4 ms·

But it's been pointed out in the top comment that the browser itself includes a tracking and reporting antifeature. So much for not worrying about tracking.

pgeorgi 9y ago
Depends on what it's tracking. There's a huge difference between "On average Focus was started 30 times a day by any single user" (which can inform resource allocation decisions for that project) and "bigbugbag was reading hacker news for 4 hours on Tuesday" (uhm. no.) They should be more transparent and upfront what they're collecting and why though.
- jancsika 9y ago
  > They should be more transparent and upfront what they're collecting and why though. ... on their flagship browser. On their super-private, pinky-swear no tracking we-hate-ads-but-sure-do-love-you tiny browser, there should be... no tracking.
  - bigbugbag 9y ago
    I disagree with you. This should apply to their flagship browser too. Have you read the marketing crap they push about desktop firefox ? The 100% fresh, free-range, ethical browser More privacy Firefox doesn’t sell access to your personal information like other companies. From privacy tools to tracking protection, you’re in charge of who sees what. More freedom Following the pack isn’t our style. As part of the non-profit Mozilla, Firefox leads the fight to protect your online rights and champion an Internet that benefits everyone — not just a few. Then you click the privacy policy and you're welcomed with: Things you should know Firefox automatically connects to us and our service providers to provide updates, security, Snippets, Firefox Health Report, and other features. They also have a very loose definition of personal information: 'For us, "personal information" means information which identifies you, like your name or email address.' In times when we know a handful of cross-referenced metadata is enough to identify someone with a high level of success this is unacceptable from some entity who claims to champion privacy, online rights and user freedom. It only shows that either there are highly incompetent people in charge at mozilla or that they treat their users as too dumb to notice. IMHO there should no tracking by default on firefox desktop and opt-in for those who want to. Actually I'd even go further and say that no browser should include tracking and should block all trackers, analytics, commercial advertising and other PR words for surveillance, spying and profiling. With relatively few efforts this was something one could almost achieve, at least get closer to, through extensions in firefox. Mozilla put an end to it by dropping their extension engine.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  It also depends on who it is sharing the data with, here it may be shared with google. It also depends on what the data is used for, let's take an absurdity : 'send drones to kill all users that started Focus 30 times a day on average' A closer to reality example is "our data shows less than 1% users have alsa only system, our implementation is sort of broken in fringe case and requires an overhaul that we don't want to do so instead of fixing it let's just drop it altogether, less than 1% of users is not enough to matter".

pgeorgi 9y ago

Depends on what it's tracking. There's a huge difference between "On average Focus was started 30 times a day by any single user" (which can inform resource allocation decisions for that project) and "bigbugbag was reading hacker news for 4 hours on Tuesday" (uhm. no.) They should be more transparent and upfront what they're collecting and why though.

jancsika 9y ago
> They should be more transparent and upfront what they're collecting and why though. ... on their flagship browser. On their super-private, pinky-swear no tracking we-hate-ads-but-sure-do-love-you tiny browser, there should be... no tracking.
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  I disagree with you. This should apply to their flagship browser too. Have you read the marketing crap they push about desktop firefox ? The 100% fresh, free-range, ethical browser More privacy Firefox doesn’t sell access to your personal information like other companies. From privacy tools to tracking protection, you’re in charge of who sees what. More freedom Following the pack isn’t our style. As part of the non-profit Mozilla, Firefox leads the fight to protect your online rights and champion an Internet that benefits everyone — not just a few. Then you click the privacy policy and you're welcomed with: Things you should know Firefox automatically connects to us and our service providers to provide updates, security, Snippets, Firefox Health Report, and other features. They also have a very loose definition of personal information: 'For us, "personal information" means information which identifies you, like your name or email address.' In times when we know a handful of cross-referenced metadata is enough to identify someone with a high level of success this is unacceptable from some entity who claims to champion privacy, online rights and user freedom. It only shows that either there are highly incompetent people in charge at mozilla or that they treat their users as too dumb to notice. IMHO there should no tracking by default on firefox desktop and opt-in for those who want to. Actually I'd even go further and say that no browser should include tracking and should block all trackers, analytics, commercial advertising and other PR words for surveillance, spying and profiling. With relatively few efforts this was something one could almost achieve, at least get closer to, through extensions in firefox. Mozilla put an end to it by dropping their extension engine.
bigbugbag 9y ago
It also depends on who it is sharing the data with, here it may be shared with google. It also depends on what the data is used for, let's take an absurdity : 'send drones to kill all users that started Focus 30 times a day on average' A closer to reality example is "our data shows less than 1% users have alsa only system, our implementation is sort of broken in fringe case and requires an overhaul that we don't want to do so instead of fixing it let's just drop it altogether, less than 1% of users is not enough to matter".