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Firefox search update

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox search update

#101

Post by mrob »

crtasm wrote: post #97
mrob wrote: post #78

I don't even want my browser to support searching from the browser UI. If I want to send information to Google I'll visit their web page directly. I don't want to do it by a misclick. It's surprisingly difficult to disable searching from the browser UI in Firefox. Firefox insists you have at least one search engine enabled at all times. The best option I know of is to set the undocumented setting "browser.urlbar.upda…

I achieved this by turning off a handful of config options for the address bar's suggestions; setting the search input to be separate from the address bar, and hiding it via Customize Toolbar. I think these were the most important: keyword.enabled browser.fixup.alternate.enabled browser.urlbar.suggest.searches

For many versions now, removing the separate search bar via Customize Toolbar reverts to combined URL bar and search bar. It also leaves the search option in the right-click menu.

Re: Firefox search update

#102

Post by autoexec »

BadHumans wrote: post #19
romanows wrote: post #11

Seems like this is in support of "Firefox Suggest", which seems to show sponsored links. I really don't like advertising so I really don't like going down that road. Can't they just take Google's yearly $600,000,000 payment and build the best browser "for the user" while also addressing technical debt and organizational issues so it can continue as an open source project if/when the money ever dries up?

You want them to be Google's vassal state and wait for death instead of trying to become self-sustainable? Defeatist mentality if I've ever seen one.

> You want them to be Google's vassal state and wait for death instead of trying to become self-sustainable?

There's no shortage of privacy respecting open source software that somehow doesn't have to choose between depending on Google and selling out their users. Firefox knows that most people won't opt out. They're choosing to take Google's money and screw over their users at the same time.

Re: Firefox search update

#103

Post by crtasm »

mrob wrote: post #101
crtasm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I achieved this by turning off a handful of config options for the address bar's suggestions; setting the search input to be separate from the address bar, and hiding it via Customize Toolbar. I think these were the most important: keyword.enabled browser.fixup.alternate.enabled browser.urlbar.suggest.searches

For many versions now, removing the separate search bar via Customize Toolbar reverts to combined URL bar and search bar. It also leaves the search option in the right-click menu.

That may be the case, but typing into my address bar does not trigger or suggest searches. Good point about the right click.

Re: Firefox search update

#105

Post by braiamp »

How can Mozilla guarantee some privacy? Well, they would be using separation of content and the source. The content is "broad categories" of search queries. They take your query, match it to a category (this is important, because it has to be local matching to make sense), encrypt it with the public key and send it to a broker. The broker knows where it is coming from, but not what it says. The broker then forward to Mozilla, which decrypts it with their private key.

I don't see a problem as long as there's not enough bytes of information that can infer a person. Aggregating the data in the client would allow this, so I see some kind of time shifting to protect the activity patterns.

Re: Firefox search update

#107

Post by exitzer0 »

poszlem wrote: post #37

One thing that annoys me more than data collection is corporations pretending they do it for my benefit while "respecting my privacy." Stop with the gaslighting, it's absolutely insufferable. Not to mention, the way the text is written makes me think it's ai generated and that makes it somehow even worse.

This. I invite everyone to go and look at the amount settings that must be turned OFF in Windows 10/11, Firefox, Chrome, whatever app from companies that claim to respect user privacy. For Windows it is literally dozens of toggles, and unsoliticed apps. Then there are the so called security features like malware scanning of URLs/file downloads, etc. Then the DNS replacements which, ya know, still see the URLs that you are asking for.

Every company that claims to respect your privacy is full of shit. There is too much money to made in not respecting it and this is the sole reason that they exist.

Re: Firefox search update

#108

Post by Barrin92 »

salawat wrote: post #87
unethical_ban wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe there is no utility in knowledge? Do you believe absolutism is the only philosophy for privacy? I think telemetry and the data software collects can help with usability, design, and product enhancement and that it's very likely this can be done to some extent without harming privacy.

You know what? That's fine and good. Ask users to opt-in, and respect the wishes of those who opt-out . Anything short of that is you ignoring the concept of consent entirely, and doing whatever mental gymnastics you can to feel fine with doing so.

This has nothing to do with mental gymnastics. Consent isn't a meaningful concept when it comes to each individual setting of a piece of software. You'd have to make 500 decisions every minute if you had to actively consent to everything your software does.

In fact cookie banners show this. People hate them because they force meaningless choices on them. If you make a website with tracking as an opt-out option, almost everyone clicks "accept all". If you make a website with tracking as opt-in, almost every one clicks accept all. That shows that opt-in/out or consent does literally nothing ot reflect people's preferences, the act of making a choice completely dominates the actual decision.

That means that if you want to respect user preferences you don't actually get around making default choices for them, and it's why consent is pretty much meaningless.

Re: Firefox search update

#109

Post by JohnFen »

I'm unclear about what search data they're collecting. Are they only talking about searches done through the omnibar, or are they including searches done by navigating to a search engine website and using that?

Re: Firefox search update

#110

Post by autoexec »

flipbrad wrote: post #32

Historically it was always interesting and quite challenging legal work, reconciling some things a bit like this with privacy, lawful intercept and anti-remote-exploitation-tool (anti-trojan) laws, especially in Europe (think: the cookie rule, which goes beyond cookies and PII). Then again, more recently mobile apps and operating systems (on all platforms, e.g. desktop OSs) seem to be doing quite a lot of it, so mayb…

> Then again, more recently mobile apps and operating systems (on all platforms, e.g. desktop OSs) seem to be doing quite a lot of it, so maybe those legal concerns were overblown.

I think its possible that the laws are still being violated, but good luck suing companies like MS or Google as an individual. Governments won't go after them because their spy agencies love the constant stream of data they can collect from it.

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