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> The telemetry part is more scary. There's a nice big section in the Firefox settings called "Firefox Data Collection and Use" that has some fairly fine-grain

> The telemetry part is more scary. There's a nice big section in the Firefox settings called "Firefox Data Collection and Use" that has some fairly fine-grained options for what data you feed back to Firefox. I have all of mine unchecked, but I could imagine that if I were more community-minded, or if I were interested in actively contributing to FF's development day-to-day (for example running on nightly builds) I would activate those. FWIW, I do explicitly allow telemetry for the applications I buy licenses for and use for my work; it's in my best interest for those programs to be improved as efficiently as possible (and to have my use patterns be part of the corpus used to prioritize those improvements), and it makes it easier for me to report issues.

zinekeller 5y ago
Also, unless you dismiss it, there's a clear button to read to read their privacy policy and set telemetry (unless you're using the nightly-weekly builds, in this case they state in no ambiguous terms that you cannot disable it).
jeroenhd 5y ago
> that has some fairly fine-grained options for what data you feed back to Firefox I looked into these settings but I can only find 4 checkboxes. Which of the four checkboxes would this telemetry fall under? Is this a study, the result of crash report logging, or is it "data about your interactions with Firefox [..] (such as number of open tabs and windows; number of webpages visited; number and type of installed Firefox Add-ons; and session length) and Firefox features offered by Mozilla or our partners (such as interaction with Firefox search features and search partner referrals)" I know Firefox collects some technical tracking, but there is no up to date overview of what tracking is actually done. Is there a list of parameters tracked like Microsoft published [1] after the outcry about their terrible tracking? The privacy policy is vague and the documentation for developers [2] contains phrases such as "opaque prio-specific payload. Like { a: <base64 string>, b: <base64 string> }" which isn't exactly useful. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-windows-diagnostic-data-events-and-fields-2004 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-wi... [2]: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/telemetry/data/prio-ping.html https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/t...
- Jap2-0 5y ago
  Disclosure: I don't have any relation to Mozilla (so some of this could be wrong), and about half of it I discovered after reading this comment. I do run Firefox Nightly, and follow Firefox development somewhat. I don't see the same screen you do (perhaps something to do with telemetry being force-enabled in nightly?) so this is based off of what you wrote: > Is this a study... Studies are generally minor tweaks in user configuration sent to a subset of users (often nightly), and then telemetry between control and experiment groups is compared. You can see what studies you have been in at about:studies. For example, some of mine include setting the user-agent to Firefox 100 (to test a 3-digit number), enabling fission (and a number of things with process counts and whatnot), enabling HTTP/3, and (I kid not) "Changing a pref that does nothing - to check enrollment and unenrollment reliability." A lot of the time if you inspect element the source has a bug number you can look at (which really ought to be a built-in feature). > The result of crash logging You can see this in about:crashes; this is when the browser or a process (eg. GPU) crashes. > Data about your interactions with Firefox Probably, this seems like the most broad and undefined one > Number and type of installed addons Seems self-explanatory > Firefox features offered by Mozilla or our partners Not really sure about this one, presumably it relates more to things that have to do with third-parties or them making money > Overview of tracking See about:telemetry. That has links to a number of other pages I didn't realize existed before today, but which seem to have a pretty comprehensive public overview.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    The quote is from Mozilla's own page explaining telemetry, not from the settings screen. The settings are much shorter. about:telemetry didn't work on my phone (although the screenshots and videos I could find on it seem to indicate that it's just names and raw values, not human-readable descriptions), but it did contain a link to https://probes.telemetry.mozilla.org/ https://probes.telemetry.mozilla.org/ and the newer https://dictionary.telemetry.mozilla.org/ https://dictionary.telemetry.mozilla.org/ that seem to contain an overview of telemetry data collected. I don't see anything on there about PDFs and Javascript, so I'm guessing there's another telemetry endpoint out there that I'm not seeing. Maybe the PDF renderer has a separate telemetry system, I don't know. Seeing the amount of (IMO useless) data Mozilla collects, I'll be opting out from telemetry from now on anyway.
jrochkind1 5y ago
> FWIW, I do explicitly allow telemetry for the applications I buy licenses for and use for my work; it's in my best interest for those programs to be improved as efficiently as possible (and to have my use patterns be part of the corpus used to prioritize those improvements) Makes sense. How do you see Firefox as different; you don't pay for it, but, if you use it, you presumably still might want it to be improved efficiently and based on your use patterns. But no?
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  A) The data that flows through my browser is private to me, and I have no assurances that Firefox will respect it. The tools I use for work have a license that openly respects IP (without which they wouldn't be in business) and I'm am comfortable that their business model relies more on keeping me as a customer than selling the (limited) IP that flows through their tools. B) The tools I use are force multipliers for me, that differentiate from their competition through the improvements they make (thus making me far more productive than I otherwise would be). I use Firefox, but there isn't a huge amount to distinguish it from other browsers, and it's not clear to me that improvements in browsers over the last 10 years (beyond security) have added enough value to my life to need my data. C) For the tools I'm using, I am one of a relatively small number (tens of thousands) of users, I am occasionally in direct contact with their staff (again, I pay for this support, among other things); my contribution of telemetry data to them is making a substantial contribution. For Firefox, with its install base in the hundreds of millions, my individual contribution is meaningless.

