Update: Intent to Ship Adjust SDK in Fennec

[Winston Bowden]

Hi,

We wanted to follow up on an email sent in March regarding the Adjust
SDK [1] we are implementing for the Spring campaign. This integration
[2] will send data to a third party server. As we noted earlier, this
isn't something we do at Mozilla often and we wanted to be proactive
about our messaging.

As we mentioned in March, there are good reasons for collecting this
data. Our marketing and growth goals for 2015 will require spending
non-trivial amounts of money. Our relationship with Adjust will enable
us to spend that money responsibly and efficiently.

Mobile installs come from App Stores, and it's harder to integrate into
those systems. That's where the Adjust SDK comes in. We believe we've
landed on the best possible implementation given the limitations of the
mobile advertising ecosystem. This tool will ensure that we're not
flying blind.

Here's a summary from the March email that provides some background on
the Adjust SDK:

* This is an open source SDK, fully transparent, and is developed by a
company based in Germany, but with offices in California and other
places, widely adopted and regarded, who is beholden to the
strictest EU privacy standards.
* We will collect the absolute minimum data, once, to measure for
install. We know exactly what data is being passed.
* We're paying for the SDK and service, which is good because the
vendor's model is not based on monetizing our data in aggregate to
develop behavioral segments for other advertisers.
* This will allow real-time optimization of marketing dollars, much
like virtually all major mobile apps do, and much like we have
already been able to do on paid marketing desktop for quite some time

Our implementation will allow us to attribute an install to a specific
advertising channel by using the a user's unique Google ID. When a user
installs Firefox for Android, the unique Google ID is sent to Adjust.
Adjust takes that and compares it to data from the networks we've placed
ads. If they find a matching ID, that install is attributed to that
particular ad network. This allows Mozilla to measure which channels
are providing maximum impact.

Adjust collects the following Fingerprint (hashed) and stores for a
maximum of three hours:

* IP address
* Timestamp in ms
* Country
* Language/locale
* Operating System
* App Version

Adjust hangs onto the following data permanently:

* Attribution source (allowing us to measure which channel produced
the best ROI)
* Storage of hashed MAC address and/or device ID hashes together with
app token

We've done an enormous amount of due diligence prior to integration.
Adjust went through a legal and privacy review. It also went through
and open source review/analysis.

The plan is to utilize Adjust beginning on June 2 for the Spring
Campaign. We'll keep this tool in place until spending is completed on
July 12. At the completion of the campaign, we will evaluate the
success and make a decision as to whether or not Adjust will be used in
future campaigns and releases.

This is just a heads up email. We want the effort to be open and
transparent.

Many thanks,
Winston

[1] https://github.com/adjust/android_sdk
[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1143888

[Benjamin Smedberg]

On 5/20/2015 1:07 PM, Winston Bowden wrote:


We've done an enormous amount of due diligence prior to integration.
Adjust went through a legal and privacy review. It also went through and
open source review/analysis.

As the data steward I've been working with both Winston and the engineering
teams on this, and the data collection system is documented using the
in-tree doc system:
https://gecko.readthedocs.org/en/latest/mobile/android/base/fennec/adjust.html

The Android advertising ecosystem isn't very healthy, but Adjust is a
service provider that takes great care with their data collection and
retention practices to reduce risk to users while measuring advertising
spend and effectiveness.

--BDS

[Joseph Lorenzo Hall]

On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 1:07 PM, Winston Bowden <wbo...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
> Adjust hangs onto the following data permanently:
>
> * Attribution source (allowing us to measure which channel produced
> the best ROI)
> * Storage of hashed MAC address and/or device ID hashes together with
> app token

nit: s/hashes/hashed/ here, no?

That is Adjust will store a single hash performed as

hash(hash(MAC/DeviceID) + App token)

Correct?

(Presumably this is to identify reinstalls or something.)

best and thanks, Joe

--
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Chief Technologist
Center for Democracy & Technology
1634 I ST NW STE 1100
Washington DC 20006-4011
(p) 202-407-8825
(f) 202-637-0968
j...@cdt.org
PGP: https://josephhall.org/gpg-key
fingerprint: 3CA2 8D7B 9F6D DBD3 4B10 1607 5F86 6987 40A9 A871

[Philip Chee]

> https://gecko.readthedocs.org/en/latest/mobile/android/base/fennec/adjust.html

I had a very confusing time the first time I tried to use readthedocs.
Clicking on every link I could see always appeared to land me back at
the TOC. It took me a while to realize that I had to scroll down to the
bottom of the page to see the relevant content.

Every other similar documentation site that I've been to puts the TOC in
a separate navigation column on the left (or right). Please, whoever is
in charge of this, fix the problem.

Phil

--
Philip Chee <phi...@aleytys.pc.my>, <phili...@gmail.com>
http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ http://xsidebar.mozdev.org
Guard us from the she-wolf and the wolf, and guard us from the thief,
oh Night, and so be good for us to pass.

[Nicholas Alexander]

Hi Philip,

On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 10:08 PM, Philip Chee <phili...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >
> https://gecko.readthedocs.org/en/latest/mobile/android/base/fennec/adjust.html


I am the author of this particular page.

> I had a very confusing time the first time I tried to use readthedocs.
> Clicking on every link I could see always appeared to land me back at
> the TOC. It took me a while to realize that I had to scroll down to the
> bottom of the page to see the relevant content.
>
> Every other similar documentation site that I've been to puts the TOC in
> a separate navigation column on the left (or right). Please, whoever is
> in charge of this, fix the problem.
>

Is this specific to the Fennec Adjust documentation, is or it general to
all of the documentation pages?

Could you include a lot more detail, including screenshots and STR? For
me, RTD has a left sidebar and clicking links in the navigation bar (and
footnote markers in the text, etc) does exactly what I expect.

Nick