They've been blasting the PR far and wide on social media but did they ever address their recent 'experiment?'
What are you referring to? Link please
Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
21–30 of 77 posts
Re: Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
#22Dear Mozilla, you have no business having my data in the first place. If you're promising to keep my data safe, things have already gone wrong.
Except they actually provide useful features like Firefox Sync. If you opt into that service it is impossible for them to provide it to you withouth having your data on their servers.
They should be transparent about what data they have. There are options like "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" and "Allow Firefox to send backlogged crash reports on your behalf" in Firefox, I don't recall if they are enabled by default when you install the browser but I seem to recall that at least one of them is. These options have nothing to do with the Sync feature.
Re: Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
#23Your decision to show ads to your users this last week without their consent was the last straw for me. And believe me, I've stood A LOT from you. My relationship with you has been practically abusive. Farewell Mozilla, it's been real.
Re: Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
#24Dear Mozilla, you have no business having my data in the first place. If you're promising to keep my data safe, things have already gone wrong.
Firefox does not force you to submit data to them to be useful. Everything can be disabled.
> Everything can be disabled.
If it is enabled by default, then they are doing it wrong.
Re: Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except they actually provide useful features like Firefox Sync. If you opt into that service it is impossible for them to provide it to you withouth having your data on their servers.
They should be transparent about what data they have. There are options like "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" and "Allow Firefox to send backlogged crash reports on your behalf" in Firefox, I don't recall if they are enabled by default when you install the browser but I seem to recall that at least one of them is. These options have nothing to do with the Sync feature.
They are transparent. Have a look at their privacy policy: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
It's simple, human-readable language, not even legalese.
Re: Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you just hate the idea of any built-in browser integration with proprietary services? Yes. I hate the idea of any built-in browser integration with proprietary services.
Exactly. I stopped trusting Mozilla when Pocket went in. I just "upgraded" Firefox to make it shut up, and I spent 15 minutes checking the privacy options to see if they were sneaking anything in. I still don't see a way to totally remove "Sync". I don't want the browser talking to any site that's not absolutely necessary to display the page. Period.
> I don't want the browser talking to any site that's not absolutely necessary to display the page. Period.
We've probably already lost that war, because almost all sites today include hundreds of kilobytes of extraneous javascript tracking cruft, and blocking it will frequently break the page display.
At least Mozilla is trying to help on that front with their privacy tools and container tabs.
Re: Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
#27They've been blasting the PR far and wide on social media but did they ever address their recent 'experiment?'
What are you referring to? Link please
Probably this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18800175
Re: Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox does not force you to submit data to them to be useful. Everything can be disabled.
> Everything can be disabled. If it is enabled by default, then they are doing it wrong.
That's just your opinion. I do not mind sharing data with them by default because I know the data helps their long-term survival. Especially because I know I'm lazy (like most people are) so if it's opt-in I wouldn't bother turning things on.
Re: Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly do not understand why so many people are angry about Pocket: https://help.getpocket.com/article/1142-firefox-new-tab-reco... > Important Note: Neither Mozilla nor Pocket receives a copy of your browser history. The entire process of sorting and filtering which stories you should see happens locally in your copy of Firefox. Do you think they're lying? Do you just hate the idea of any built-in browser integr…
They're not lying, they're just missing the point. 1. I don't want recommendations, I didn't ask for recommendations. Having it as a feature that can be enabled for pocket-users might be defensible, opt-out isn't. 2. Even if they're somehow keeping your full browser history on your machine for processing (which is an irrelevant point anyway since it's often synced with your Firefox account anyway), the point is they'…
Interesting thesis but,
1. turn them off. Like any other application on the planet, you get some defaults and you turn on/off what you want, yourself, if what you want is different from the default. Settings => Home => Firefox Home Content. There's even a settings shortcut on the new tab view to take you to those settings, so turn it off first and see if you feel better now that you'll never see pocket ever again.
2. No it's not, that makes no sense. Processing your local behaviour, and never sending that information to anyone else, is not "the antithesis of what Mozilla stands for" in the slightest. What do you think happens here? Do you think they're sending that metadata to pocket, which then does _more_ processing on their end to match your preferences to recommendations? Because if so: that's not what happens, and it's time to read up on how pocket recommendations actually work to see if you're upset with them for a legitimate reason or whether you just completely misunderstood how this works.
Re: Firefox Fights for You. We keep your data safe, never sold
#30Never sold, just given away, see the cliqz debacle. https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/06/mozilla-to-launch-firefox-...
Before the apologists roll in: Cliqz GmbH is a media and advertising company, and Firefox DOES NOT own Cliqz GmbH, they just own a bit of it (officially they are a "minority investor").
The Mozilla Corporation sent private data of its users without their permission to a third party ad company. It's despicable and unforgivable.