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> Why don’t you give power users at the very least in about:config an option to disable ALL phoning home by Firefox upon launch and exit. Biggest reason I refu

> Why don’t you give power users at the very least in about:config an option to disable ALL phoning home by Firefox upon launch and exit. Biggest reason I refuse to use Firefox no matter how bad Chromium is. I sometimes use Firefox Focus for doing searches on my phone and the thing is always pinging mozilla services. Some of them location related. No way to turn any of these off on what is supposed to be an incognito browser.

emptyparadise 4y ago
I find it hard to believe Chromium pings any less than Firefox. Would love to get more info on this.
- vntok 4y ago
  Here you go: https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604... > What I found were dozens of requests, which loaded nearly 16 MB in data. Lets break down what I saw. > I also reviewed Google Chrome, for those interested: When I launched Google Chrome for the first time (and let it sit for a minute), 32 requests were made, and 7.26 MB of data downloaded. Presumably Chromium would ping even less than Google Chrome.
  - insanitybit 4y ago
    Raw numbers mean nothing. Lots of these requests are totally benign.
- s_ting765 4y ago
  Believe it. Firefox is kind of unbeaten in this regard. There was a study carried out on what kinds of data leaks on browsers during launch [0] but Chromium specifically wasn't measured. I can only infer Safe browsing to be a leak point available on Chromium since it is shipped by default but I have it turned off (never needed it anyway) so I have not observed any pings related to it personally. [0] https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf
  - insanitybit 4y ago
    SafeBrowsing V2 only sends a partial hash to Google, only sending the full hash if the partial has a match. You can just read Chromium's whitepaper on their various features if you want to understand the privacy implications.
dont__panic 4y ago
You feel like Firefox doesn't respect your privacy, so you use Google's phone-home software instead? Sounds kinda like "Biggest reason I refuse to use weed no matter how bad methamphetamine is" to me. Unless you're using UnGoogled Chromium and blocking requests by IP or something.
- s_ting765 4y ago
  Mozilla's Firefox is the 'Google' of the FOSS world. Too big, too data (telemetry) hungry. They have even experimented with doing ads. I could go on and on. You cannot be preaching about privacy and refuse to provide a simple toggle to opt-out of all telemetry in your software. FYI I do use ungoogled chromium as my main browser.
  - dont__panic 4y ago
    Agreed that Mozilla is big, data hungry, and hypocritical. That's why I use LibreWolf: it respects my privacy and autonomy, and I help fight against Google's growing web engine monopoly. I specifically don't use UnGoogled Chromium because I don't want to look like "just another Chrome user" when companies decide whether or not they should test web apps on anything besides chrome, or prioritize non-chrome bugs. Seriously, give LibreWolf a shot. It's a very minimal fork of Firefox that just removes the Mozilla botnet parts of the browser, so it should be (relatively) easy for maintainers to keep it going for the forseeable future. You can install and update it with homebrew. And, y'know... you're not helping Google push around web developers with Manifest V3 ad-blocker killers, AMP, FLOC, etc.

emptyparadise 4y ago

I find it hard to believe Chromium pings any less than Firefox. Would love to get more info on this.

vntok 4y ago
Here you go: https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480 https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604... > What I found were dozens of requests, which loaded nearly 16 MB in data. Lets break down what I saw. > I also reviewed Google Chrome, for those interested: When I launched Google Chrome for the first time (and let it sit for a minute), 32 requests were made, and 7.26 MB of data downloaded. Presumably Chromium would ping even less than Google Chrome.
- insanitybit 4y ago
  Raw numbers mean nothing. Lots of these requests are totally benign.
s_ting765 4y ago
Believe it. Firefox is kind of unbeaten in this regard. There was a study carried out on what kinds of data leaks on browsers during launch [0] but Chromium specifically wasn't measured. I can only infer Safe browsing to be a leak point available on Chromium since it is shipped by default but I have it turned off (never needed it anyway) so I have not observed any pings related to it personally. [0] https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf
- insanitybit 4y ago
  SafeBrowsing V2 only sends a partial hash to Google, only sending the full hash if the partial has a match. You can just read Chromium's whitepaper on their various features if you want to understand the privacy implications.

dont__panic 4y ago

You feel like Firefox doesn't respect your privacy, so you use Google's phone-home software instead? Sounds kinda like "Biggest reason I refuse to use weed no matter how bad methamphetamine is" to me. Unless you're using UnGoogled Chromium and blocking requests by IP or something.

s_ting765 4y ago
Mozilla's Firefox is the 'Google' of the FOSS world. Too big, too data (telemetry) hungry. They have even experimented with doing ads. I could go on and on. You cannot be preaching about privacy and refuse to provide a simple toggle to opt-out of all telemetry in your software. FYI I do use ungoogled chromium as my main browser.
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Agreed that Mozilla is big, data hungry, and hypocritical. That's why I use LibreWolf: it respects my privacy and autonomy, and I help fight against Google's growing web engine monopoly. I specifically don't use UnGoogled Chromium because I don't want to look like "just another Chrome user" when companies decide whether or not they should test web apps on anything besides chrome, or prioritize non-chrome bugs. Seriously, give LibreWolf a shot. It's a very minimal fork of Firefox that just removes the Mozilla botnet parts of the browser, so it should be (relatively) easy for maintainers to keep it going for the forseeable future. You can install and update it with homebrew. And, y'know... you're not helping Google push around web developers with Manifest V3 ad-blocker killers, AMP, FLOC, etc.