The article doesn't mention installs via repositories, do these bypass the tracking?
Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
331–340 of 480 posts
Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
#332Suppose 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…
You know I let a lot of important things in Firefox slide (like the poor Webspeech API support, bad text-to-speech, some missing extensions and a lot of other things) but I still make it a habit to use it over Chrome (and recommend it to everybody) as somewhere in my mind it feels like a small revolt against the giant evil Google corp. But stuff like this and other shenanigans in the past (like Mr.robot, misuse of fu…
Firefox has no real competitive pressure and no need to improve. Google is their sugar daddy and Mozilla stopped innovating a decade ago. It's just constantly playing catchup while suckling on Google teats, desperately clinging onto relevance. Without Google nobody would pay for their browser.
At this point it'd be better for the web if we standardized on Blink and moved on, cleaning up some of the invasive tracking in Chrome but leaving the renderer intact. Gecko and Safari/Webkit are just holding back the web.
Firefox provides nothing but a bunch of incompatibilities these days and some warm fuzzies that honestly haven't been deserved for years and years. Modern Firefox is slow, bloated spamware.
Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
#333I'm posting anonymously for obvious reasons. I've been working at Mozilla since its inception. And eventually left the company 2 years ago. And I'm so mad. Mozilla is not the Mozilla that was created almost 20 years ago. It's not the same people there. After the Firefox 4 nightmare, they started hiring product managers from big corp. We started seeing some ex-twitter, ex-microsoft, ex-amazon joining the company. Peop…
A good time to remind everyone that when you donate to "Mozilla", you're donating to the Mozilla Foundation, which is the social justice part, not the Mozilla Corporation, which is the browser part.
Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
I changed my default browser few days ago back to Safari. In Firefox, I would usually click the first two items on the home page which would be photopea or reddit. That day, they put 2 sponsored items for Amazon and Trivago instead at the first 2 spots and I accidentally clicked the amazon one without realizing because that first item was supposed to be Photopea. That was enough to piss me off: https://i.imgur.com/s7…
You can disable the sponsored links.
Yeah, by using a better browser... Mozilla is kinda incompetent these days and shouldn't be trusted with stewardship. All they do is posture and market. All the real engineering seemingly stopped a long time ago.
Arguably Google can't either but at least they provide the engineering talent, if not the ethical leadership. Mozilla just offers spam.
Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
#335Suppose 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 wonder if the Tor people know about this?
Firefox to my eye jumped the shark a long, long time ago, when they took to using deliberate deception during the install process to get people to sign up to a Mozilla account.
Pretty much everything they've introduced for years I've not wanted or disliked.
The saving grace has been that pretty much everything can be turned off in about::config.
I may be wrong, but I think Moz has become a typical larger company, wholly divorced from its users, unable to know what users want, let alone respond.
What Moz as a large company wants is really completely different to what users want, and a unique tracking ID is a shining example of this.
I'll be using Tor, but I my secondary browser now has to change, as this is intolerable.
Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now let's think about how much users can trust Firefox's VPN service. Multipurpose telemetry being utilized there too?
Good point. Isn’t their VPN just a rebranded Mullvad VPN with a higher price?
The application at least on macOS appears bespoke as it was missing connect on startup and a few other things I rely on so switched to Mullvad.
Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I changed my default browser few days ago back to Safari. In Firefox, I would usually click the first two items on the home page which would be photopea or reddit. That day, they put 2 sponsored items for Amazon and Trivago instead at the first 2 spots and I accidentally clicked the amazon one without realizing because that first item was supposed to be Photopea. That was enough to piss me off: https://i.imgur.com/s7…
Advertising inside of Firefox is going insane, even if it’s just ads for Mozilla. Tabs that opens when you open FF, little lines on the home page, “Big browser takes care of your privacy” starts looking very creepy.
They're desperate. The whole organization is dying.
Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
#338They seem to be trying to gather a lot of telemetry to measure how they can boost popularity of Firefox. I wonder did they tried to measure how the measurement itself influences popularity? Social measurements are like quantum ones, they change reality. There was a funny story of a Hawthorn Experiment[1], which tried to find ways to boost productivity but at the end managed to state just that the very attempt to cond…
That seems like a very harsh interpretation. Very few people will care whether their specific download is tracked. I do honestly wonder how that adds vakuento Mozilla, but no one will not use Firefox due to this- especially as every single alternative is much worse than Firefox on such metrics.
It’s another straw on the camels back
Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
#339Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the lynx-but-graphical alternative? I just want a minimal web view and input a URL. Why doesn't this exist
> What's the lynx-but-graphical alternative? Dillo or elinks > I just want a minimal web view and input a URL. Surf (suckless project)
Also thanks, TIL alternatives do exist