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mcc

@denschub It doesn't matter if I can, at this moment, find a deanonymization attack on Firefox PPA. It matters if marketing firms or nation-states can find one. If they do find one, they won't be sending you a nice email telling you about it.

Given all this I feel "privacy-preserving" is a deeply dishonest descriptor, and differential privacy—made of advanced math, something most consumers are not good at—creates in the consumers' mind a perception of certainty that you cannot actually provide.

15 July at 21:00 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.social
2 comments
Don Marti

@mcc @denschub calling something "privacy-preserving" because it prevents individual re-identification is misleading, because most privacy issues are group level and most privacy harms are perpetrated by classifying someone as a member of a group

DP is great for browser telemetry when you want to know that someone's browser crashed doing some specific thing but you actively don't want to know who it was—but it's not a good fit when the recipient of the message has a motivation to discriminate

15 July at 21:13 | Open on federate.social
TechnoTenshi 🏳️‍⚧️

@dmarti @mcc @denschub To add support to this, by own experience, advertising analytics companies focused on TV and streaming ads often use "individually anonymized" data. historical data analysis enable demographic determination, including age, gender, geographic location, household size, income level, behavioral trends, and viewing context (whether the ad is watched at home, at a neighbor's, or in a sports bar). The cross-referencing of this data provides insights into both household and individual preferences. It's not just about anonymizing a single data source; it's the cumulative analysis of multiple data points that matters. Thinking that anonymizing a single data source is harmless is a narrow and naive view.

Enabling and making the user part of this data tracking and analysis effort by default is clearly a "profit first" view, considering that the browser has automatic updates. Sure, some developers and other technical audience might closely track blog posts, repositories, etc., but the browser is targeted to a general audience.

Sorry, I’m not engaging on Reddit. Simply pointing out that other platforms have issues too doesn't address the specific problems with Reddit. Recognizing and addressing the unique issues of each platform is crucial.

@dmarti @mcc @denschub To add support to this, by own experience, advertising analytics companies focused on TV and streaming ads often use "individually anonymized" data. historical data analysis enable demographic determination, including age, gender, geographic location, household size, income level, behavioral trends, and viewing context (whether the ad is watched at home, at a neighbor's, or in a sports bar). The cross-referencing of this data provides insights into both household and individual...

15 July at 22:46 | Open on infosec.exchange
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