See what’s changing in Firefox: Better insights, same privacy | The Mozilla Blog
blog.mozilla.org
Innovation and privacy go hand in hand here at Mozilla. To continue developing features and products that resonate with our users, we’re adopting a new a

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.

  • meseek #2982@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    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.