10 ms·

It doesn't matter if it's open source - it's an issue of trust. Firefox has never secretly downloaded binary blobs in the background which listen to my micropho

by hgf888 10y ago

It doesn't matter if it's open source - it's an issue of trust. Firefox has never secretly downloaded binary blobs in the background which listen to my microphone without my permission or knowledge.[1] Chromium lost all my trust that day, even if none of my private conversations/data made it to Google that particular time. [1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922

tomjakubowski 10y ago
It certainly matters with respect to the point that the top level commenter was making.
mortehu 10y ago
The fact that it had the ability to listen to audio shouldn't be the issue, since it wouldn't do that unless you explicitly enabled it. Your grammar is kind of ambiguous there. Certainly it was downloaded without permission, but it wasn't listening without permission. Any web page can listen to your microphone if you allow it to, and the code for it can be downloaded without your consent, even if you have JavaScript disabled, if it's embedded in the HTML code.
- RubyPinch 10y ago
  > even if you have JavaScript disabled, if it's embedded in the HTML code. how so?
  - dietrichepp 10y ago
    I think the point is that if you disable JavaScript, inline JavaScript is still downloaded.
mynameislegion 10y ago
Firefox downloads OpenH.264 blobs and are working on supporting EME blobs.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  That gets into the entire H.264 licensing issue. It's a trade-off between open source and wanting to support H.264 HTML5 video. (instead of just webm) :-/
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
TAForObvReasons 10y ago
If anything, the whole Sponsored Tiles push (https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504 https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504 https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformation-with-users-at-the-center/ https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...) and attempts to justify ads in the browser as "user-enhancing" made me very wary of Firefox. Moreso than Chromium.
- SimeVidas 10y ago
  Why? From what I’ve read, it was completely harmless. I smell FUD :-)
  - dijit 10y ago
    I think it's only fair to tell people when they've been downvoted. I downvoted you because that smug sarcastic smiley really set my teeth on edge.
    - SimeVidas 10y ago
      Whoops! My intention with that smiley was to not appear negative :-) (I do think it’s FUD.)
  - khedoros 10y ago
    A subset of the tiles are paid advertisements. "Completely harmless" depends on your point of view. Personally, if I have a choice, I'll opt for the browser that doesn't show me "sponsored content" on first boot, just out of principle.
    - SimeVidas 10y ago
      IIRC, the sponsored tiles only appeared on new installations and they weren’t targeting the user (i.e. the user’s privacy wasn’t compromised). I dunno, I remember reading about this and thinking how meaningless it really is and how grotesque the negative response is.
gnarbarian 10y ago
They fired a founder for retroactive wrongthink (post ex facto). That's pretty disturbing. Hard to trust someone like that. Meanwhile, Google doesn't return results for guns in the shopping section. So I get to search a bunch of sites and call people like i'm on astalavista in 1998. Sad Truth: both companies inject a brand of exclusionary (read: discriminatory) politics into their products. I don't trust either.
- Frondo 10y ago
  Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. He wasn't imprisoned, nothing was done to him with the force of law. He just had/has unpopular views and accepted the consequences of holding those views. I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like?
  - gnarbarian 10y ago
    >I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like? It's called not talking politics or religion at work. Or not discriminating against someone because of something unrelated to their job. There is zero conflict of interest between Eich supporting prop 8 and heading the Mozilla foundation. Same as there is zero conflict of interest for Palmer Luckey supporting the leading candidate in the presidential election.
    - stephenr 10y ago
      You can't police people's thoughts/feelings. Those people both exercised their freedom of speech (via donations). Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of such speech.
      - gnarbarian 10y ago
Zarel 10y ago
The source you link to explicitly says that it does not listen to your microphone without your permission or knowledge: > First and foremost, while we do download the hotword module on startup, we do not activate it unless you opt in to hotwording. If you go into "chrome://settings", you will see a checkbox "Enable "Ok Google" to start a voice search". This should be unchecked by default, and if you do not check it, the hotword module will not be started.
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  Except it does bind into the microphone and consumes audio stream using standard OS APIs, it just doesnt propagate it further .. as far as we know.
andybak 10y ago
> which listen to my microphone without my permission This part is inaccurate. See: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c6 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922... > You don't have to take my word for it. Starting and stopping the hotword module is controlled by some open source code in Chromium itself [3], so while you cannot see the code inside the module, you can trust that it is not actually going to run unless you opt in. Also: > I hope this explanation is satisfactory. I am closing this as WontFix because it is already an opt-in feature, and Debian has already removed the component in their distribution of Chromium [2]. I've read the comments on that bug thread and I really struggle to see anything sinister that doesn't require several visits to the tinfoil haberdashery. There are problems around governance, communication and lack of respect for the priorities of the OSS community - but to see this as a failed attempt to listen to the conversations of Chromium users without their consent strikes me as verging on conspiracy thinking.

by hgf888 10y ago

tomjakubowski 10y ago

It certainly matters with respect to the point that the top level commenter was making.

mortehu 10y ago

The fact that it had the ability to listen to audio shouldn't be the issue, since it wouldn't do that unless you explicitly enabled it. Your grammar is kind of ambiguous there. Certainly it was downloaded without permission, but it wasn't listening without permission. Any web page can listen to your microphone if you allow it to, and the code for it can be downloaded without your consent, even if you have JavaScript disabled, if it's embedded in the HTML code.

