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Cliqz nearly made me stop using firefox a while back https://www.heise.de/-3852129 https://www.heise.de/-3852129 (german article) Tldr 1% of german firefox ins

Cliqz nearly made me stop using firefox a while back https://www.heise.de/-3852129 https://www.heise.de/-3852129 (german article) Tldr 1% of german firefox installations automatically uploaded search queries to cliquz. I wont trust a search engine like this with any of my data.

autoexec 7y ago
Would you trust google who does the same thing with chrome? Bing which does the same thing with IE (or whatever it's called now)? Blame firefox for selling out their users not the search engine. I didn't close my account with amazon when Ubuntu started sending searches to them, I just switched distros.
- nostromo 7y ago
  There's a difference. When I use a service from Google, I expect that my data will be parsed by Google. And I can decide if I trust Google or not. But Firefox sending the urls I visit to a third party (Cliqz) silently and without permission is shady and deceptive. And then, after all this, Cliqz claims that it's a company built on privacy... sheesh.
  - galaxyLogic 7y ago
    An interesting quote for their article: " Philosophically, we believe copying is a loaded term, we prefer to use the term learning. Learning from each other is something all of us do" What is the difference between copying and learning?
- BlackLotus89 7y ago
  I use mainly duckduckgo and only use google if duckduckgo doesn't bring up anything useable (which is far too often for me tbh). And yes I blame firefox for every mishap over the last few years like the certificate expiration, the mr robot "advertising", the cloudflare dns and so on. But I see the good things as well like trowing out avast. So I trust them more than google. But still I will never trust something like cliqz which belongs to the media gmbh which produces Schund like die bunte. Ps I tested the beta and the search results werent good Pps I will read the search engine articles thought
- yellowapple 7y ago
  > Would you trust google who does the same thing with chrome? No, which is why I use neither Google nor Chrome. > Bing which does the same thing with IE (or whatever it's called now)? No, which is why I use neither Bing (besides indirect use via DuckDuckGo including it as a data source) nor IE/Edge. > I didn't close my account with amazon when Ubuntu started sending searches to them, Amazon didn't and doesn't (last I checked) have a financial stake in Canonical, nor did/does Canonical have one in Amazon. No need to blame Amazon here; that was just Canonical being stupid. However, per Wikipedia, the same disconnection can't be asserted between Mozilla and Cliqz: > In August 2016, Mozilla, developer of Firefox, made a minority investment in Cliqz. Cliqz plans to eventually monetize the software through a program known as Cliqz Offers, which will deliver sponsored offers to users based on their interests and browsing history. > [...] > On 6 October 2017, Mozilla announced a test where approximately 1% of users downloading Firefox in Germany would receive a version with Cliqz software included. The feature provided recommendations directly in the browser's search field, including for news, weather, sports, and other websites, based on the user's browsing history and activities. That is: Mozilla invests in a company whose stated business model is literally to scrape my browsing history and shove ads into my browser, and then a year or so later starts A/B testing this as something baked into Firefox for German users. That's scummy, no matter which way you look at it, and no matter how many times Cliqz assures users that "we pinky swear we're not collecting any personally-identifiable data". I'm taking Cliqz' "we care about your privacy" claims with a hydrostatically-equilibrious and possibly-neighborhood-clearing grain of salt.
philippclassen 7y ago
(Disclaimer: I work at Cliqz) Just read the article. It is from 2017 and very short. For the non-German speakers, I have to translate the relevant part: > Rund ein Prozent der Firefox-Downloads enthalten künftig das Add-On Cliqz, das bereits beim Eintippen Vorschläge für Webseiten anzeigt. Dafür wertet es die Surf-Aktivitäten aller Nutzer aus. About 1% of the Firefox downloads will contain the Cliqz Addon, which will show you search suggestions for websites while you type. For that, it uses browsing activities of all users. --- The last "of all users" is important. Yes, our search is built on data collected from users, but the point is we cannot build profiles of single users; we are only seeing what the whole group of users does. I cannot stress that part enough. We are not Avast. In fact, we are very open about our data collection system called Human Web: * https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-in-a-socially-responsible-manner.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-i... And this article explains how we provide anonymity while sending: * https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn... I can understand that you did not like the way that Mozilla rolled it out in 2017. I'm also not glad about how it went (my personal opinion). But from the technical side, I'm more than happy to take any question on that topic (how we collect data in Cliqz).

