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For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

heise.de

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Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#301
If you want to disable this, instructions are given here[1] but

1) Hamburger menu -> Settings -> Privacy & Security

2) scroll down to the new section entitled "Web Site Advertising Preferences".

3) Make sure the box marked "Allow web sites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement" is not checked.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attr...

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#302
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I walk outside I'm bombarded by ads. Almost all websites have been tailored to include ads and hide information. You're tracked on all devices you touch. Vaguely referencing more laws or larger government doesn't mean anything. We're not talking about all problems but a specific one. There is an obvious imbalance between the power and information an individual consumer can use to shield themselves from activities…

Seeing ads outside likely doesn't harm you though, you can ignore them. If your city is plastered with ads to a point at where you can't stand it you can always move, that's just another part of a city that someone may decide they don't like and want something different. > Almost all websites have been tailored to include ads and hide information. You're tracked on all devices you touch. That's really the crux of it…

So because we want to keep government small and ad companies can get so big they basically invade every part of your life you have to leave your phone, close your eyes, stay offline, just move bro. This doesn't seem like a very serious or productive line of reasoning.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla has never given us a choice to pay for Firefox.

Sure, but I don't think that really changes anything here. The idea of a law that bans advertising when the customer pays you would miss a huge portion of advertising and data collection including Firefox.

I read their post as banning it when the advertiser pays anyone else?

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#304
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no auto-update mechanism. Might not seem like a big deal, but IMO it is, especially on Windows where you're recommended to rely on 3rd party client to update the browser for you. You've now added a middle man, and since the binaries are not signed... well there's no guarantee you aren't downloading a malicious binary. To me, this seems like a plus. If you want users to update, provide them with something wo…

Also, for some software vendors, frequent/automatic upgrades are a great place to hide silent reconfiguration. Mozilla has been repeatedly resetting "Always check if Firefox is your default browser" option to "yes" with upgrades. I don't see why "private-attribution submission enabled" wouldn't be reset in future in the same way.

As mentioned above, we aren't talking about Firefox's update mechanism here, but rather Librewolf's.

> Mozilla has been repeatedly resetting "Always check if Firefox is your default browser" option to "yes" with upgrades.

I'm sorry to say this, but this just seems to be misinformation.

I don't see that anywhere in the source code[1]? Anything I can find regarding prompting the user regarding the default browser is hidden behind an if guard to make sure the pref is `true` and not `false`.

The only scenarios I am aware of that will change the pref if the user has toggled one manually is the `_migrationUI`[2] function (as you can see, no changes relating to `browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser`). Otherwise, untoggled prefs will be changed if the value in `firefox.js`[3] or `all.js`[4] is changed. As you can see, the last time the pref was modified was 2004.

[1] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/search?q=browser.shell...

[2] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compone...

[3] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/diff/94ff451885bb94679...

[4] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/modules/libpref...

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#305

Enough of this waiting for virtuous entities to address legitimate concerns of the public. The "ad industry" is a cancer and we need legal protection against this "industry". The solution is political not technical and definitely can not be left to "the market". Haven't you had enough?

[flagged]

so ban all advertisements?

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's to say this "my bad, we'll do better next time" isn't part of the playbook?

Once you start assuming that every apology is fake and in bad faith, the world quickly goes to shit. I'm not saying its impossible for apologies to be in bad faith, just that if it becomes impossible to apologize and move on after making a mistake, it becomes impossible to do anything productive.

Not real apologies, like from people — just corporate apologies, like from paid-for stooges.

Society will not collapse if we start holding these monsters to account; the opposite.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#307
post #6
post #2

Says the site that only offers one big button "accept" to its cookies :( :( There's no "Nope". Edit: Weird, some people seem to have received more options than me. For me there was just one option to accept (Zustimmen) and nothing else. Everything was in German but I read German anyway. I was on mobile though, perhaps this is why? I can't see it again because I already pressed it. A practice (pay or accept cookies) w…

> A practice (pay or accept cookies) which was actually ruled in breach with GDPR but many German sites seem to do this somehow. Our Data Protection Agencies ruled it okay. There was a recent court case that called it into question again, so we’ll see how things develop. FWIW, my normal blockers manage to block the heise.de pay-or-track banner, different from, e.g. golem.

[deleted]

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#308
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why Ladybird? Why not Servo?

I appreciate Ladybird's initiative. But if they work with Servo, Ladybird can build the browser and Servo can focus on the engine. Also we can avoid C++ nightmare. Everybody wins.

For the user, C++ won't be a nightmare.

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could just not do this shit. Completely refuse to help your enemies. Actually support their users.

Firefox has 3% market share. Completely refusing to engage with your enemies only works when you have the actual guns to back that attitude up. If you refuse to engage with the ad industry they just ignore you. Oh and the company that owns a large part of the world's ad industry and owns the browser that has 65% market share also pays like 90% of your bills. I mean, what's step two of your glorious plan to charge fis…

Maybe they would have a better market share if they weren't constantly pulling this shit every two or three years...

Re: For advertising, Firefox now collects user data by default

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until secureboot. At least on my Debian I retain full control using the shim and my own enrolled keys. So seems less an issue with the technology but perhaps with how some vendors (that are already locking you in anyway) use secureboot? from https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot >> Shim then becomes the root of trust for all the other distro-provided UEFI programs. It embeds a further distro-specific CA k…

In theory the benefits of secureboot around attestation and hashing/measuring of boot components do not require a secure/verifiable chain of custody. You could self verify using PCRs. The boot loader signing aspects were always for control and restricting devices, IMO.

> The boot loader signing aspects were always for control and restricting devices

Not surprising, given the huge role Microsoft had in developing this.

You can't enroll your MOK without booting up, and you can't boot up if Microsoft hasn't signed your bootloader/kernel... It used to be an no-brainer and now its difficult.

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