Android is now warning of Firefox sharing data
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Hopefully soon Librewolf, Fennec F-droid and other forks will become mainstream.
I haven't switched to Librewolf on pc yet; hoping that turning off the telemetry/etc options in ff is enough, but I'm starting to think it might not be long.
I was that same way with Firefox for a while, but after I gave Librewolf a long-term test drive I stuck with it.
If you’re used to Firefox with the privacy stuff cranked up, from a user perspective Librewolf is basically just that. But I like knowing that some of the Mozilla stuff is actually removed.
They also roll out updates quickly. I’m pretty sure I updated Firefox and Librewolf to 136.0.1 today just hours apart.
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Yes, I agree. That's why I'm weirded out by people saying "Firefox bad, use Librewolf" and the like.
I still think a solution that relies on donation (maybe with some corporate support) would be very good for everyone involved. Unfortunately, Mozilla is not a player in this, so we're stuck with basically three engines, one that can't be used, one that's openly hostile, and one that's becoming hostile.
Not great.
You just described Servo. It will happen. The Linux Foundation is backing it up now... after Mozilla dropped it.
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Ironfox?
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Its app that you can downloaded in F-Droid, basically it's a app that can control other app components. But before that you must Root/Unlock bootloader
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So if Mozilla wants to monetize location data, what does this mean for all the custom ROMs that use Mozilla's location provider instead of Google's?
This might mean that we would have no true free location provider left.
Edit: just was thinking, what does this mean for Firefox forks that also use Mozilla's location service?
No custom ROM use MLS anymore. It was shut down a few years ago.
Anyway, in general, apps get their location data from Play Services.
Apps that don't use Play Services get data from the default provider, which is always Google.
The successor of MLS is BeaconDB.
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Librewolf is Firefox plus some light patches, and as such depends entirely from Firefox.
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Okay, turned it off. If a site needs my location it can ask me and I can politely tell it to fuck off unless it has a warrant.
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Any good browser suggestion??
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Any good browser suggestion??
I like Zen. Waterfox is also good.
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I like Zen. Waterfox is also good.
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I don't get what your comment is getting at. I don't view this post as saying anything special or unique about the notification. I see it as a warning that Firefox is now doing this.
The legal definition of "sell" has changed in several major markets, and that's (supposedly) why Firefox has recently changed their terms. The word "sell" is now ostensibly broad enough to include "give to anybody for any reason", including if you use Firefox for any reason where you would legitimately want and need Firefox to give ("sell") your data - for example if you use it for: literally any shopping or even just browsing store pages; any interactive (real world) maps where you may want to use your location; any searches where you want local businesses to be listed; any search engine that may want to use your location to aid in results; etc. etc. etc.
Any legitimate exchange of data can now be construed as "selling" because of the new legal definitions, regardless of if anyone is actually selling anything.
It's very possible that nothing has changed - that Firefox hasn't started selling user data, they're just updating their terms (and this app listing) to reflect the changes in the legal definitions of "sell".
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I like Zen. Waterfox is also good.
for android?
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Hey guys, did you know?
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Any good browser suggestion??
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Never heard of that, what's the benefit over F-Droid?
GrapheneOS posted this on Mastodon about a month & a half back:
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Nah, open street maps is part of an open source map initiative with Meta and Microsoft, we're safe there....
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Great app also maintained by Mozilla
(wait, don't tell me y'all don't know lol)
Firefox is maintained by Mozilla, Fennec is a custom build that removes some stuff, and is maintained by some Russian person who I'm pretty sure isn't affiliated with Mozilla (get here by clicking the "Issue Tracker" link).
It's not a fork since it's built from Mozilla sources, it's just a build script.
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God damn why's the world so shit
My understanding is this is due to regions broadening the definition of "sell" to include any form of personal data transfer. So Mozilla giving location info (with consent if you enable "ask every time" in the permissions) to websites to look up local store hours or whatever is "selling data."
AFAIK, nothing has changed in Firefox.
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Do they mean “Firefox can get your location data to pass on to pages you give permission to, who we cannot guarantee won’t share it with advertisers” or “Firefox reserves the right to do a deal to monetise the tantalising firehose of location data coming from your device unless you specifically opt out”?
The former, but the language looks vague enough that they could do the latter eventually. My understanding is that they have to be vague in the language for legal reasons (e.g. to appease regulators in various markets).
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fennec vs ironfox opinions?
- Fennec - Firefox build with some proprietary stiff removed; repo
- IronFox - Firefox fork (forked from Mull) with a bunch of hardening changes (notably
resistFingerprintingenabled); repo
IronFox is more ambitious, which means higher maintenance load and more likely to fall behind. Fennec is much simpler, so less likely to fall behind, but also doesn't change much from Firefox.
