3 ms·

My first thought seeing this headline: Let me guess, another move from Mozilla to start gathering more personal data. I wish they’d proven me wrong.

bionicbits 8y ago
I thought Mozilla was pro-privacy with all the features they have added to the browser. Have I been missing something? I recently came back to Firefox for their stance on privacy.
- Ardon 8y ago
  No, you're right on Mozilla's stance on privacy. I think Mozilla keeps making things that are good for collecting customer data because those are the things that most need an open alternative.
kgiori 8y ago
the WebThings gateway is an opportunity for Mozilla to help protect privacy and security, not copy the approach of industry silo's where devices connect to the cloud. your gateway data stays local.
- rzr 8y ago
  yes, This is what I call privacy by design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_by_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_by_design ps: I am a contributor of it ;)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
walid 8y ago
"another move from Mozilla to start gathering" What do you mean by "another move" here? Mozilla isn't gathering anything!
- drdaeman 8y ago
  Not exactly correct. There was a lot of movement in Mozilla to become a services provider rather than just a software vendor. Firefox Account is the manifestation of that. I can't tell what exactly their management is thinking, but from my sofa it looks like that just as everyone else, Mozilla wants you to be a part of their proprietary[1] ecosystem. _______ [1] Proprietary as in "unique to the company, not compatible with anything else and in full control of that company", not as in "closed source" or "non-free/non-libre software".
  - sfink 8y ago
    I work for Mozilla. But I have absolutely no clue what you're going on about here. Our whole reason for existence is to support a standards-based web and avoid proprietary lock-in. Yes, you can use Mozilla services. But you don't have to. I imagine that if there were a privacy-preserving service that got popular, and allowed storing and syncing the sorts of profile data that FxAccounts is used for, then Mozilla might be interested in making an adapter (or defining an API layer.) But these things tend to be tightly integrated, so I'm not sure if it would be worth the trouble. (I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool to share open tabs across different browsers...)
    - pault 8y ago
      What about keybase?
  - roca 8y ago
    Mozilla put in a lot of effort to let you run your own Firefox Accounts server if you really want to. https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-fxa.html https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run... So pretty much the opposite of what you're afraid of.
    - cdubzzz 8y ago
      Looks like this has improved a lot since I used it a few years ago. That documentation even seems a bit outdated -- the new monorepo is here: https://github.com/mozilla/fxa https://github.com/mozilla/fxa. I eventually abandoned it when I was cutting back on things I had to manage, but maybe I'll take another look soon...
chucksmash 8y ago
> Have you ever wanted to know how many times the door was opened and closed while you were out? Are you curious about energy consumption of appliances plugged into your smart plugs? With the new logs features you can _privately_ log data from all your smart home devices and visualise that data using interactive graphs. > Note: If booting WebThings Gateway from an SD card on a Raspberry Pi, please be aware that logging large amounts of data to the SD card may make the card wear out more quickly!
bedosh 8y ago
How is Mozilla gathering personal data from people using WebThings? When I tried WebThings Gateway a few months back, it did not seem to collect/send personal data off site. It allows you to create a public endpoint as a subdomain of mozilla-iot.org for easy off site access (https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/Gateway-Remote-Access https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/Gateway-Remote-Acce...) which would allow some tracking I assume, but in general I have noticed no hidden data collection as your comment implies.
- aphextron 8y ago
  >It allows you to create a public endpoint as a subdomain of mozilla-iot.org for easy off site access (https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/Gateway-Remote-Acce... https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/Gateway-Remote-Acce...) which would allow some tracking I assume, but in general I have noticed no hidden data collection as your comment implies. This is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not about keylogging your passwords or getting into your bank accounts. It's about the subtle metadata they'll be able to skim to start fingerprinting you for advertising profiles, and integrating into learning models. It just disgusts me that this has become the defacto behavior for every tech company now rather than "we want nothing to do with any of your analytics". Data is the new oil times 10, and this is Mozilla doing some exploration.
  - kgiori 8y ago
    > for easy off site access Exactly. The WebThings Gateway on an RPi is behind a firewall. How to access it? Mozilla makes it easy for users to securely access their gateway when remote, by setting up a tunneling service for the .mozilla-iot.org subdomains that users configure during the setup process. Mozilla has to pay* for running the https tunneling services that allow this security. Mozilla wants to protect your security; they do not want your data. The subdomain enables Mozilla's setup process to download and install the cert for the subdomain you create (from LetsEncrypt) onto the gateway, so you don't have to figure it out on your own. If you have your own registered domain name and know how to install its cert and then expose and port forward 443 from your router to the WebThings gateway, Mozilla would be happy because that reduces their tunneling expense. The goal was to make it easy for users to run a secure gateway by default. But with an OpenWrt router approach, appropriate firewall rules and dynamic dns can help reduce the need for the tunneling service, yet keep things secure. Maybe eventually ordering your own complete domain could be part of the setup process, but you'd be paying some 3rd party to make that happen, whereas the subdomain approach keeps it free.
igetspam 8y ago
Have you played with it at all? Mozilla isn't acting as a data broker, they're providing software and a framework. The world of iot doesn't have that many great offerings for private systems. Mozilla is taking their years of software experience and building something decent. I'm glad to see this hasn't been shuttered yet. I've been wanting to move more of my home automation away from cloud based services and this has a lot of potential. (The current best offering I know of is hass)
- metildaa 8y ago
  Even things Mozilla did pull support from and attempt to shutter, like Thunderbird and Firefox OS (now KaiOS) had vibrant communities that stepped up and kept these projects alive. Mozilla does know how to build a community around the projects they work on.
- bedosh 8y ago
  Right, IIUC, the stated goal is to reach some standardization (https://www.w3.org/WoT/ https://www.w3.org/WoT/) for IoT communication. Which, in my opinion would be great for users if it panned out. It is not an ideal situation that people that prefer to control their IoT devices themselves need to rely on a myriad of integration plugins for hass. But I'm not hopeful that this will gain the required industry traction

