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Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

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Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#11

Post by WalterGR »

kevindication wrote: post #8
WalterGR wrote: post #6

Like Apple products, Firefox branded itself as malware proof. --- http://web.archive.org/web/20041127034451/http://www.mozilla... "“Beware of spyware. If you can, use the Firefox browser.” - USA Today" "Privacy and Security Built with your security in mind, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity yo…

The difference being that you have to decide to install this harmful extension. ActiveX just gets loaded during regular browsing.

ActiveX hasn't worked that way for a long time. At least since XP SP2, released 2004. Possibly even before then - I'm not sure exactly what XP SP2 changed.

Edit: Fix typo.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#12

Post by zerosanity »

A quick fgrep found the code making the requests to their servers: http://pastie.org/1932287

Edit: Further code browsing points to the "rank" feature. They rank all URLs that are http/https and the host isn't "localhost". I'm guessing, but if you turn of ranking in the preferences, it will stop logging your page views.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#13

Post by WalterGR »

alecco wrote: post #7
WalterGR wrote: post #6

Like Apple products, Firefox branded itself as malware proof. --- http://web.archive.org/web/20041127034451/http://www.mozilla... "“Beware of spyware. If you can, use the Firefox browser.” - USA Today" "Privacy and Security Built with your security in mind, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity yo…

Are you blaming Mozilla/Firefox for every possible 3rd party misuse of their software?

No. And rereading my post, I'm just not seeing any blame.

I'm presenting some pertinent history and tying it to the recent Apple malware news, which has been heavily discussed here.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#15

Post by willidiots »

Seems like an overreaction, imho. This is likely a case of poor Privacy Policy writing and general ineptitude, rather than deliberate evil.

From their feature list: "Easy to use : when a video is detected, the download button becomes clickable." - i.e. our plugin sends all URLs to us for analysis, we respond telling the plugin whether to activate the button

"Integrated Traffic Rank indicator for all the sites you visit." - i.e. we need a way of measuring unique visits to everything

Still, interesting, and good on this guy for bringing it into the public eye.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#17

Post by cont4gious »

willidiots wrote: post #15

Seems like an overreaction, imho. This is likely a case of poor Privacy Policy writing and general ineptitude, rather than deliberate evil. From their feature list: "Easy to use : when a video is detected, the download button becomes clickable." - i.e. our plugin sends all URLs to us for analysis, we respond telling the plugin whether to activate the button "Integrated Traffic Rank indicator for all the sites you vis…

but absolutely none of that requires a unique identifier, which is where this article focuses most of it's gripe.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#18

Post by willidiots »

cont4gious wrote: post #17
willidiots wrote: post #15

Seems like an overreaction, imho. This is likely a case of poor Privacy Policy writing and general ineptitude, rather than deliberate evil. From their feature list: "Easy to use : when a video is detected, the download button becomes clickable." - i.e. our plugin sends all URLs to us for analysis, we respond telling the plugin whether to activate the button "Integrated Traffic Rank indicator for all the sites you vis…

but absolutely none of that requires a unique identifier, which is where this article focuses most of it's gripe.

It seems like the "Integrated Traffic Rank indicator" could, if they wanted to distinguish uniqueness by users rather than unique IPs.

Not that it's a good idea.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#20

Post by Sargis »

MattBearman wrote: post #16
natmaster wrote: post #10

Chrome tracks your browsing history... why do people suddenly care when there's an addon for Firefox that does that?

I'd like to see some proof of that. Or in the words of Wikipedia, 'Citation Needed'

I'd like to see some proof as well. While there is some tracking involved in Chrome, I doubt they track browser history as well.
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