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Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

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Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#61

Post by dblohm7 »

b112 wrote: post #50
kaba0 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Like, seriously. Telemetry is useful, and I am more than happy to provide them with some useful metrics so they know what to improve on - since I can’t really help with the code itself, since it is an insanely huge project. It’s not like they use it to build a profile of you, as goddamn chrome does. I feel that whatever Mozilla does can never be good enough for some people, even though they are one of the most i…

It’s not like they use it to build a profile of you, as goddamn chrome does. Eh? Says who? Them? So many times, companies have lied, cheated, made excuses. So many times "we don't", then they do. So. Many. Times. So I should just trust Mozilla, because... well, why? And this doesn't even take into account new corporate owners, leveraging existing data in a new way. Or rogue elements in corps, employees stealing data…

The client is open source (and you can go to about:telemetry to see for yourself what it’s sending), the server side is open source, and much of that data is publicly accessible at https://telemetry.mozilla.org

Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#62

Post by dblohm7 »

alibert wrote: post #39
MikusR wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. They even install an additional telemetry service that runs independently of Firefox.

Only on Windows I believe. Every time Firefox is updated, it installs back the "Firefox Default Browser Agent" in the Task Scheduler.

And FWIW it’s not just a “telemetry service.”

Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#63

Post by calcifer »

Aachen wrote: post #51
thristian wrote: post #49

A related anecdote: Firefox disabled ALSA support because their telemetry showed nobody was using it, but it turned out that the kind of people who use ALSA are also the kind of people who disable as much telemetry as possible: https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/data-science-is... Disabling telemetry is like refusing to register to vote: you minimise the chance of people doing bad things to you, but you als…

More like refusing to vote if it can't be done anonymously. That said, I have telemetry turned on in my personal browser because I trust Mozilla not to abuse my data. At work I handle more sensitive data and there it's turned off (the basic stuff, without diving into about:config to make it completely silent). On the other extreme, I also use Firefox during security assessments. My browser making noise on a network w…

> More like refusing to vote if it can't be done anonymously.

It's already anonymous, no? Of course if you consider a CGNAT IP address not-anonymous then nothing can help you.

Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#64

Post by Aachen »

calcifer wrote: post #63
Aachen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like refusing to vote if it can't be done anonymously. That said, I have telemetry turned on in my personal browser because I trust Mozilla not to abuse my data. At work I handle more sensitive data and there it's turned off (the basic stuff, without diving into about:config to make it completely silent). On the other extreme, I also use Firefox during security assessments. My browser making noise on a network w…

> More like refusing to vote if it can't be done anonymously. It's already anonymous, no? Of course if you consider a CGNAT IP address not-anonymous then nothing can help you.

The definition of personally identifiable information, as I recall it, is info for which there exists a party that can trace it back to a person. Just because I can't find your name using your social security number doesn't mean that your SSN is not PII, because there exists a party that knows whom this SSN belongs to.

Similarly, it's not as if CGNAT is an anonymisation technology. Crooks would love it: download and upload whatever you want and nobody can ever tell it was you! No, ISPs log who used which IP and port at which time.

Processing the IP address and port number is essential for TCP to work, and even if you don't store it and filter it on your network's edge, it's still covered by privacy law–technically. A judge might not award you damages, but technically the processing (not storage) of personal data is also covered by privacy laws.

Of course, if they don't store it then I would consider it anonymous. The question to me is what they do with the data. But it's not correct to assume that it's anonymous just because you share an IP address with others, or to assume that everyone has CGNAT. Where I live a personal address is the default.

Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#65

Post by calcifer »

Aachen wrote: post #64
calcifer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More like refusing to vote if it can't be done anonymously. It's already anonymous, no? Of course if you consider a CGNAT IP address not-anonymous then nothing can help you.

The definition of personally identifiable information, as I recall it, is info for which there exists a party that can trace it back to a person. Just because I can't find your name using your social security number doesn't mean that your SSN is not PII, because there exists a party that knows whom this SSN belongs to. Similarly, it's not as if CGNAT is an anonymisation technology. Crooks would love it: download and…

You are conflating separate things. The fact that your ISP can match an IP/port pair to a person doesn't make Mozilla's IP based telemetry "personal data".

Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#66

Post by mkl »

Aachen wrote: post #52
mkl wrote: post #36

To see what the telemetry actually entails, go to about:telemetry. It looks like enough for fingerprinting, but doesn't seem to include websites visited. A bit more info here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-now-shows-what-telemet...

> doesn't seem to include websites visited I mean, that would be China++ level surveillance. Of course it doesn't include what sites you visited.

Of course, but some people seem to be reacting as if that's what's happening, and knowing which sites problems occurred on would be useful for a browser vendor to know.

Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#67

Post by rndgermandude »

underdeserver wrote: post #6

Mozilla people - this is a serious issue. If you want to champion privacy, you NEED to have a big red button that says "nothing gets sent out" and you NEED to have an end-to-end test to make sure Firefox respects it.

The preference controlling whether telemetry is sent anywhere is "datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled". The other telemetry settings are just about what telemetry modules are enabled to collect telemetry data locally (which you still can view with about:telemetry, but will not get send when you disabled "uploadEnabled"). [1]

Disable "datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled" and Firefox will not send telemetry data around. But users cannot be expected to mess around in about:config, right? That why there is a checkbox in the Firefox preferences just for this. In the Privacy & Security tab.

Also, when you create a fresh Firefox profile (e.g. when you use it for the first time), it will open their privacy policy page, with a somewhat hidden button that brings you straight to those checkboxes. I don't like that it's a bit hidden now by default, and they could do better there (and actually did better in the past, where there was a very visible popup asking you about this stuff).

As for "they should test this!": Right, and they do have unit tests[2].

[1] https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/t... [2] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/compone...

Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#68

Post by rndgermandude »

huhtenberg wrote: post #37
diegocg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they have exactly that already for telemetry? You can go to the preferences and turn it off instead of using about:config

Apparently this still leaves a boatload of telemetry options switched On. I had the Preferences option Off for years and yet there was a laundry list of telemetry options enabled in about:config. This is shady as fuck if you pardon my French. Completely unacceptable.

No, it doesn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25057424

Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#69

Post by rndgermandude »

Mike_Jordan wrote: post #38

Any idea why option to edit 'toolkit.telemetry.enabled' is disabled? https://i.imgur.com/DCLiMZh.png

Yes, read: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/t...

That preference has nothing to do with actually sending data to the mothership:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25057424

Re: Disable telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum (2018)

#70

Post by privacyonsec »

mkl wrote: post #31
privacyonsec wrote: post #27

Alright, this is a click bait, misleading title, the title should be: "How to disable all telemetry and data collection in mozilla Firefox Quantum"

It doesn't seem like click bait or misleading [1]. Maybe it's changed in the last few minutes? Adding "How to" and messing with the capitalisation doesn't seem like an improvement. [1] Currently "Disable All Telemetry and Data Collection in Mozilla Firefox Quantum"

The point is hadding "how to" nothing about capitalization ..
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