of updating patches. And it gives the Firefox team a way to experiment with the advanced privacy features that Tor Browser team is building, to see if we can bring them to a much wider audience.
Our first major target in the uplift project was a feature called First Party Isolation, which provides a very strong anti-tracking protection (at the risk of breaking some websites). Mozilla formed a dedicated team to take the First Party Isolation features in Tor Browser and implement them in Firefox, using the same technology we used to build the containers feature. The team also developed thorough test and QA processes to make sure that the isolation in Firefox is as strong as what's in Tor Browser -- and even identified some ways to add even stronger protections. The Mozilla team worked closely with the Tor Browser team, including weekly calls and an in-person meeting in September.
First Party Isolation will be incorporated in Firefox 52, the basis for the next major version of Tor Browser. As a result, the Tor Browser team won't have to update their First Party Isolation patches for this version. In Firefox, First Party Isolation is disabled by default (because of the compatibility risk), but Firefox users can opt in to using First Party Isolation by going to about:config and setting "privacy.firstparty.isolate" to "true".
We're excited to continue this collaboration in 2017. Work will start soon on uplifting a set of patches that prevent various forms of browser fingerprinting. We'll also be looking at how we can work together on sandboxing, building on the work that Yawning Angel has done for Tor Browser and the Firefox sandboxing features that are scheduled to start shipping in early 2017.
takyon: Where's the long-rumored Tor integration in default Firefox? Make Firefox useful again.
Previously: Some Tor Privacy Settings Coming to Firefox
Tor Project and Mozilla Making It Harder for Malware to Unmask Users
Netmarketshare reports that Mozilla Firefox's share of the desktop and notebook computer web browser market has fallen below ten percent.
Firefox had a market share of 12.63% in June 2017 according to Netmarketshare and even managed to rise above the 13% mark in 2017 before its share fell to 9.92% in May 2018.
Google Chrome, Firefox's biggest rival in the browser world, managed to increase its massive lead from 60.08% in June 2017 to 62.85% in May 2018.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer dropped a percent point to 11.82% in May 2018 and Microsoft's Edge browser gained less than 0.50% to 4.26% over the year.
[...] Netmarketshare collects usage stats and does not get "real" numbers from companies like Mozilla, Google or Microsoft. The company monitors the use of browsers on a subset of Internet sites and creates the market share reports using the data it collects.
While that is certainly good enough for trends if the number of monitored user interactions is high enough, it is not completely accurate and real-world values can be different based on a number of factors. While it is unlikely that they differ a lot, it is certainly possible that the share is different to the one reported by the company.
The Brave Browser by former Mozilla CEO and JavaScript developer Brendan Eich has begun testing opt-in ads and integrating Tor into private tabs.
From gHacks:
One of the key ideas behind Brave was to replace the current advertisement system of the Internet with a better one. Brave wanted to establish its own system that shares the advertisement revenue between publishers, users, and the company.
Brave uses its own currency and platform for that. BAT, Basic Attention Tokens, has been integrated into Brave Payments last year and some users started to use it to distribute BAT to publishers and creators anonymously. Brave funds this currently if you opt-in; this means that you do get a monthly budget of 15 BAT (about 4.41 USD) that you can distribute to websites you visit.
[...] The company announced the start of opt-in advertisement trials yesterday. Users need to leave a comment on the Brave forum and may be selected for the trial when they do.
Brave wants to do things differently in regards to advertisement and the two core difference to the existing advertising model are the following ones:
- Brave pays users about 70% of the gross advertising revenue in BAT. Users can use BAT to reward sites they visit or exchange it for other currency in the future.
- Brave's advertising model values user privacy. Instead of tracking users, it is downloading a set of ads to the user system based on region and language, and displays the most appropriate ad using local matching.
The advertisement option will be opt-in and consent-based according to Brave. Users who don't want to see advertisement don't need to change anything as ads won't be displayed to them.
