Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
#32Previous discussions:
Re: Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right now, after the Cliqz and remotely installed addon controversies, and the fact that Firefox Focus sends analytics data to a third party (Adjust Inc.), I'd say Apple is more privacy focused than Mozilla.
> Right now, after the Cliqz and remotely installed addon controversies, and the fact that Firefox Focus sends analytics data to a third party, I'd say Apple is more privacy focused than Mozilla. Could you clarify what is the third party that Mozilla is sending analytics to?
Firefox Focus (but not Firefox Klar) sends usage data to Google Analytics.
Mozilla has a promise from Google that Google will not use this data for their own analysis. If you do not trust Google to honor this agreement, Mozilla employees said on a GitHub issue about this, you should stop using Mozilla products.
Re: Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
#34Wasn't there someone on HN a while ago saying that Focus was built on WebKit which makes it basically a Google thing?
Every browser on iOS has to use WebKit as Apple won’t allow any other rendering engine (they say it’s for security reasons but I doubt this is the main motivation)
The main motivation is that the web will take over apps because apps are today's flash and apple wants to make sure it has a stake in the platform.
Re: Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
#35A nice trick with Focus on iOS is that you can set it to be the adblocker for mobile Safari. So, you install it, but don’t have to switch browsers to partially benefit from it. There are apparently paid adblockers that route your web requests for all apps through a VPN. Personally, I’m not interested in any aspect of that last sentence. Filtering just Safari locally for free is good for me. I’ve been against adblocke…
So the content blockers can also submit my traffic details to some server? I was under the impression that they can only add to the rule list in Safari. I am suddenly very afraid of adguard. Can someone clarify on this?
Re: Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
#36I use Firefox Focus on my phone for most of my casual browsing. It launches and loads pages much faster than Firefox does. For some reason, Firefox insists on stalling for a few seconds before starting to load the web page whereas Focus does it instantly. I only use Firefox when I need session management.
I hope Firefox 58 improves the situation.
Re: Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am sure the mobile devs will jump in and give an authoritative answer, but you can refuse to send usage data to Mozilla by toggle off in Focus’s settings.
The usage data is not sent to Mozilla but to a marketing company called "Adjust Inc.": https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-ios/wiki/Install-Tra... Firefox sending my data to a marketing company should not be on by default... Heck, it should not even be an option.
Usage data isn't much of a privacy issue, but if you are a concerned user, don't you already have the habit of going through the settings of each new app? I found this one 2 minutes after installing and though nothing more of it.
Re: Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The usage data is not sent to Mozilla but to a marketing company called "Adjust Inc.": https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-ios/wiki/Install-Tra... Firefox sending my data to a marketing company should not be on by default... Heck, it should not even be an option.
Usage data isn't much of a privacy issue, but if you are a concerned user, don't you already have the habit of going through the settings of each new app? I found this one 2 minutes after installing and though nothing more of it.
By the time I have disabled it they have already pinged the "Adjust, Inc." servers at least once with my information. That's unacceptable.
Re: Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Usage data isn't much of a privacy issue, but if you are a concerned user, don't you already have the habit of going through the settings of each new app? I found this one 2 minutes after installing and though nothing more of it.
By the time I have disabled it they have already pinged the "Adjust, Inc." servers at least once with my information. That's unacceptable.
If that is unacceptable in general, then why don't you check the settings of apps before you give them permission to access the internet?
Mozilla is not even sneaky about it. On the Google Play download page, the privacy notice for the app tells you that optional usage tracking is on by dafault. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/focus#w_privacy
Perhaps you should read the privacy notices for apps if you are concerned? It seems perfectly acceptable to me.
Re: Firefox Focus: A Fast Private Mobile Browser from Mozilla
#40I have been using Firefox focus for a while and I have 2 main problems with it. The adblocker is worse than ublock origin (eg. try to google Kindle) and there is no simple way to use tabs. I still use it to open links, but a lot of the time I end up having focus open it on Firefox.
That's because Firefox Focus doesn't actually have an ad blocker. What it has is a tracking blocker. It just so happens that almost all ads have trackers in them, that's why it still blocks most ads.
The ad results on web search engines generally don't have trackers in them, that's why they for example don't get blocked. Also, webpages with privacy-conscious users tend to have privacy respecting ads and webpages that are typically opened in Private Browsing tend to at least have privacy-respecting ads as backup, since Firefox's Private Browsing has this same tracking blocker.