autoexec 7y ago

Would you trust google who does the same thing with chrome? Bing which does the same thing with IE (or whatever it's called now)? Blame firefox for selling out their users not the search engine. I didn't close my account with amazon when Ubuntu started sending searches to them, I just switched distros.

nostromo 7y ago
There's a difference. When I use a service from Google, I expect that my data will be parsed by Google. And I can decide if I trust Google or not. But Firefox sending the urls I visit to a third party (Cliqz) silently and without permission is shady and deceptive. And then, after all this, Cliqz claims that it's a company built on privacy... sheesh.
- galaxyLogic 7y ago
  An interesting quote for their article: " Philosophically, we believe copying is a loaded term, we prefer to use the term learning. Learning from each other is something all of us do" What is the difference between copying and learning?
BlackLotus89 7y ago
I use mainly duckduckgo and only use google if duckduckgo doesn't bring up anything useable (which is far too often for me tbh). And yes I blame firefox for every mishap over the last few years like the certificate expiration, the mr robot "advertising", the cloudflare dns and so on. But I see the good things as well like trowing out avast. So I trust them more than google. But still I will never trust something like cliqz which belongs to the media gmbh which produces Schund like die bunte. Ps I tested the beta and the search results werent good Pps I will read the search engine articles thought
yellowapple 7y ago
> Would you trust google who does the same thing with chrome? No, which is why I use neither Google nor Chrome. > Bing which does the same thing with IE (or whatever it's called now)? No, which is why I use neither Bing (besides indirect use via DuckDuckGo including it as a data source) nor IE/Edge. > I didn't close my account with amazon when Ubuntu started sending searches to them, Amazon didn't and doesn't (last I checked) have a financial stake in Canonical, nor did/does Canonical have one in Amazon. No need to blame Amazon here; that was just Canonical being stupid. However, per Wikipedia, the same disconnection can't be asserted between Mozilla and Cliqz: > In August 2016, Mozilla, developer of Firefox, made a minority investment in Cliqz. Cliqz plans to eventually monetize the software through a program known as Cliqz Offers, which will deliver sponsored offers to users based on their interests and browsing history. > [...] > On 6 October 2017, Mozilla announced a test where approximately 1% of users downloading Firefox in Germany would receive a version with Cliqz software included. The feature provided recommendations directly in the browser's search field, including for news, weather, sports, and other websites, based on the user's browsing history and activities. That is: Mozilla invests in a company whose stated business model is literally to scrape my browsing history and shove ads into my browser, and then a year or so later starts A/B testing this as something baked into Firefox for German users. That's scummy, no matter which way you look at it, and no matter how many times Cliqz assures users that "we pinky swear we're not collecting any personally-identifiable data". I'm taking Cliqz' "we care about your privacy" claims with a hydrostatically-equilibrious and possibly-neighborhood-clearing grain of salt.

philippclassen 7y ago

(Disclaimer: I work at Cliqz) Just read the article. It is from 2017 and very short. For the non-German speakers, I have to translate the relevant part: > Rund ein Prozent der Firefox-Downloads enthalten künftig das Add-On Cliqz, das bereits beim Eintippen Vorschläge für Webseiten anzeigt. Dafür wertet es die Surf-Aktivitäten aller Nutzer aus. About 1% of the Firefox downloads will contain the Cliqz Addon, which will show you search suggestions for websites while you type. For that, it uses browsing activities of all users. --- The last "of all users" is important. Yes, our search is built on data collected from users, but the point is we cannot build profiles of single users; we are only seeing what the whole group of users does. I cannot stress that part enough. We are not Avast. In fact, we are very open about our data collection system called Human Web: * https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-in-a-socially-responsible-manner.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-03/human-web-collecting-data-i... And this article explains how we provide anonymity while sending: * https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn.html https://0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-04/human-web-proxy-network-hpn... I can understand that you did not like the way that Mozilla rolled it out in 2017. I'm also not glad about how it went (my personal opinion). But from the technical side, I'm more than happy to take any question on that topic (how we collect data in Cliqz).