From PC Gamer:
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday June 10 2018, @02:46AM (6 children)
there goes my theory that the 10% only *looked* small because everyone was already using user agent spoofing and/or Tor.
Poor Firefox. Killed by hamburger-ization.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 10 2018, @02:59AM (5 children)
I don't remember that anyone addressed the splintering of Firefox. At this moment, I have Palemoon and Cyberfox both open on my desktop. I think of them as "Firefox, improved". That is, I'm using Firefox, but my usage is probably not credited to Firefox and Mozilla. It seems obvious that people using Tor browser probably aren't counted as Firefox users, either. What else is there?
I'm pretty sure that Firefox usage is higher than that 10% claim, but I sure don't have the tools to correct the claim.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday June 10 2018, @03:05AM
Palemoon and Cyberfox really *aren't* Firefox, though. Not sure about Iceweasel.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by DeVilla on Sunday June 10 2018, @03:19AM (1 child)
I'm glad you mentioned cyberfox. I hadn't heard of that one. I like that it appears to debugger firefox like palemoon, but lets me keep the new theme. I know people don't like the new theme and the way the familiar UI was tanked. I was able to use the new theme to put only indicators by the address bar, hide a bunch of crap I don't want to see all the time in the hamberger button and discard the rest of the crap. I can still get normal menus by hitting tab.
Of course, since I found it good, Firefox had to kill that and replace the hamburger button with a menu full for crap I have no use for and I can't get ride of the "search bar" any more without making the "url bar" into a "search bar". Seems firefox is just out to scorch earth sometimes.
So thanks for the tip. I'll have to see if cyberfox works for me. Palemoon seems to have thrown out a little too much with the bath water for me.
And yes, they are probably "firefox" as much as Ubuntu & Mint are "Debian".
(Score: 1, Redundant) by requerdanos on Sunday June 10 2018, @04:22AM
Ubuntu is not Debian. Mint is not Ubuntu. Mint is not Debian.
They are not only not Debian, they are not remotely Debian. (Though Mint Debian Edition is much closer.)
So, they aren't Firefox, even if they are fiery-foxy.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday June 10 2018, @04:18AM
Well, I am posting this from Waterfox, and have Pale Moon installed. And Firefox ESR with the Iceweasel Branding plug-in.
Incidentally, I don't have Chrome nor Chromium, but for things that "only work in Chrome" I use the Chromium-derived Yandex Browser. Pretty sure Chrome is the one that doesn't get counted there, but then, I think Yandex Browser, from Google's #1 competition in Russia, is probably conceptually a little further from Chrome than Water-, Palemoon-, Cyber-fox are from Firefox.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10 2018, @04:50AM
It AFAIR uses either win32 or win64 (maybe depending on linux32/linux64 versions) plus a firefox version basically equivalent to either the esr it is based off of, or the mainline release version equivalent to the ESR.
As a result TBB users should appear as normal firefox users, only on Windows instead of their actual OS.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by DeVilla on Sunday June 10 2018, @03:24AM (3 children)
Does this mean that the security and protection provided by the Tor features will be broken in little ways with every release of Firefox?
I want to think of Firefox as the browser for the security & privacy minded, but the still back DRM in web standards and they still implement features in java script that allow Google to should me one URL when I hoover over a link and then open a different one when I click the link. A lot of the terrible tracking features that advertisers use wouldn't be possible if Firefox had paid any attention to security as they implemented the features.
Yes, they would say they had to implement a broken features to stay compatible with broken specs. But will they continue do the same to Tor's determent?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10 2018, @05:23AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 10 2018, @12:31PM
Like it says in the summary, Firefox Extended Support Release.
I know we're not supposed to read the fine article but how about the fine summary at least?
ps. please never write "java script" again, people are confused enough as it is...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11 2018, @08:09AM
That went out the window when they were caught integrating Google Analytics, and a couple of weeks later they got caught installing adware.