Mozilla is already revising its new Firefox terms to clarify how it handles user data
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A FOSS browser has and never will require collecting user data.
This should not happen at all.
Certain features certainly could be considered as doing that, such as:
- Firefox sync
- crash reporting
- add-on store
I certainly want those. And then there are others that I don't want:
- telemetry
- studies
- AI
My understanding is that this change is primarily motivated by a recent/upcoming law change in California that has a pretty broad definition of "selling user data" and this is less likely to be a fundamental change in how Mozilla operates. However, let's see what they come back with.
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maybe with anti-detection browser, there are with free-bee version, dont know if that will help . which basically lets you use proxies as well, and spoofs your fingerprinting. people who made of accts, or advertise on reddit uses these to evade reddit ban(until reddit made it harder to do so currently)
I found something but it is for chrome. https://github.com/Xodarap/Paranoid-Browsing
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Arc. They are only continuing security updates and necessary maintenance. No more feature work, no more bug fixes.
Do you have a source for that? I can't seem to find anything on their website, though judging by the past few release notes you're absolutely right.
Edit: found this video. Kinda feel like this should be a big red banner on the front page though.
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It lets developers target what to improve and fix instead of going in blind.
I'm sure they'll make do
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Software makers did just fine without telemetry for decades
They actually did not, almost every software out there is mining your information. Software developers rely on and need data, you can't guess what people want. Whether it's from studies, testers, surveys, or telemetry, developers need information about what users like, what they don't, how they interact with the software... This is what makes data so valuable, and why businesses like Google can exist. Denying open source software telemetry is shooting yourself in the foot.
. Software developers rely on and need data, you can't guess what people want.
Why would I want software developers (particularly we've browser) to guess what I want? I will tell them what I want, otherwise they have no business serving it to me.
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How convenient for you.
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Fennec is maintained by Mozilla lol
Is it? It seems to be maintained by a user named relan based out of Russia. It's just a few scripts to build it for F-Droid and basically just removes some proprietary stuff. It's not a fork, just a build script.
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. Software developers rely on and need data, you can't guess what people want.
Why would I want software developers (particularly we've browser) to guess what I want? I will tell them what I want, otherwise they have no business serving it to me.
I will tell them what I want
You might, but 99% of users will never take a step towards giving any feedback whatsoever.
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I will tell them what I want
You might, but 99% of users will never take a step towards giving any feedback whatsoever.
Yes, which means they don't want anything from them. Rather than seeing those people as nothing more than potential profit, just move on.
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Do you have a source for that? I can't seem to find anything on their website, though judging by the past few release notes you're absolutely right.
Edit: found this video. Kinda feel like this should be a big red banner on the front page though.
Yeah, that video was what I was referencing
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Yes, which means they don't want anything from them. Rather than seeing those people as nothing more than potential profit, just move on.
Yes, which means they don't want anything from them.
And yet they're using the application. Don't you want the applications that you use to work better? This is what telemetry enables, the ability to give feedback without jumping through 10 hoops, creating an account, responding to a survey, or whatever other method you're thinking of to give feedback.
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How about all the other that have no checkboxes and you can find by snooping around in either the code or about:config ?
Which are? Genuine question. I'm not aware of those either.
I'm not going to enumerate them, mostly because I did not keep track of which one was on and which one was off before messing all of them up.
If you're curious, open "about:config" and search for "survey*.enabled", "collect*.enabled". Even with all settings disabled, some of them remains on, and they do cause traffic to the (documented) endpoints. -
Too late, I switched to Floorp.
Because of privacy stuff? No. Because of repeated drama? Yes.
I don't have time for this stuff. I don't have time to track every minute twist of the knife that Google's funding drives Mozilla to embark on.
I'm bored of using software and watching it go through "death by a thousand minor dramas"
So now I use a web browser that has a name so stupid I don't even recommend it to other people. Brilliant.
The drama isn't exactly their fault. There are a lot of rich organizations that want them to cease to exist. Most 9f which want track you online and/or shove ads down your throat.
