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Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

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Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#281

Post by tareqak »

aembleton wrote: post #272
cookiengineer wrote: post #256

I don't understand why this is news? Spyware watchdog posted about this years ago. It's been in there at least since 2016, and every time you open Firefox (not start!) it will happily broadcast its geo position information to their geolocation backend. The same goes for the WebRTC related STUN servers, which are always connected to when Firefox starts. I mean, come on folks. Never trust any software blindly. Use MITM…

If you prefer Firefox to chrome, then the best alternative is librefox. Librefox is Firefox without all of the tracking: https://github.com/intika/Librefox/

Librefox is unmaintained: https://github.com/intika/Librefox/issues/141 . https://librewolf.net/ is a fork of that.

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#282

Post by sdoering »

hosteur wrote: post #83

How is this not a blatant violation of EU GDPR? This is involuntary non informed tracking.

I have just sent a complaint to the data protection officer responsible for me (of the German federal state in which I live).

Let's see what happens (expectation: nothing).

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#283

Post by nemosaltat »

wyclif wrote: post #277
OrlandoHakim wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Brave - no regrets

I did, too. All I can tell you is that when I have Brave running on an M1 with four tabs open, it's consistently using 240MB of memory. When I fire up Firefox Developer Edition with the same tabs open, it starts at 660MB and quickly balloons up to 1.05GB of memory usage.

My experience also. I’ve slowly edged away from Firefox and have primarily been using Brave and Safari for the last 6mos or so. Brave just feels snappier, and it’s close enough to Chrome that most work required websites aren’t broken.

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#284

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

busymom0 wrote: post #241
thyrox wrote: 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 changed my default browser few days ago back to Safari. In Firefox, I would usually click the first two items on the home page which would be photopea or reddit. That day, they put 2 sponsored items for Amazon and Trivago instead at the first 2 spots and I accidentally clicked the amazon one without realizing because that first item was supposed to be Photopea. That was enough to piss me off: https://i.imgur.com/s7…

You can disable the sponsored links.

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#285

Post by VexorLoophole »

busymom0 wrote: post #241
thyrox wrote: 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 changed my default browser few days ago back to Safari. In Firefox, I would usually click the first two items on the home page which would be photopea or reddit. That day, they put 2 sponsored items for Amazon and Trivago instead at the first 2 spots and I accidentally clicked the amazon one without realizing because that first item was supposed to be Photopea. That was enough to piss me off: https://i.imgur.com/s7…

What do you use for adblocking on safari?

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#286

Post by sdoering »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #154
charcircuit wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To tell how many downloads result in an actual install http logs are not enough. You will get extra noise on top of the data you care about.

Download to install conversion also doesn't need an embedded token. It could be obtained through other data that doesn't need to track the individual install. I forget if Firefox has a 'welcome' page that it shows on first launch, but it could serve as the count of number of installs. I believe Firefox also has an auto update system, so that too could serve as an Active Users count. Lots of ways that you can derive t…

Even if you do 'install' and 'first run' tracking without the unique identifier you need to have consent for EU citizens before sending the tracking request to Mozilla. As the IP is transmitted you would already be sending what the regulations call 'personal data'.

The ID is just additional data that would probably be classified as PD (personal data) as well.

So even basic install tracking is a no go. I also just don't understand why this would be necessary. This wasn't the case for software for how many decades? It didn't necessarily transmit such information. If it was commercial you probably had something like license server stuff in the later days (before just a number that was checked for validation).

It probably became a thing when the mobile phone with app model rose. There the vendors (mostly Apple/Google) knew the downloads from the app stores and marketing wanted more. Especially when the pushed advertisements for apps.

So companies like Adjust rose to fame for tracking ad clicks to installs, first run and usage stats.

This probably led to others thinking it to be a great idea for general software as well.

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#287

Post by the_gipsy »

cookiengineer wrote: post #256

I don't understand why this is news? Spyware watchdog posted about this years ago. It's been in there at least since 2016, and every time you open Firefox (not start!) it will happily broadcast its geo position information to their geolocation backend. The same goes for the WebRTC related STUN servers, which are always connected to when Firefox starts. I mean, come on folks. Never trust any software blindly. Use MITM…

> I am still busy forking webkit into retrokit and it's a shitload of work to remove these tracking features.

Why not fork Firefox? Or just disable the tracking?

Re: Each Firefox download has a unique identifier

#290

Post by 58028641 »

VexorLoophole wrote: post #285
busymom0 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I changed my default browser few days ago back to Safari. In Firefox, I would usually click the first two items on the home page which would be photopea or reddit. That day, they put 2 sponsored items for Amazon and Trivago instead at the first 2 spots and I accidentally clicked the amazon one without realizing because that first item was supposed to be Photopea. That was enough to piss me off: https://i.imgur.com/s7…

What do you use for adblocking on safari?

I switched to AdGuard after Safari stopped supporting uBlock Origin.
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