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Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

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Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#161

Post by alkonaut »

If they state as an explicit principle that no addons/studies are actually enabled unless the user opted in, then I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that if that happened to users that did not opt in, it was a terrible mistake (I.e a bug).

I can tolerate bugs, much more than I can tolerate sneaky app behavior. But I hope the statement about explicit opt-in will be repeated, and this will be explained.

At first I thought it must have been users that explicitly had opted in, but with so many users claiming they haven’t, it seems unlikely.

The next possibility is that preview versions have things opt-out instead of opt in (because in preview versions you need more data from users - typical for closed alphas etc) - but then this should be very clearly explained on download/install.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#163

Post by acqq »

lozenge wrote: post #153
acqq wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you also need to explicitly opt-in Wrong, as far as I see: Looking in my about:config, I see app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled=true browser.onboarding.shieldstudy.enabled=true enabled by default . The settings that I've changed from the default are shown in bold. These aren't bold. Those are the defaults. Everybody can check. That means that the user must actively take steps to disable them, if he knows that they ex…

It looks like experiments are previews of potential new features, like letting you pop a video out of a page https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/min-vid?utm_source... Whereas studies collect usage data.

Why should the "previews of potential new features" in the form of the extensions be hidden from the user, and even if the user "unhides" them be automatically hidden again?

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#164

Post by uep »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #74
yborg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it's getting loaded anyway for some people that say they had "Studies" disabled and/or "Studies" itself became re-enabled. The whole idea of slipping paid advertorial content into what are billed as "research" kind of gives the lie to this whole thing and is why I never turn these on in any product. Which is also why it's now "opt-out" by default, and why it will eventually not be an option at all. It's al…

You don't just need "Studies" enabled, you also need to explicitly opt-in to each specific study on an individual basis: > Participation in an individual study is opt-in Source: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies If that didn't happen in this case, then I suspect it's probably a bug.

Well, this is very troubling; it's installed in my browser. Not only did I not get prompted, I never volunteered for being in any studies. I'm running Firefox on Linux, but I installed it from Mozilla, and not the package manager.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#165

Post by teamhappy »

roywiggins wrote: post #139
teamhappy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking about advertisers running code in your browser. I think you have to opt-in to participate in one of the studies, so that's not happening without your consent. It looks like Firefox auto-installs the studies though if you've enabled the feature. But it only activates the individual extensions for the studies once you've opted in to participate. The extensions themselves need to be approved by a bunch of…

I never knowingly opted in to anything and found both the "Studies" section and the "pug-experience" study turned on just now in about:studies. I don't know if it really is meant to be opt-in, but it certainly didn't seem like they've done it correctly.

The wiki page says that no changes are made until you opt in. Can you tell if you're part of the game? (I assume you'd be able to tell somehow)

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#166

Post by napsterbr »

edibleEnergy wrote: post #25

Somewhat tangential to this particular issue, but this is a good lesson for developers in why you should be dry and explicit in your writing. Sure `alert("FFFUUU WHY U NO WORK");` keeps you entertained for 5 minutes while you debug a problem but when that accidentally gets to prod...

I see you, but your example outlines a problem with the process/workflow, not with the developer.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#167

Post by kamranjon »

I actually discovered this because my browser would not stop running at 100% cpu utilization about 3 days ago, not doing anything, just sitting at Google.com with one tab open. It freaked me out because I couldn't find any documentation on the extension. Once removed Firefox was running fine again. I guess I'm relieved to know it wasn't some malware or something more sketchy, but I am wondering what it was doing pegging my cpu at 100% whenever my browser was open...

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#168

Post by nogridbag »

alkonaut wrote: post #161

If they state as an explicit principle that no addons/studies are actually enabled unless the user opted in, then I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that if that happened to users that did not opt in, it was a terrible mistake (I.e a bug). I can tolerate bugs, much more than I can tolerate sneaky app behavior. But I hope the statement about explicit opt-in will be repeated, and this will be explained. At…

Just installed Firefox a week ago on OS X. Just checked and I have Looking Glass installed. I'm usually very careful when installing software about things like this. I don't recall ever opting in to anything (including error reporting). So my guess is it's a default you have to disable in settings.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#169

Post by kuschku »

dahart wrote: post #64
mark-r wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that makes it better. Knowing that there's a way to get an addon installed invisibly is going to be more justification for paranoia.

There almost certainly is not a way to invisibly install add-ons, unless you are part of Mozilla, and, you know, making Firefox. If paranoia is your thing, it might be worth considering that Mozilla can do anything it wants inside Firefox core, all of it is "invisible" to you.

And this is the point where even the most Mozilla-supporting users move away. For me, this is it, I’m going to Chromium.

Fuck this shit, in the past months we had CliqZ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708, we had Mozilla adding new telemetry, we had Mozilla force-enable toolkit.telemetry.enabled, we had Mozilla say that, if you download Nightly, that is considered opt-in to tracking, we had Mozilla put Google Analytics into the Addons menu (because it’s loaded from addons.mozilla.org: https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785 ), and we had Mozilla say that, if we don’t trust Google, we shouldn’t use Firefox.

Fuck this.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#170

Post by blauditore »

Many people seem to be shocked because Mozilla installed an add-on automatically. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter since the code is coming from Mozilla - they're building the whole browser, so they could introduce functionality anywhere. If someone distrusts their add-ons, why trust their browser at all?

The main question is what behavior is being introduced. I haven't researched deeply, but apparently the add-on does nothing until the user opts-in on studies.

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