4 ms·

These discussions with responses from Mozilla employees demonstrate that hasn't always been the case (I'm not 100% sure the add-on settings tracking is opt-in a

• pcwalton 9y ago
  None of that contradicts the fact that telemetry, the feature, is opt-in.
  • j_s 9y ago
    (Original reply, heavily edited) My intention was to warn that Mozilla's use of the term 'Telemetry' as a feature does not cover all of their data collection, and to point to official examples demonstrating the mindset of the Mozilla developers for a higher-level perspective. As you have repeated, the one (primary) aspect of of Firefox's data collection that you mentioned (dubbed Telemetry, which I initially confused in context of OP's comment as intending to include all data collection) is documented on your link as opt-in. Props for that, but there are other aspects. (I am also going to verify it must indeed be enabled manually during a default install.) Per OP: The last thing I want is my browser to 'phone home' when it feels like it. I may be wrong, but my understading is that "Google Analytics in the add-on settings" has been improved only to _opt-out_ rather than being required in the past. Also, per their website SHIELD Studies seem to have a global opt-in followed by a per-study opt-in/out setting. Unfortunately the wording seems a bit wishy-washy and there are anecdotes on this discussion claiming this specific "study"/marketing opportunity did install and run something (at the very least: to skip enabling itself) without purposeful opt-in. There is a lot of confusion here. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956568 >Manishearth: What was enabled was a small piece of code[1] that would enable the full addon when a pref was flipped (Note: the Github link 404's since the add-on has been updated after this story broke.) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15958466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15958466 >tosssh: Shield Studies are opt-out by default
  • j_s 9y ago
    (Reply after actually double-checking, also heavily edited) I just went to getfirefox.com, ran the download, and this URL was displayed within tab 2 next to the 'Welcome to Firefox' tab (unfortunately I didn't record which tab was given initial focus) when Firefox started for the first time: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#firefox-by-default-shares-data-to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#firefox-by-de... Effective September 28, 2017 [...] Firefox by default shares [...] Interaction data [...] Technical data Since the page you linked was "Last edited 3 years ago" I'm going to specifically contradict what you re-emphasized as fact by stating: telemetry, the feature, has been changed to currently (Sep 2017-present [as of Dec 2017]) be _opt-out_, unless the development of ancient feature capital-T Telemetry somehow still exists separately from contemporary lowercase-t telemetry (per this link also referencing the telemetry documentation). This conversation/investigation/out-of-date documentation reinforces what I see as a very recent trend where Mozilla/Firefox is heading in the wrong direction, basically spending/burning the political capital/trust they've earned while (perhaps unintentionally) deceiving even their most technically adept defenders. I would love to investigate how this approach took root; how it was finally given the official green light; and how its ongoing escalation has affected rank-and-file Mozilla developers, supporters, and the various categories of users. In my opinion, the "spirit of Mozilla" is changing ever so slightly (eerily similar to Google's pro-marketing turn away from "don't be evil" culminating in merging of all collected data). My biggest beef with this is that Mozilla has pushed its public branding further laying claim to protecting privacy, but this could be tempered somewhat with a comparison to Signal's inclination toward practicality rather than perfection. I would be interested to hear how you feel after doubling down on this, since it appears to have indeed changed from opt-out to opt-in without your knowledge. Further, if you did not originally opt-in on install long ago I would be curious to hear what the current value of the setting is now. (Was a previous non-opt-in "default" updated to the new non-opt-out "default" at any point? I hope not!) It goes without saying that you should feel no obligation to invest the time to respond, especially to these last unnecessarily detailed and specific interests.