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I'm happy to see an apology, but there are further steps they could take. I just did a clean install of Firefox and unless I somehow messed that up, it looks l
by suby 9y ago
I'm happy to see an apology, but there are further steps they could take. I just did a clean install of Firefox and unless I somehow messed that up, it looks like user studies are enabled by default. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here, as I didn't expect that to be the case.
They should absolutely not be running any sort of user studies on people who may not be aware it is being done, which is going to be the case with the current setup. The only way it sits right in my mind is if user studies are opt-in instead of opt out.
This is especially ridiculous as their marketing is focused on respecting privacy. An apology is nice, but changing this setting would go a long way towards proving that.
- detaro 9y agoI believe that is a strong part of the current outrage: people did not realize that this existed and was turned on. Since actual studies would collect actual user data (unlike this now), the fact that it surprises people suggests that they did not obtain meaningful consent for their data collection. At least from a quick search, I could not find good documentation what studies do exactly to avoid or properly handle personal data, it's possible that they do a very good job of that. (Suggestion to Mozilla: talk about these details at least after the study is done, show what you found. Hopefully: More tech-content to publish, less questions, less ugly surprises)
- tosssh 9y agoShield Studies are opt-out by default https://github.com/mozilla/normandy/issues/741 https://github.com/mozilla/normandy/issues/741 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1370801 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1370801 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1370799 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1370799