With the latest version of Firefox for U.S. desktop users, we’re introducing a new way to measure search activity broken down into high level categories. This measure is not linked with specific individuals and is further anonymized using a technology called OHTTP to ensure it can’t be connected with user IP addresses.
Let’s say you’re using Firefox to plan a trip to Spain and search for “Barcelona hotels.” Firefox infers that the search results fall under the category of “travel,” and it increments a counter to calculate the total number of searches happening at the country level.
Here’s the current list of categories we’re using: animals, arts, autos, business, career, education, fashion, finance, food, government, health, hobbies, home, inconclusive, news, real estate, society, sports, tech and travel.
Having an understanding of what types of searches happen most frequently will give us a better understanding of what’s important to our users, without giving us additional insight into individual browsing preferences. This helps us take a step forward in providing a browsing experience that is more tailored to your needs, without us stepping away from the principles that make us who we are.
We understand that any new data collection might spark some questions. Simply put, this new method only categorizes the websites that show up in your searches — not the specifics of what you’re personally looking up.
Sensitive topics, like searching for particular health care services, are categorized only under broad terms like health or society. Your search activities are handled with the same level of confidentiality as all other data regardless of any local laws surrounding certain health services.
Remember, you can always opt out of sending any technical or usage data to Firefox. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to adjust your settings. We also don’t collect category data when you use Private Browsing mode on Firefox.
What’s the point of making it opt in when only the most paranoid users are going to be concerned enough about this to opt out
“We came out with this new feature to help us improve our product, but we’re deliberately kneecapping it on day one by making it opt-in” lol
If you are this paranoid about your data just go use Tor through a vpn already
“You most likely would have agreed, so why bother asking for your consent?”
Ah right, makes sense. I take it you read the EULA in its entirety before you ever downloaded Mozilla in the first place? Because if you didn’t, you missed the part where you gave them permission to do exactly that.
Lawyers love that trick.
There’s no trick to it. If you don’t agree with the terms of service, feel free to not use the product. There’s dozens of other free web browsers out there if you think you can find a better one.
Any other contract in everyday life would be invalid under these terms; consent must be affirmative and informed. “I have read and accept the terms” is a crude lie that should be illegal but is tolerated for convenience, and which allows to justify all kinds of abuses.
The mozilla case is even worse, because they’ve even bragged about how they respect affirmative consent by asking their users if they allow telemetry (they’ve never really fully complied), and about being respectful of privacy in general. They deserve to be criticized for it, and that’s what people are doing here, but your responses of “if you don’t like it go away, the competition is worse”, is typical corporate ass-kissing that only legitimizes bad behavior.
It’s truly amazing how much the digital world gets away with.
Ok, so stop using their product.
Way to show you have zero reading comprehension skills lol
I comprehended it just fine, doesn’t change the fact that yes, it really is that simple. If you don’t like what a company is doing, don’t use their products. It’s not “legitimizing bad behavior”, it’s communicating with the company in the only language that a company that isn’t charging you for their product could possibly understand: market share. Nobody at Mozilla gives a shit about what some tiny niche fraction of their userbase is bitching about on Lemmy, they give a shit about whether or not they’re getting stomped into the dirt by chrome.
You guys are just having a giant, meaningless circlejerk.
This is the most toxic take that literally empowers companies to do whatever the fuck they want. Don’t want to buy gas here, go drive 200 kms to another one there’s plenty of gas stations. Drive there only to see that company doing the exact same thing. Because as a company, why wouldn’t you?
You can’t kill the myth that competition handles itself and that if a company does a dick move, another company won’t and will get all the sales and traffic. That doesn’t happen. Outside of monopolies and basic price fixing, competitors have long realized that while they aren’t friends with each other, you are all their collective enemy. Waging war against you is all in their collective interests.
All that goes without saying that privacy at all its levels should always be a fundamental human right and not a “feature.” We need to be building on top of that model, not plugging privacy in when it suits them.
Yes, please continue to shout about how the nonprofit company that gives you open source software for free is ruining your life by making a feature opt out instead of opt in lol
Talk about being too dumb to argue with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
Oh yeah, the classic “most people will not care se we are not even going to ask them, an entry in our blog no one reads will do”.
You explicitly gave them permission to do so when you agreed to the EULA at the time you downloaded it. If you have a problem with that, feel free to delete Mozilla and move on with your life. Mozilla doesn’t owe you anything.
Maybe we can discuss when a company does something completely inmoral that goes against what they say they stand for?
Sure, by all means, go screaming your discontent to every corner of the internet. Let me know what that accomplishes for you.
You can bitch about shit outside of your control or you can deal with it and move on with your life. Your choice.
Go use Tor if you’re so addicted to that “shit-quality browser that nobody outside of dark web users puts any work into because they’re the only people that make any money off it” vibe
Tor is Firefox, why are you calling it “a shit-quality browser” while defending Mozilla so hard
Haha, remind me again why we are all in a lemmy community about firefox if you feel that any complain at them is “screaming your discontent at every corner of the internet”. Is that bitching lmao? Did anyone mention Tor or do you have a weird hate boner against it or need to attack something else to protect the multi million dollar company?
Because it came up in my feed and I felt like commenting? Do I need a better reason? I’m not protecting anybody, I’m just pointing out basic shit about how the world works lol.
Mozilla is free. And like any other service on the internet, when it’s free you are the product. This is internet 101 shit. If you have a problem with that, uninstall the program and move on with your life. I just used tor as an example because you all seem to be incredibly worried about the privacy you get from a free program lol. If you want maximum privacy without spending any money, that’s what you should be using
You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole
And I am perfectly fine with that. Beats being yet another internet slacktivist bitching about how the shit they’re being given for free isn’t good enough.
Wow, you really went and edited all your posts on this discussion several hours later to try to not look as stupid as you were? This is some reddit level shit lmao.
I’ll be sure to add any future comments as new replies in order to maintain compliance with your imaginary rules that wouldn’t matter even if they were real lol