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I hate the fact that they collect so much data. It's just the next company saying "nah, we're not evil! Don't worry that the browser we make sends home five hun
by ephaeton 5y ago
I hate the fact that they collect so much data. It's just the next company saying "nah, we're not evil! Don't worry that the browser we make sends home five hundred columns of data about your box and your usage patterns! We really really do promise not to peel out your identity from the data mud and monetize it! pinky promise! Just like google, we're not evil!!"
To those who claim you can opt-out of the "experience":
You can spend quite some time configuring firefox not to check for updates, get rid of all mentions of mozilla's servers in the config, try to have it not phone home, opt-out of any data sharing .. then you start it, and it does nonetheless: "Hey, update me please!" And what data do they share when checking for updates? Too much - I instructed the software to shut the fuck up and not ask for a fresh version, and surely don't communicate that I'm just using version X on my OS under my IP for fuck's sake! And that's just the obvious part of data that'll have to be transmitted in order for an update check to work! See pinky promise, above.
And then, after an update, if you don't start it with -ProfileManager to force your old profile (under linux), it will start with a fresh profile and ... phone home. With fresh settings. Which, by default, share your data. Oh and you can't control what it does while it sits there in the profile manager window. I presume it phones home. How can we be so blind and think this is a good alternative?
I know for me, it's exhaustion, and the inability to quickly scan the obfuscation mess that mozilla calls firefox's source code. What is it for you?
- ______- 5y ago> You can spend quite some time configuring firefox not to check for update Yeah I tried doing this once. I searched about:config for any mention of `mozilla.org` and deleted it. It still pinged Mozilla looking for an update. You're probably wondering why I wanted to disable updates, well I have a few toy browsers I don't want updated because I like the specific version and some addons I have are not compatible with newer Firefox (due to the webextensions overhaul). My solution was to use an older version of Waterfox (Waterfox Classic) which still supports older addons. I also use Palemoon for oldskool extension support, but don't use it as my main browser for obvious reasons.
- circularfoyers 5y agoSetting "app.update.auto" to false in about:config would have prevented Firefox from updating to the new release.
- ______- 5y agoI'm aware of this setting, and choosing to disable auto updates where Firefox let's you choose to update can be done in the preferences pane. What I meant is that if you remove all references to `mozilla.org` you still receive updates as though they hard-coded the Mozilla URL because they really don't want people disabling updates.
- circularfoyers 5y agoAre you not using the Firefox package from your distro's repo? If you were, it doesn't check for updates and I've never in all my years had it load into a new profile after an update. It sounds like you were using the official binary not from your package manager, which in most cases you really shouldn't do that.