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Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

ghacks.net

351–360 of 480 posts

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What're the alternatives to Firefox? The only ones that come to mind are Opera and Brave, and Brave had some controversy too.

Librefox https://github.com/intika/Librefox/

As pointed out elsewhere, this is unmaintained, and you should instead use https://librewolf.net/

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#353
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I switched to Brave - no regrets

You don't regret supporting a guy who wants to ban same sex marriage and pushes covid misinfo?

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#355
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I switched to Brave - no regrets

From Wikipedia:

> On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users type a URL of Binance into the address bar, which earns Brave money. Further research revealed that Brave redirects the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites, too. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting". [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Insertion_...

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#356
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don’t use the internet at all if this is your threat model.

The threat model is reasonable behavior + a single warrant or data leak. It may not be the most likely way of compromise, but it's very possible, and such small insecurities add up. Mozilla should be making such compromise less likely, not more .

How do they add up? Having your IP address 10 times won’t make anyone ever of your medical history. It is not cumulative.

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#357

I'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…

Let's not act like Eich was some kind of last bastion of honest software. At the helm of Brave, I've witnessed a lot of very scummy ideas be presented (sure most of them were backpedaled when people were appalled as expected, but they're still pushing the line of what is _just_ not shady enough to be tolerated), and even defended online (even here on HN) personally. Ad replacement, shadow accounts in their BAT "donation" system, the system that collects on peoples behalf without their knowing and will never tell them if under a certain threshold. etc etc. Maybe he didn't try that stuff at Mozilla but let's not make him out as a saint.

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#358
post #289

I would not download anything from Softonic. I know it's just an example but if you download anything from there you might get few surprises with the download.

Not just any example: Ghacks is owned by Softonic.

Well that explains!

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#360

I'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…

what exactly was the motivation of the managers here? more money?
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