You visited a website that had a Facebook tracker.
8 attempts means you opened a single page then you went to see the report. DDG isn’t doing deep packet inspection and can’t distinguish which traffic is coming directly from the app logic and what is just the result of the user browsing a page. Also with “known to collect name, dob, city”, ddg has no idea of the content, it just blocked the encrypted request. It could have been an embedded Facebook post in a page you visited, or a tracking pixel, but it’s not Mull reporting to Facebook all that information
You’re surprised?
The text at the bottom should be worded differently. This is not the app Mull tracking you.
if we didn’t block them
Seems pretty self explanatory to me.
It’s not though, DDG says it is the app (Mull, in this case). Mull is not introducing these trackers, a page they visited is.
It is important to make the distinction.
Why is this posted in the Firefox community?
And is this the first time OP has heard about tracking?
The mind boggles.
Mull is a privacy focused Firefox fork for Android. I don’t think DivestOS has a presence here, though they do on Mastodon.
Due to DDG’s incorrect wording it is easy to see that someone might be confused and think Mull/Firefox was tracking them.
We all started somewhere, I think it is fine here.
Facebook, and other GAFAM tracking is insidious, many do not know this, or are just learning it.
many do not know this
It just baffles me that someone could find the Firefox community on Lemmy (a niche of a niche) and not be aware of how Facebook et al track users. It’s like arriving in Mexico for vacation and being surprised they speak Spanish.
Many, like me and yourself, came here during the API nonsense.
OP is not only on Firefox, but on the more privacy focused Mull. To me those things are not mutually exclusive.
Despite being very interested in privacy and security, I had never heard of Mull (I initially thought people were referring to Mullvad browser, which has no mobile version), though I do sometimes use Tor browser (not as a daily driver, just enough to drive “normal” traffic to help obfuscate traffic for those who need it).
So if you found both Mull and Lemmy, you’re probably interested in privacy, which means you probably know that SM companies track their users a ton.
I did come at the start of the API nonsense, but I had already been looking at alternatives for some time, the API announcement was the final nail in the coffin. I have been interested in privacy well before I same to Reddit, and I have never had my email connected to any Reddit accounts, and I would regularly delete Reddit accounts after a year or two. I don’t know how typical I am, but I like to to a lot of Lemmy users are similarly privacy oriented since otherwise Lemmy is just a worse Reddit (fewer users, more bugs, etc).
I had already been looking at alternatives for some time, the API announcement was the final nail in the coffin.
That’s me too. My point was that we all start somewhere and you saying that reinforces it. We are never going to get people to come over to the dark side (even though we have cookies) by making them feel unwelcome.
When DDG released this there were posts on Spezit about ‘this privacy app is trying to track me’ all because of how it is worded. It is quite similar to the ‘DDG is blocking a quadrillion requests from Branch’ (some of Spezits analytics). The exact scenario is different (Branch just repeatedly tried to connect when it was blocked. Resulting in, well, making your logs a mess.), but this is DDG not being specific about what is actually happening vs. what their warnings say. It was reported to them and they never responded.
ETA: Mull is awesome
Ah, interesting. The wording is quite clear to me, but I’m also quite familiar with how the web works. Perhaps just changing “app” to “page” is enough to make it clear that the page is the one attempting the tracking.
I’ll probably continue using FF w/ uBlock Origin for now because I’m not exactly sure what Mull adds on top (vague “settings from Tor”). But if you have a comparison, I’d be very interested. I don’t mind Mozilla’s analytics (and I’ve opted out of the things that matter), but I am interested in avoiding fingerprinting as much as possible, so I think sticking with FF is the better way to go.
This is the link to Mull info https://divestos.org/pages/our_apps#mull
They build from source so some proprietary blobs are removed, and use some of the arkenfox preferences. PrivacyResistFingerprint is on by default for instance.
In that link there is a link to a comparison between Mull and Firefox, as well as other Android browsers.
Doesn’t boggle my mind to understand the rate of understanding such displayed attempt being conducted must be actively denied by the browser and their knowledge of how to protect themselves in the digital world.
Even I know better than trust firefox a hair let alone even customized to the bottom settings. Even on Librewolf you have to really back it up properly.
I don’t know if cookie promts are a thing outside EU but I always spend a few seconds refusing them. It’s like a distopian minigame every time I want to access a website because some are more tricky than others. But I am amazed at how many “legitimate interests” they can have
Some of them share data with over 3.000 other partners or ventors and I don’t even use shady sites! (new York Times had 3.170 vendors last time I checked)
It’s not required in my part of the US, but we get them anyway. It turns out it’s a lot easier to just turn it on for everyone instead of figuring out who the EU residents are (esp since an EU citizen could easily use a VPN).
And yeah, I do exactly the same. I also use an ad blocker and other privacy settings, so I’m guessing most of the stuff there is blocked regardless, so I mostly hope they’ll look at the cookie data and realize people hate that nonsense.
May I suggest ublock origin?
I do use it, that’s part of the reason I was shocked
Yup, Facebook tracks all kinds of crap, and I’m pretty sure this list is missing a ton of things.
Yes, that would have blocked it. RethinkDNS would have blocked it earlier, then they could get rid of ddg
Where have you been and how’d you end up on Lemmy?
Is OP (internet) famous? Or do I entirely misread your question?
It’s probably that Lemmy isn’t exactly mainstream (like Reddit), suggesting that people on Lemmy aren’t normally oblivious to the ways of the internet. And most people on the fediverse are more adverse to the centralised mainstream social media companies.
Using Firefox would back up this assumption.And that it has been widely known for a long time that Facebook tracks/collects/processes anything/everything it can get it’s grubby hands on.
So, it reads - to me - along the lines of “how are you participating in the fediverse (suggesting some decent knowledge of internet/computer things) without knowing that Facebook is going to try and get everything (common knowledge) and that Firefox is going to try to prevent this (which is a prominent reason to use Firefox)”
I should have realised this is what Willya meant lol.
OP seems surprised that Facebook is tracking them, yet found their way onto a fairly niche SM community full of people who care about privacy.
I realize that now. Thanks anyway.
Someone clueless about Facebook data mining its users shouldn’t have made their way here in my opinion so I’m curious about the journey.
Last name lol
How are you at all surprised by these permissions? It’s the fucking Facebook app.
Also why is this posted on Firefox? It’s the duckduckgo app…
Come on people…
Edit: I didn’t know Mull was a Firefox fork. I apologize.
It is DDG reporting on Facebook trackers coming from Mull activity. Mull is a Firefox fork.
I did not know that. Thank you for correcting me.
