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Seems kind of like it is part of an ARG. I can't say I'm totally against something like that; Mozilla's gotta make money somehow, and as long as it's not selling out user privacy it's a better tradeoff than Chrome.
You think having advertisers change text on unrelated websites you visit is an acceptable tradeoff?
Still better than everything else
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 ad…
This is being added to the browser, outside the realm of security updates, through what is supposed to be a UX improvement program, for commercial purposes. It's written by a commercial company that produces advertisement content. It's not clear this code is audited. Sorry, but I'm uninstalling firefox. They have broken the basic trust I have in them as a user to not push arbitrary code to my machine against my inter…
Well maybe Safari, not because Apple wouldn't, but because they just don't care enough about ad revenue.
Chrome: They leech everything they can get away with, granted it goes only to Google, but you know it's just to feed their never-ending ad-revenue goal.
MS: They bypassed IE only ads, and went on to build ads into the entire OS.
Previously: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15921134 This is a link to the GitHub issue: * https://github.com/gregglind/addon-wr/issues/36 There are several scary things about this: - Unknown Mozilla developers can distribute addons to users without their permission - Mozilla developers can distribute addons to users without their knowledge - Mozilla developers themselves don't realise the consequences of doin…
1. Can you explain what you mean by "unknown Mozilla developers?" Unknown to whom?
2. Can you provide more detail on what specific configuration changes are reverted when opening the add-ons window? That sounds like a fairly serious bug.
3. What is the specific "this" you're trying to "properly disable?" You shouldn't have to dive into things like lockpref.
Mozilla (and other browser vendors) have the ability to push updates to their browsers outside of the normal release cadence. In many cases, these updates are distributed as add-ons, as they're cleanly separated from the rest of the browser internals, but that's just an implementation detail. If you visit about:support in Firefox, you should see a table of "Firefox Features," which are exactly that. Their source lives at: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-unified/file/tip/browser/exte...
For example, we used a system add-on to control the gradual roll-out of multiprocess Firefox, and the New Tab page is also implemented as an add-on called "activity-stream."
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I'm concerned about Mozilla pushing software written by the Mr Robot marketing department.
Is the plugin opensource, where can we vet it? I can't find it on github or anything like I can with the other plugins I use
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 ad…
"Well, I'm your bank. You already gave me authority to reinvest all your savings. Why are you mad now that I invested everything into bitcoin futures?"
What exactly does "trust" mean? We might have given mozilla such a widespread access exactly because we trust them not to abuse it. Stuff like this undermine that trust.
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That's novel, going to so much effort to use a tracking service while proclaiming you are not tracking! Sounds like taking a shower without getting wet. I see you silently dropped the Pocket thing, then?
Staying bitter for two years is one thing, but it took me a few minutes to refresh actual details about what happened. The initial integration raised privacy concerns but mainly by being unclear. Since then things have steadily improved, like Pocket updating their privacy policy. https://venturebeat.com/2015/06/09/mozilla-responds-to-firef... There was a long discussion on the Mozilla Governance board that clarified…
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Are you switching to Chrome, the browser that sends your every keystroke back to HQ?
Google does a lot of things but they've never betrayed my trust by installing an extension in conjunction with a third party without telling me. Google does track a lot of my data but they provide useful services in exchange, and in addition they make it pretty easy to see what data they have on me. Also Google's data is its competitive advantage so our interest in protecting my data from 3rd parties is aligned. In s…
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Is the plugin opensource, where can we vet it? I can't find it on github or anything like I can with the other plugins I use
The source lives at https://github.com/gregglind/addon-wr/
[1]: https://github.com/gregglind/addon-wr/graphs/contributors
This happened to me yesterday, so I looked for it. The Extension actually does nothing, but invert (make them upside down) a few words on specific sites. It's an experiment called "PUG ARG" to check whether page contents sniffing works. Its page doesn't reference any Bugzilla issue or Wiki page, while https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Shield/Shield_Studies/Queue doesn't list it. The source code references https://supp…
This is clearly an abuse of a development/testing/telemetry tool to deliver an advertisement.
Trust is hard to win and easily lost.