zinekeller 5y ago

Also, unless you dismiss it, there's a clear button to read to read their privacy policy and set telemetry (unless you're using the nightly-weekly builds, in this case they state in no ambiguous terms that you cannot disable it).

jeroenhd 5y ago

> that has some fairly fine-grained options for what data you feed back to Firefox I looked into these settings but I can only find 4 checkboxes. Which of the four checkboxes would this telemetry fall under? Is this a study, the result of crash report logging, or is it "data about your interactions with Firefox [..] (such as number of open tabs and windows; number of webpages visited; number and type of installed Firefox Add-ons; and session length) and Firefox features offered by Mozilla or our partners (such as interaction with Firefox search features and search partner referrals)" I know Firefox collects some technical tracking, but there is no up to date overview of what tracking is actually done. Is there a list of parameters tracked like Microsoft published [1] after the outcry about their terrible tracking? The privacy policy is vague and the documentation for developers [2] contains phrases such as "opaque prio-specific payload. Like { a: <base64 string>, b: <base64 string> }" which isn't exactly useful. [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-windows-diagnostic-data-events-and-fields-2004 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/required-wi... [2]: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/telemetry/data/prio-ping.html https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/t...

Jap2-0 5y ago
Disclosure: I don't have any relation to Mozilla (so some of this could be wrong), and about half of it I discovered after reading this comment. I do run Firefox Nightly, and follow Firefox development somewhat. I don't see the same screen you do (perhaps something to do with telemetry being force-enabled in nightly?) so this is based off of what you wrote: > Is this a study... Studies are generally minor tweaks in user configuration sent to a subset of users (often nightly), and then telemetry between control and experiment groups is compared. You can see what studies you have been in at about:studies. For example, some of mine include setting the user-agent to Firefox 100 (to test a 3-digit number), enabling fission (and a number of things with process counts and whatnot), enabling HTTP/3, and (I kid not) "Changing a pref that does nothing - to check enrollment and unenrollment reliability." A lot of the time if you inspect element the source has a bug number you can look at (which really ought to be a built-in feature). > The result of crash logging You can see this in about:crashes; this is when the browser or a process (eg. GPU) crashes. > Data about your interactions with Firefox Probably, this seems like the most broad and undefined one > Number and type of installed addons Seems self-explanatory > Firefox features offered by Mozilla or our partners Not really sure about this one, presumably it relates more to things that have to do with third-parties or them making money > Overview of tracking See about:telemetry. That has links to a number of other pages I didn't realize existed before today, but which seem to have a pretty comprehensive public overview.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  The quote is from Mozilla's own page explaining telemetry, not from the settings screen. The settings are much shorter. about:telemetry didn't work on my phone (although the screenshots and videos I could find on it seem to indicate that it's just names and raw values, not human-readable descriptions), but it did contain a link to https://probes.telemetry.mozilla.org/ https://probes.telemetry.mozilla.org/ and the newer https://dictionary.telemetry.mozilla.org/ https://dictionary.telemetry.mozilla.org/ that seem to contain an overview of telemetry data collected. I don't see anything on there about PDFs and Javascript, so I'm guessing there's another telemetry endpoint out there that I'm not seeing. Maybe the PDF renderer has a separate telemetry system, I don't know. Seeing the amount of (IMO useless) data Mozilla collects, I'll be opting out from telemetry from now on anyway.

jrochkind1 5y ago

> FWIW, I do explicitly allow telemetry for the applications I buy licenses for and use for my work; it's in my best interest for those programs to be improved as efficiently as possible (and to have my use patterns be part of the corpus used to prioritize those improvements) Makes sense. How do you see Firefox as different; you don't pay for it, but, if you use it, you presumably still might want it to be improved efficiently and based on your use patterns. But no?

InitialLastName 5y ago
A) The data that flows through my browser is private to me, and I have no assurances that Firefox will respect it. The tools I use for work have a license that openly respects IP (without which they wouldn't be in business) and I'm am comfortable that their business model relies more on keeping me as a customer than selling the (limited) IP that flows through their tools. B) The tools I use are force multipliers for me, that differentiate from their competition through the improvements they make (thus making me far more productive than I otherwise would be). I use Firefox, but there isn't a huge amount to distinguish it from other browsers, and it's not clear to me that improvements in browsers over the last 10 years (beyond security) have added enough value to my life to need my data. C) For the tools I'm using, I am one of a relatively small number (tens of thousands) of users, I am occasionally in direct contact with their staff (again, I pay for this support, among other things); my contribution of telemetry data to them is making a substantial contribution. For Firefox, with its install base in the hundreds of millions, my individual contribution is meaningless.