Android is now warning of Firefox sharing data
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My (probably incomplete) understanding is: phones have a GNSS chip (such as GPS, Galileo, or Glonass), but getting location from that takes a long time and a lot of battery. So they estimate location based on other information such as what cell tower they are connected to and the list of available wi-fi networks. This requires a database with all that info, which Google built through its Street View cars.
So the location provider is a service to which your phone sends all the info it has and which replies with an estimate of your location; which means it handles a lot of sensitive data.
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God damn why’s the world so shit
Society empowers and encourages shitty people that only care about their own kind/tribe, is why.
~This~ ~comment~ ~is~ ~licensed~ ~under~ ~CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0~
Society empowers and encourages shitty people that only care about
their own kind/tribethemselves, is why. -
FWIW I'm not seeing this on the Play Store for Firefox 136.0.1 on my Pixel 8a, and I'm not seeing any warnings on Beta or Nightly either:
I don't see it from installs direct via Obtainium, either.
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Found this notification this morning on my pixel 6.
Fanboys of Firefox: "DUHB DUHB USE FIREFOX CUZ IT NOT CHROME DUHB DUHB!"
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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?
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?
Nothing, because they dont sell location data, this just seems like a routine warning that pops up when ToS and Privacy policy changes, and since they have clarified their position on this matter, (not to mention the lack of alternative FOSS web engines). We really shouldn't let this bother us
Of course i might be wrong and it may come out that Mozilla has turned heel(lot of heel turning happening lately)
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Because they are legally obligated to mention it?
Are they? What law?
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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”?
Who can say
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Never heard of that, what's the benefit over F-Droid?
The main difference is of philosophy of trust. With F-droid you trust F-droid to build the binary from the developers' source code. With Accrescent, you trust the developers to build the binary from the source code.
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The main problem is that building a web browser is extremely difficult and everyone else uses Google's version of WebKit. So there's no alternatives: it's either Google or Mozilla. Forks don't count because if some functionality that end users need is deprecated, nobody will maintain it and it will just disappear once it's removed from the main codebase
building a web browser is extremely difficult and everyone else uses Google's version of WebKit
To be fair it is based on KHTML. One of projects KDE can spend that extra money on and resurrect.
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Found this notification this morning on my pixel 6.
Firefox engines have telemetry since old ages. Do you know what even crazier ??? even other firefox browser like fennec has Mozilla telemetry.
PSA : disable it with Blocker (ROOT) for more privacy -
The main difference is of philosophy of trust. With F-droid you trust F-droid to build the binary from the developers' source code. With Accrescent, you trust the developers to build the binary from the source code.
So Accrescent is more like the classic play store or Obtainium?
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building a web browser is extremely difficult and everyone else uses Google's version of WebKit
To be fair it is based on KHTML. One of projects KDE can spend that extra money on and resurrect.
Bring back Konqueror too while at it!
Edit: Apparently it still exists, it just isn't the default on any mainstream distros anymore
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Found this notification this morning on my pixel 6.
"Quick! Jump to chrome instead!" - Google spokesperson
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Fanboys of Firefox: "DUHB DUHB USE FIREFOX CUZ IT NOT CHROME DUHB DUHB!"
Genuine question to see if the downvotes are justified or not : are you implying Chrome is a good browser and if so, why?
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Because they are legally obligated to mention it?
...except they don't for their own browser.
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Are they? What law?
Probably GDPR if I had to guess. Seems like anything decent these companies do can be directly traced back to GDPR.
Edit: guys, "probably" means that I'm unsure.
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Found this notification this morning on my pixel 6.
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building a web browser is extremely difficult and everyone else uses Google's version of WebKit
To be fair it is based on KHTML. One of projects KDE can spend that extra money on and resurrect.
Saying KHTML = WebKit is like saying a sponge is a killer whale.
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Found this notification this morning on my pixel 6.
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Well, there seem to be some good safe alternatives. I am currently switching from Firefox to Vivaldi, for example.
Isn't Vivaldi a chromium browser?