bionicbits 8y ago

I thought Mozilla was pro-privacy with all the features they have added to the browser. Have I been missing something? I recently came back to Firefox for their stance on privacy.

Ardon 8y ago
No, you're right on Mozilla's stance on privacy. I think Mozilla keeps making things that are good for collecting customer data because those are the things that most need an open alternative.

kgiori 8y ago

the WebThings gateway is an opportunity for Mozilla to help protect privacy and security, not copy the approach of industry silo's where devices connect to the cloud. your gateway data stays local.

rzr 8y ago
yes, This is what I call privacy by design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_by_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_by_design ps: I am a contributor of it ;)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

walid 8y ago

"another move from Mozilla to start gathering" What do you mean by "another move" here? Mozilla isn't gathering anything!

drdaeman 8y ago
Not exactly correct. There was a lot of movement in Mozilla to become a services provider rather than just a software vendor. Firefox Account is the manifestation of that. I can't tell what exactly their management is thinking, but from my sofa it looks like that just as everyone else, Mozilla wants you to be a part of their proprietary[1] ecosystem. _______ [1] Proprietary as in "unique to the company, not compatible with anything else and in full control of that company", not as in "closed source" or "non-free/non-libre software".
- sfink 8y ago
  I work for Mozilla. But I have absolutely no clue what you're going on about here. Our whole reason for existence is to support a standards-based web and avoid proprietary lock-in. Yes, you can use Mozilla services. But you don't have to. I imagine that if there were a privacy-preserving service that got popular, and allowed storing and syncing the sorts of profile data that FxAccounts is used for, then Mozilla might be interested in making an adapter (or defining an API layer.) But these things tend to be tightly integrated, so I'm not sure if it would be worth the trouble. (I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool to share open tabs across different browsers...)
  - pault 8y ago
    What about keybase?
- roca 8y ago
  Mozilla put in a lot of effort to let you run your own Firefox Accounts server if you really want to. https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run-fxa.html https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run... So pretty much the opposite of what you're afraid of.
  - cdubzzz 8y ago
    Looks like this has improved a lot since I used it a few years ago. That documentation even seems a bit outdated -- the new monorepo is here: https://github.com/mozilla/fxa https://github.com/mozilla/fxa. I eventually abandoned it when I was cutting back on things I had to manage, but maybe I'll take another look soon...

