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Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

blog.mozilla.org

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171–180 of 352 posts

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#171

Post by throwaway2048 »

PeanutCurry wrote: post #166
quazeekotl wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im sure ad companies claim much the same thing, tracking is just telemetry for statistical anonymized bulk purposes, that is really just benefiting the user! The point is you cant have it both ways, both decrying tracking of users and then actively enaging in it, and agressively defending it when it comes to light.

Except for the part where you completely ignored their point that you and anyone else with security concerns can conduct their own audit of the code and verify whether or not the telemetry functionality is performing in the manner described.

show me where i can audit the google play store analytics code, or what is running on their servers.

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#172

Post by mcbits »

shurcooL wrote: post #121
fiatjaf wrote: post #111

> For example, if you need to jump on the internet to look up Muddy Waters’ real name Best idea ever. That's the most common use case people have and one that's drastically underserved by current browsers. If people can't get their browser to quickly open a link to simple stuff, it means the web is failing. If the web is failing they'll quickly jump over to sending images over WhatsApp or fall into the trap of using…

For example, if you need to jump on the internet to look up Muddy Waters’ real name, and instead of “McKinley Morganfield” you get pop-up ads, screen takeovers, “sponsored” content and other third-party advertising- driven distraction, then you know what browser overkill feels like. What? I don't understand how that's possible. If you just google search for Muddy Waters, it tells you his real name right on the search…

Wikipedia's banner ads have grown effectively into full-page interstitials. And then after I blocked the first one, there was a second one embedded in the article.

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#173

Post by JetSpiegel »

prophesi wrote: post #127
shurcooL wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, if you need to jump on the internet to look up Muddy Waters’ real name, and instead of “McKinley Morganfield” you get pop-up ads, screen takeovers, “sponsored” content and other third-party advertising- driven distraction, then you know what browser overkill feels like. What? I don't understand how that's possible. If you just google search for Muddy Waters, it tells you his real name right on the search…

Sure, but then you're depending on Google search. And hoping that the information they bring to the top is actually correct. When you actually have to peruse the search list and click on a site, that's when the trouble begins. When I'm asked to look something up on my LG G2 budget phone, I usually just say "Can't, sorry" or "Sure, give me a few minutes".

That's easy, Firefox could just download a copy of The Internet on installation and run an indexer over it, so that you could look up any information you need. How foolish of them!

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#174

Post by JetSpiegel »

my_ghola wrote: post #137
gnicholas wrote: post #113

I love Focus and now use it for almost all of my mobile googling. One thing that would be nice is a share extension, so that when I'm in Safari and see a link I want to open I can share it to Firefox Focus. Right now I have to "share" it to [copy], open Focus, and paste it in. Not a huge hassle, but would be nice to streamline.

Is there a good share to clipboard app? I tried the only one I found once and it tried to open google drive when I tried to use it. I'm not giving Google all the things I copypaste. Now I share to some notepad app and then copy from there.

> Is there a good share to clipboard app?

There's the clipboard...

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#175

Post by st3fan »

lucideer wrote: post #146
kuschku wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a developer, and I've worked with this before, but the library included here has only the purpose of analytics, and is not required for anything else.

Google has recently been moving GCM over to FCM, since the Firebase acquisition, and FCM has a hard dependency on the analytics library for some reason (even if you're not availing of the service - perhaps as a veiled upsell attempt). It seems very likely that Firefox would be making use of GCM/FCM - I think most major apps do - so this could be it. Incidentally, this same topics is one of the main controversies arou…

Focus and Klar do not use GCM.

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#176

Post by ams6110 »

drdaeman wrote: post #126
chairmanwow wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm only surprised to see this comment and not that Firefox bundled analytics into their app. What's controversial about anonymized usage statistics in 2017?

Well, about the very same moment you see "Browse like no one's watching / Automatically block online tracking while you browse" app starts to silently send some data to app.adjust.com and incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org. If that's not controversial, that's at least ironic. (Just to clarify: this particular behavior was observed on a version from a Play Store, not FDroid. And this was about 1.5 months ago or so. But I…

Honestly, if you're browsing through your ISP or carrier's data service, you're not anonymous and people are watching. That point of view is the only way to operate.

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#177

Post by eli »

progval wrote: post #7

According to F-Droid [1], it contains `com.google.android.gms:play-services-analytics`. [1]: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/issues/171#note_30410376

Yes it collects anonymous analytics by default but you can disable it in the settings. It's not a conspiracy. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/send-anonymous-usage-da...

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#178

Post by ams6110 »

shurcooL wrote: post #121
fiatjaf wrote: post #111

> For example, if you need to jump on the internet to look up Muddy Waters’ real name Best idea ever. That's the most common use case people have and one that's drastically underserved by current browsers. If people can't get their browser to quickly open a link to simple stuff, it means the web is failing. If the web is failing they'll quickly jump over to sending images over WhatsApp or fall into the trap of using…

For example, if you need to jump on the internet to look up Muddy Waters’ real name, and instead of “McKinley Morganfield” you get pop-up ads, screen takeovers, “sponsored” content and other third-party advertising- driven distraction, then you know what browser overkill feels like. What? I don't understand how that's possible. If you just google search for Muddy Waters, it tells you his real name right on the search…

> Am I missing something

I think you're taking the example a bit too literally. You know exactly what they're talking about. It's become almost impossible to use a phone browser for anything quick. They are slow to begin with, and with all the ads and other crap it's just not even worth it half the time.

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#179

Post by st3fan »

bigbugbag wrote: post #62
jamesmishra wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm relatively uninformed here, but Google often requires Android app developers to bundle Google Play Services for various features like Chromecast[1]. It is possible that the Mozilla folks needed Google Play Services for some feature. [1]: https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/android_sender_setup

Maybe, but Mozilla has a quite a record for using firefox for surveillance and spying purpose, the early versions of firefox had a proprietary modules just for this purpose and the recent version have 'telemetry'. AFAIK f-droid always had a warning about firefox containing and promoting non free in addition of tracking users from https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/org.mozilla.firefox : This app has the NonFreeAdd Antifeat…

Focus is an open source project with no secrets. It is easy to verify your claims by looking at the code.

The telemetry is documented in detail at https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/wiki/Telemet...

We also include Adjust in Focus (not in Klar) for attribution tracking - to understand where the install came from. (This is useful if you are spending money on campaigns and you would like to understand what campaigns are the most effective)

If you have questions or suggestions, check the https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/blob/master/... for ways to reach the team.

Re: Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android

#180

Post by st3fan »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #171
PeanutCurry wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the part where you completely ignored their point that you and anyone else with security concerns can conduct their own audit of the code and verify whether or not the telemetry functionality is performing in the manner described.

show me where i can audit the google play store analytics code, or what is running on their servers.

Focus and Klar do not use the Google Play Store Analytics. Mozilla has their own Telemetry service. This documentation is a good start: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/wiki/Telemet...

You have to understand how extremely strict Mozilla is with using third-party services for things like crash reporting and telemetry. It is extremely difficult to find services that meet our very high standard for privacy.

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