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LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

librewolf-community.gitlab.io

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Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#161

Post by wintermutestwin »

jfk13 wrote: post #157
wintermutestwin wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not proclaiming that it was a fact. I am openly frustrated and confused. An oft repeated claim is that "people just don't care about their privacy." I am moderately technical and I am totally unsure of how to keep my data from these parasite companies. Achieving privacy is incredibly arcane and confusing. Instead of quipping at me with a low value post, why don't you tell me exactly what Mozilla's telemetry doe…

If you want to know about Mozilla's telemetry, you could start with https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid and its links to additional details.

Perhaps these indicate data leakage?

>Searches: Firefox sends Mozilla what you type into the search bar and Mozilla may share that data with its partners.

>Sites you visit: For the Suggestions you click, Firefox sends Mozilla the website URL, and Mozilla may share that data with its partners.

Interesting that turning off "suggestions" is not located in the "privacy" section.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#162

Post by jfk13 »

_jal wrote: post #150
jfk13 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that Firefox is "surveillance malware"? Precisely what surveillance are you referring to? Telemetry isn't surveillance. Recommended content (e.g. on the default New Tab page) doesn't involve surveillance.

> Telemetry isn't surveillance. As a categorical statement, this is false. "Not all telemetry is surveillance" is true. Telemetry is exfiltrated data the user did not ask to send. The line between telemetry and surveillance depends on the use and intent of the data recipient, not (necessarily) the data itself, and that use is opaque to the person whose actions generated the data. It is interesting to note that teleme…

Your prejudice is showing. "Exfiltrate" implies a surreptitious operation. E.g. Merriam-Webster: "to remove (someone) furtively from a hostile area"; Dictionary.com: "to escape furtively from an area under enemy control"; Collins: "to remove (data) from a computer, network, etc surreptitiously and without permission or unlawfully".

When Firefox is first launched, it opens the Privacy Notice page https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/, which is totally up-front about data being collected. Nothing surreptitious about it. Data is not "exfiltrated", it's simply "sent". But that doesn't sound nearly as evil, does it?

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#163

Post by cpeterso »

chinathrow wrote: post #100
solarkraft wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t mind telemetry that much. I mind Pocket, ads and whatever bullshit they’ll push next week.

I have some color packs for you, but they are only available briefly.

Additional "colorway" themes will be introduced seasonally, but the current colorway themes will not disappear. They will "graduate" to https://addons.mozilla.org/.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#164

Post by xanaxagoras »

sfink wrote: post #144
throwawayswede wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Mozilla is actually helping Google build and maintain a monopoly on search (for money) and is accepting the scraps that Google leaves on the table from the browser market. Mozilla has continuously and repeatedly fucked up when it comes to defaulting to grab telemetry and shady deals with Google, to asking for money while spending way too much salaries for its execs for a supposed non-profit corporation (that is e…

(Mozilla dev here, not speaking for Moz) "grab telemetery" - that data is really, really useful in making development decisions, and we are hyperparanoid about what we collect. From an armchair, it may seem like you can make the right guess about how to eg adjust garbage collection scheduling priorities, but actual data always surprises you in one way or another. It can make the difference between spending a month on…

> "grab telemetery" - that data is really, really useful in making development decisions, and we are hyperparanoid about what we collect.

We understand that, and we're saying no. You can do whatever you want. I will use LibreWolf.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#165

Post by _jal »

jfk13 wrote: post #162
_jal wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telemetry isn't surveillance. As a categorical statement, this is false. "Not all telemetry is surveillance" is true. Telemetry is exfiltrated data the user did not ask to send. The line between telemetry and surveillance depends on the use and intent of the data recipient, not (necessarily) the data itself, and that use is opaque to the person whose actions generated the data. It is interesting to note that teleme…

Your prejudice is showing. "Exfiltrate" implies a surreptitious operation. E.g. Merriam-Webster: "to remove (someone) furtively from a hostile area"; Dictionary.com: "to escape furtively from an area under enemy control"; Collins: "to remove (data) from a computer, network, etc surreptitiously and without permission or unlawfully". When Firefox is first launched, it opens the Privacy Notice page https://www.mozilla.o…

I'm talking about telemetry, not FF. But whatever, I'm not going to have a pointless discussion with someone more interested in criticizing word choice than replying to what I wrote.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#166

Post by rumpelstilz18 »

alexmcc81 wrote: post #125

Once I would have used this, but I can't just can't bring myself to trust forks by small or unknown teams. We trust browsers with passwords to everything in our lives, like our bank details. The FAQ doesn't even cover who created LibreWolf. Why should I trust them? Even if I do trust the developers, are they really capable of keeping a modern complex browser secure in the hostile environment of todays internet? It ha…

"We trust browsers with passwords to everything in our lives, like our bank details."

No we don't. I use C&P from my PW Manager (Enpass).

For your Bank you should have your own Browser (I use a vanilla Chrome). Firefox with a ton of privacy plug-ins. And Chromium for Facebook. I use other browsers too.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#167

Post by fabrice_d »

est31 wrote: post #86
Sebb767 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet we see quite a lot of Chromium forks - Brave, Vivaldi and Edge come to mind. For Firefox, the number seems to be a lot lower.

Due to its market share, Chromium has better website compatibility these days than Firefox. See the statement by the Brave creator on this: https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1165348116398104576 Also, especially on mobile, Firefox is an extremely niche browser engine. The biggest browser forks in therms of global user count are actually not the likes of Edge, Brave, etc, but android Chromium forks popular in asia…

The biggest chromium fork on mobile is actually FB "in app browser".

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#168

Post by dblohm7 »

geofft wrote: post #151
alexmcc81 wrote: post #125

Once I would have used this, but I can't just can't bring myself to trust forks by small or unknown teams. We trust browsers with passwords to everything in our lives, like our bank details. The FAQ doesn't even cover who created LibreWolf. Why should I trust them? Even if I do trust the developers, are they really capable of keeping a modern complex browser secure in the hostile environment of todays internet? It ha…

What I'd like to see is a Firefox (and Chromium) fork with - automatic builds and uploads via GitHub/GitLab CI (or similar) from a well-commented build script - all the knobs for reproducible builds set up, so anyone can fork the repo, run the CI themselves, and see that it's bit-for-bit the same thing - an automatic merge or rebase of the latest stable release tag, and the result of that merge being plugged into aut…

A lot of those forks don't even bother with CI: Some of them, one of their first commits is to remove all the tests.

Re: LibreWolf – A fork of Firefox, focused on privacy, security and freedom

#169

Post by dblohm7 »

dmos62 wrote: post #110
solox3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No one opts in" aside, any opt-in metrics you do collect tend to be skewed towards how the people who opt in, use the product. Anyone serious about making product decisions using opt-in metrics should be aware of this bias.

This could be solved by a lot of transperancy about what collected telemetry is saying. A user can then check if the users that opted-in to telemetry are representative of his own use cases and thus make an informed decision if he should opt-in as well (if he's not well represented). Telemtry is a lot like voting.

So, `about:telemetry`, https://telemetry.mozilla.org
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