chucksmash 8y ago

> Have you ever wanted to know how many times the door was opened and closed while you were out? Are you curious about energy consumption of appliances plugged into your smart plugs? With the new logs features you can _privately_ log data from all your smart home devices and visualise that data using interactive graphs. > Note: If booting WebThings Gateway from an SD card on a Raspberry Pi, please be aware that logging large amounts of data to the SD card may make the card wear out more quickly!

bedosh 8y ago

How is Mozilla gathering personal data from people using WebThings? When I tried WebThings Gateway a few months back, it did not seem to collect/send personal data off site. It allows you to create a public endpoint as a subdomain of mozilla-iot.org for easy off site access (https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/Gateway-Remote-Access https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/Gateway-Remote-Acce...) which would allow some tracking I assume, but in general I have noticed no hidden data collection as your comment implies.

aphextron 8y ago
>It allows you to create a public endpoint as a subdomain of mozilla-iot.org for easy off site access (https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/Gateway-Remote-Acce... https://github.com/mozilla-iot/wiki/wiki/Gateway-Remote-Acce...) which would allow some tracking I assume, but in general I have noticed no hidden data collection as your comment implies. This is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not about keylogging your passwords or getting into your bank accounts. It's about the subtle metadata they'll be able to skim to start fingerprinting you for advertising profiles, and integrating into learning models. It just disgusts me that this has become the defacto behavior for every tech company now rather than "we want nothing to do with any of your analytics". Data is the new oil times 10, and this is Mozilla doing some exploration.
- kgiori 8y ago
  > for easy off site access Exactly. The WebThings Gateway on an RPi is behind a firewall. How to access it? Mozilla makes it easy for users to securely access their gateway when remote, by setting up a tunneling service for the .mozilla-iot.org subdomains that users configure during the setup process. Mozilla has to pay* for running the https tunneling services that allow this security. Mozilla wants to protect your security; they do not want your data. The subdomain enables Mozilla's setup process to download and install the cert for the subdomain you create (from LetsEncrypt) onto the gateway, so you don't have to figure it out on your own. If you have your own registered domain name and know how to install its cert and then expose and port forward 443 from your router to the WebThings gateway, Mozilla would be happy because that reduces their tunneling expense. The goal was to make it easy for users to run a secure gateway by default. But with an OpenWrt router approach, appropriate firewall rules and dynamic dns can help reduce the need for the tunneling service, yet keep things secure. Maybe eventually ordering your own complete domain could be part of the setup process, but you'd be paying some 3rd party to make that happen, whereas the subdomain approach keeps it free.

igetspam 8y ago

Have you played with it at all? Mozilla isn't acting as a data broker, they're providing software and a framework. The world of iot doesn't have that many great offerings for private systems. Mozilla is taking their years of software experience and building something decent. I'm glad to see this hasn't been shuttered yet. I've been wanting to move more of my home automation away from cloud based services and this has a lot of potential. (The current best offering I know of is hass)

metildaa 8y ago
Even things Mozilla did pull support from and attempt to shutter, like Thunderbird and Firefox OS (now KaiOS) had vibrant communities that stepped up and kept these projects alive. Mozilla does know how to build a community around the projects they work on.
bedosh 8y ago
Right, IIUC, the stated goal is to reach some standardization (https://www.w3.org/WoT/ https://www.w3.org/WoT/) for IoT communication. Which, in my opinion would be great for users if it panned out. It is not an ideal situation that people that prefer to control their IoT devices themselves need to rely on a myriad of integration plugins for hass. But I'm not hopeful that this will gain the required industry traction