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What’s your point, that someone can attempt to do something anonymously and fail?
My point is that they failed only because they were betrayed by the free software tool they thought they could trust.
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My point is that they failed only because they were betrayed by the free software tool they thought they could trust.
Mozilla has never advertised that their software was designed to keep you anonymous.
Suppose you want to do something anonymously. 1. Download installer from Mozilla from your home network - Mozilla now has your home IP and installer ID. 2. Transfer it via USB key to a secure, anonymous computer - one not linked to you, on a network not associated with you, such as public WiFi. 3. Install Firefox using that installer on said computer. It transmits the installer ID to Mozilla, which matches the one gi…
I can't remember exactly but Apple also does this with apps. "Downloaded from ...".
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Any connection to Mozilla's servers reveals your IP to them. Given the amount of telemetry in Firefox, it's foolish to assume they don't log these IPs. And in either case, they could be legally compelled to. But afaik, under US law, they cannot be compelled to subvert their software, e.g. to add such spyware features if they were not already present.
Why would Mozilla need the IP address? It doesn’t seem useful for their telemetry.
> This data will allow us to correlate telemetry IDs with download tokens and Google Analytics IDs.
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Why would Mozilla need the IP address? It doesn’t seem useful for their telemetry.
What part of Mozilla's behavior makes you assume they don't ? It's easy to come up with some dubious internal justification to store IPs (like to determine where to focus internationalization efforts).
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My point is that they failed only because they were betrayed by the free software tool they thought they could trust.
Mozilla has never advertised that their software was designed to keep you anonymous.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...
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Why would they need installer IDs? The question is if they collect it, not if they need it, and all their other behavior suggests that they do collect it.
The article explains why: to figure out why there are more installs than downloads.
(Joking, but only a little.)
"Principle 4: Individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional."[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
How was this principle violated in this case?
It's fairly hidden first off (what % of users are going to watch the checksums or read these articles?). You also don't seem to get a chance to opt-out of this until after the installation when you can open settings in a normal use case, yet as explained here[1] they'll be attaching the download token to the install and post-install pings[2] which include system information which seems to enable tracking people via metadata across systems.
The "optional" bit is maybe open to interpretation, but if taken literally it's tracking that's on by default, so the privacy is "optional" here in that sense.
I get this isn't a big deal for a lot of people, but I dislike that Mozilla has a "manifesto" and talks a huge game about empowering users and privacy when they're treating them as secondary priorities rather than actual principles. It strikes me as disingenuous to claim it's a principle then have a bunch of "buts" in there that are increasingly moving away from the alleged principle, even if it isn't nefarious.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1677497#c0 [2] https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/t...