Giving Firefox Users Control of Their Data

Giving Firefox UsersControl of Their Data Mozilla Summit 2010

We are:Mehdi Mulani Jennifer BorissMozilla Intern Extraordinaire Mozilla User Experience Designer

We work on:

We work on: (mostly)

Warning: This project has just started. We’re after feedback and discussion.

One of the Firefox team’s priorities forFirefox 4.0 is improving privacy on theweb.

Privacy vs. Security

Security refers to the prevention ofmaterial harm to the user.

Security refers to the prevention ofmaterial harm to the user.Harms include: • Theft • Fraud • Data Loss

Privacy refers to users’ control over whatthey reveal about themselves online,whether or not what they reveal mightlead to material harm.

Privacy refers to users’ control over whatthey reveal about themselves online,whether or not what they reveal mightlead to material harm.All internet users reveal someinformation about themselves to somesites, but the user has privacy if hisdiscretion determines what information isshared with whom.

Firefox has local privacy...

Firefox has local privacy... • Private Browsing Mode • Clear Recent History • Forget About this Site

Firefox has local privacy... • Private Browsing Mode • Clear Recent History • Forget About this Site ...but lacks network privacy

The most far-reaching way Firefox canprotect user privacy is by providingintelligent defaults that protect user data

...such as preventing advertisers from creatingproﬁles based on user behavior without userknowledge

Also important is giving users the abilityto easily ﬁne-tune their privacy settings,giving complete control of their own data

However, just “control” isn’t enough.

Firefox already provides very ﬁne-grained,precise control over privacy settings.

The problem: Firefox’s privacy controls areframed around the implementation modelrather than the user’s mental model.

Implementation model: The actual way that a system works from the programmers perspectiveUser’s mental model: The way the user perceives that the system worksDesign model: The way the designer represents the program to the user

Questions the current system can’t answer: “What access does this particular site have?” “How can I turn off all access to this particular site that I don’t trust?”

What do other browsers do?

Chrome’s design...

...is just like ours.

Internet Explorer presents privacy permissionsin a very different way

Proposal:

Proposal: Site-speciﬁc rather thantechnology-speciﬁc privacy preferences

Site-speciﬁc preferences

Domainsdisplayedbased on freceny score Site-speciﬁc preferences

With “All Sites” selected, global privacy options can be conﬁguredSite-speciﬁc preferences

Site-speciﬁc preferences

Privacy preferences for only the site selectedSite-speciﬁc preferences

Demo!Follow along at home: search for “Site Preferences” on addons.mozilla.orgor go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/ﬁrefox/addon/181744/

Better privacy preferences are great inpreferences, but should some of thisfunctionality be revealed in the main UI?

The site identity button is a good candidate: • Linked to the identity of the current site • In primary UI • Currently useless

Site identity button

The site identity button could present a UIfor the speciﬁc privacy controls that thewebsite has requested or the user has set

Site identity button: Preferences interface: • Changing • Consistent • Specific control • Global and specific control • Modified while browsing • Modified while user is explicitly (not the main user task) configuring their options

Questions we’d like feedback on: • How well do you feel this interface addresses privacy in the browser? • How should we group sites - by domain, subdomain, visit, etc? • Are there site-speciﬁc preferences that belong in this interface aside from privacy access? • Other ideas? Thoughts?

Giving Firefox Users Control of Their Data

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