RubyPinch 10y ago
> even if you have JavaScript disabled, if it's embedded in the HTML code. how so?
- dietrichepp 10y ago
  I think the point is that if you disable JavaScript, inline JavaScript is still downloaded.

mynameislegion 10y ago

Firefox downloads OpenH.264 blobs and are working on supporting EME blobs.

djsumdog 10y ago
That gets into the entire H.264 licensing issue. It's a trade-off between open source and wanting to support H.264 HTML5 video. (instead of just webm) :-/
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

TAForObvReasons 10y ago

If anything, the whole Sponsored Tiles push (https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504 https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504 https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformation-with-users-at-the-center/ https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...) and attempts to justify ads in the browser as "user-enhancing" made me very wary of Firefox. Moreso than Chromium.

SimeVidas 10y ago
Why? From what I’ve read, it was completely harmless. I smell FUD :-)
- dijit 10y ago
  I think it's only fair to tell people when they've been downvoted. I downvoted you because that smug sarcastic smiley really set my teeth on edge.
  - SimeVidas 10y ago
    Whoops! My intention with that smiley was to not appear negative :-) (I do think it’s FUD.)
- khedoros 10y ago
  A subset of the tiles are paid advertisements. "Completely harmless" depends on your point of view. Personally, if I have a choice, I'll opt for the browser that doesn't show me "sponsored content" on first boot, just out of principle.
  - SimeVidas 10y ago
    IIRC, the sponsored tiles only appeared on new installations and they weren’t targeting the user (i.e. the user’s privacy wasn’t compromised). I dunno, I remember reading about this and thinking how meaningless it really is and how grotesque the negative response is.

gnarbarian 10y ago

They fired a founder for retroactive wrongthink (post ex facto). That's pretty disturbing. Hard to trust someone like that. Meanwhile, Google doesn't return results for guns in the shopping section. So I get to search a bunch of sites and call people like i'm on astalavista in 1998. Sad Truth: both companies inject a brand of exclusionary (read: discriminatory) politics into their products. I don't trust either.

Frondo 10y ago
Eich resigned because his political views made it difficult for him to continue doing his job. He wasn't imprisoned, nothing was done to him with the force of law. He just had/has unpopular views and accepted the consequences of holding those views. I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like?
- gnarbarian 10y ago
  >I struggle to see how the world could be arranged such that we could all hold forth with controversial views, but such that there was never a consequence to holding those views. What would that world look like? It's called not talking politics or religion at work. Or not discriminating against someone because of something unrelated to their job. There is zero conflict of interest between Eich supporting prop 8 and heading the Mozilla foundation. Same as there is zero conflict of interest for Palmer Luckey supporting the leading candidate in the presidential election.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    You can't police people's thoughts/feelings. Those people both exercised their freedom of speech (via donations). Freedom of speech is not freedom from the consequences of such speech.
    - gnarbarian 10y ago

Zarel 10y ago

The source you link to explicitly says that it does not listen to your microphone without your permission or knowledge: > First and foremost, while we do download the hotword module on startup, we do not activate it unless you opt in to hotwording. If you go into "chrome://settings", you will see a checkbox "Enable "Ok Google" to start a voice search". This should be unchecked by default, and if you do not check it, the hotword module will not be started.

rasz_pl 10y ago
Except it does bind into the microphone and consumes audio stream using standard OS APIs, it just doesnt propagate it further .. as far as we know.

andybak 10y ago

> which listen to my microphone without my permission This part is inaccurate. See: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c6 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922... > You don't have to take my word for it. Starting and stopping the hotword module is controlled by some open source code in Chromium itself [3], so while you cannot see the code inside the module, you can trust that it is not actually going to run unless you opt in. Also: > I hope this explanation is satisfactory. I am closing this as WontFix because it is already an opt-in feature, and Debian has already removed the component in their distribution of Chromium [2]. I've read the comments on that bug thread and I really struggle to see anything sinister that doesn't require several visits to the tinfoil haberdashery. There are problems around governance, communication and lack of respect for the priorities of the OSS community - but to see this as a failed attempt to listen to the conversations of Chromium users without their consent strikes me as verging on conspiracy thinking.