| This statement is misleading. Firstly, for context here's the paragraph you ought to be referring to: > This experiment also includes the data collection tool Cliqz uses to build its recommendation engine. Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit. Cliqz uses several techniques to attempt to remove sensitive information from this browsing data before it is sent from Firefox. Cliqz does not build browsing profiles for individual users and discards the user's IP address once the data is collected. Cliqz's code is available for public review and a description of these techniques can be found here. This section is a horrible write up of what happened. Over the years, among a lot of other privacy tech (e.g. [0][1][2]), we developed a privacy-preserving data collection framework we call Human Web [3]. The gist of it is simple: Users contribute data. There's no way to link any two messages with one another making it impossible to build profiles out of the data. In fact, most of the URLs are dropped thanks to these strict checks. Mozilla, Princeton University and Red Pen Team have audited the approach. The code is open-sourced [4]. Feel free to audit it, and also please feel free to use it in your projects. If you are genuinely interested in the approach, please read [3] and let's discuss details. Here's the bigger issue. We have created an unhealthy, and wrong narrative around privacy vs data collection. It's a false dichotomy. We also wrote at length about this here [5]. Data from people, is not the same as personal data. Record linkage here is key, and we prevent it - even at a network level [6]. If you are interested to read more about the Firefox Integration (and the context in which it happened), read this: https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-11/the-pivot-that-excited-... --- [0] Adblocker (fastest there is):
https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-20/not-all-adblockers-are-... [1] Algorithmic anti-tracking (first and only):
https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-19/blocking-tracking-witho... [2] Anti-Phishing:
https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-21/anti-phishing-with-priv... [3] Human Web:
https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-da... [4]: Human Web Code:
https://github.com/cliqz-oss/browser-core/tree/master/module... [5]: Is Data Collection Evil:
https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-02/is-data-collection-evil... [6]: HPN: https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network... |