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The drama isn't exactly their fault. There are a lot of rich organizations that want them to cease to exist. Most 9f which want track you online and/or shove ads down your throat.
A fair amount of drama is exactly their fault. Mozilla chose to increase management pay and fire people, Mozilla chose to flirt with ai, Mozilla bought an ad firm, and so on. It's not like someone was holding a knife to their throat.
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"ChatGPT, I need your help. Please pretend to be a lawyer that recently suffered a severe concussion and write me something I can post online that will male this situation slightly weirder."
Neil doesn't need a chatbot with sparkles for that, he's plenty capable to take absolute piss himself.
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AI Summary:
Overview:
- Mozilla is updating its new Terms of Use for Firefox due to criticism over unclear language about user data.
- Original terms seemed to give Mozilla broad ownership of user data, causing concern.
- Updated terms emphasize limited scope of data interaction, stating Mozilla only needs rights necessary to operate Firefox.
- Mozilla acknowledges confusion and aims to clarify their intent to make Firefox work without owning user content.
- Company explains they don't make blanket claims of "never selling data" due to evolving legal definitions and obligations.
- Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable, but ensures data is anonymized or shared in aggregate.
What's the alternative for Android? Fuck Chrome I want to move off this shit onto something that actually gives half a shit about me.
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What's the alternative for Android? Fuck Chrome I want to move off this shit onto something that actually gives half a shit about me.
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Some jurisdictions classify "sale" as broadly as "transfer of data to any other company, for a 'benefit' of any kind" Benefit could even be non-monetary in terms of money being transferred for the data, it could be something as broadly as "the browser generally improving using that data and thus being more likely to generate revenue."
To avoid frivolous lawsuits, Mozilla had to update their terms to clarify this in order to keep up with newer laws.
I agree, I don't want my browser provider to collect any data on me at all, but if they absolutely must gather the absolute minimum system analytics stats or such they should NEVER pass it to a third party for ANY reason.
You make a desktop browser application, that's your job, to provide a portal to the world wide web, nothing more. Stay within your bounds and we'll never have any problem.
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if it’s properly handled and anonymized it benefits everyone using firefox
glub glub much?
There is no justification for opt-out telemetry data collection, and there is no proper handling of data obtained despite user pushback. Also, properly anonymizing large data sets is not as trivial as you think. Even "fully anonymized" data set, assuming everything's possible's been done, can lead to correlation when added with other data. Even "cohorts" can lead to the creation of an aggregate group with so few individuals that it basically boils down to individual tracking.
Why do you think people are so vocal about not letting any of this happens in the first time? It's not for blind idealism. It's basically because even a minimum waiver on "supposedly anonymous" data is a huge blow to your privacy. And some people care about that.
Besides, Mozilla's been pushing for a shitton of features that are constantly blamed for Firefox becoming as bad as its competition, and constantly turned off/removed. If they cared even a tiny bit about user feedback, the last… 3, 5 years of decisions from Mozilla would have been very different. Feature usage telemetry is a joke to make people accept their bullshit; the only thing that influence feature development is management or very heavy pushback, and that happens in dev issues, not with telemetry feedback.
While they have to be careful, there can be reasonable ones to help what they do/stop doing.
Example, "x% of telemetry enabled users enable the bookmark bar", not particularly useful for harmful purposes, but if it were 0.00%, then they know efforts accommodating the bookmark bar would be pointless. Not many users would go out of their way to say "I don't use some feature I'm ignoring", and telemetry is able to convey that data, so the developer is not guessing based on his preference.
That being said, the telemetry is so opaque that it's hard to make an informed decision as to whether the telemetry in question is risky or not. Might be good to have some sort of accumulated telemetry data that you can click to review and submit, and have that data be actually human readable and to the point for salient points.
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some people consider indirect, cryptic answers to be complete
Oh, it's perfectly clear. We got the message. Mozilla are not to be trusted with our data.
