Privacy/Roadmap/2014

Tracking Roadmap for 2014

Background

Tracking is any technique that can be used to accumulate history (purchases, browsing, messaging) and associate it with a particular person. There are many reasons for organizations to engage in tracking, including behavioral advertising, customized content, conversions, and government surveillance. Many of these reasons are legitimate -- in fact advertising revenue subsidizes almost all free web content. However, a combination of industry and government forces have aligned in a way to incentivize silent, invisible wholesale data collection of personal information. Because typical users don't recognize when or how data collection happens, it essentially takes place without user consent.

In 2013, Edward Snowden's revelations showed that industry and government tracking are intertwined. Although everyone knew this was possible, the Snowden revelation was the first case of documented misuse of advertising tracking for another purpose. This misuse has devastating impact on our economy, reducing trust worldwide in the mechanisms that enable free access to information, freedom of expression, and commerce.

In this roadmap we focus on three major sources of tracking:

• Tracking for the purposes of advertising
• Tracking via social widgets, such as the Facebook "Like" button, the Twitter retweet button, or the Google +1 button
• Tracking via physical devices such as mobile phones.

Goal: Firefox users know when they are being tracked

• Lightbeam is a Firefox addon that enables users to visualize network connections. The roadmap discusses improvements to visualization.

Goal: Firefox users can avoid being tracked

• Tracking protection in Lightbeam
• Native tracking protection in Firefox
• Reducing traffic from social widgets
• Reducing physical tracking on mobile devices

Goal: Firefox users can be who they want, when they want

• Multiple profiles in FF Sync
• The right to be forgotten