Is it just me or is this video stupid af? You can easily disable all of the telemetry in Firefox. Like yea, no shit if you keep recommendations on, it'll collect data for that. How else would it recomend shit to you? Am i missing something here?
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Privacy
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Hysteria drives clicks.
I was hopeful that there would be less of these shitposts. I expect this bullshit on Reddit but I had higher hopes for Lemmy. I guess I'm naive.
I mean, yeah, what did you expect? People make shitposts, no matter what the name of the website is
I just assumed there would be LESS shitposts, lol. But clearly that was wrong.
Also, Mozilla is non-profit. They run on fumes because of it. As long as everything is disable-able, and it is, I'm happy to let them make some money so they can keep going. We need Firefox.
It's infuriating that this video calls out Mozilla's declaration that they respect user privacy, as if this contradicts that.
Respect is giving users options to do whatever they like and respecting their choices. Firefox does all of that. It respects you as the user and trusts you to control your own privacy by providing you the tools to do so.
Modern day software design emphasizes removing user choices so they're easier to corral. Firefox will straight up let you break it if you want. It lets spinoffs like Fennec exist. That is user respect.
Yea. We really do need them. Like no browser is gonna make you 100% (or close to 100%) anonymous unless you use TOR (correctly). Even then idk. TOR is above my knowledge-base so I stick with firefox. It's really the best you're gonna get for reasonable privacy control. Of course I hardened it a bit and added a few extensions.
My favourite part is.... the context the data is collected. Its collected during you search or interact with firefox addons or Firefox sync.
Easily? How?
AFAIK no matter what you do, firefox still calls home sometimes.
From what I can tell, the idea is to make you feel like, with a little bit of effort, the privacy thing would be achievable,
but when you actually try, it's a whole different ordeal.
In the settings you can disable telemetry. It's very self explanatory. Also I think firefox may call home to check if you have telemetry enabled (y/n). But that isn't a big deal. Can you be more specific on what actual data you see Firefox still sending home and exactly what the problem is? Saying that firefox still phones home isn't helpful or a big deal in itself, without providing the actual data sent that you disagree with.
How would I check exactly what data firefox is sending home?
firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com
content-signature-2.cdn.mozilla.net
There are unexpected connections to these two domains that cannot be disabled using firefox options.
You would have to use wireshark or some other software to look at the actual data being sent. I'm not 100% sure. Likely the first one is just checking to see if you have telemetry enabled or something. Like I said, you can't just assume all of your data is being sent because it's phoning Firefox domains. You need to pick apart the traffic. It could literally just be sending (user has telemetry disabled) and that's it. You don't know. Firefox is open source. If it was sending massive amounts of user info despite telemetry heing turned off then it would be fucking obvious and you'd hear about it everywhere. You could try posting in a firefox community and asking if anyone knows. I'd be interested too
Honestly I don't think I'm technically adept enough to check this myself. I was following firefox privacy guides, and the (much more competent) people writing them were puzzled about those two.
Of course it's not necessarily malicious, but it has became hard to be trusting.
In the end I kind of just gave up on privacy, I take mitigation measures as a symbolic gesture, but still assume someone's watching over my shoulder whatever I do online. Not a good feeling to be honest.
Can you send me the link where people were trying to figure those 2 out?
EDIT: Nvm I found what these are. Check my other comment.
Sorry for linking to a Reddit thread, but looks like at least the first domain you listed is for checking blocklists and extensions:
https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/fwc2sf/shavarservicesmozilla_and/
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Admin
None of these seem suspicious or privacy-invasive. Like I said, the browser is doing a bunch of shit in the background. You have to actually look at the traffic being sent.
Believe me, i'm the same way. If I see an app sending out domain requests, I get automatically sketched out. But if you take a step back, and really try to research what these domains are for, you'll see that most (not all of them) are just normal data that you need for the software to function.
Thanks for taking the time to answer, I'll check the thread.
Yeah I switched from trust to paranoia, it seems, hopefully I'll settle on a middle ground.
There. Is. Not. A. Single. Browser. That. Values. Your. Privacy.
Librewolf, Hardened Firefox, ungoogled-chromium
librewolf is hardened firefox AND ungoogled XD
The first two of which are just Firefox...they're not browsers in their own right, and they only continue to exist because Mozilla and Firefox continue to exist.
And Mozilla and Firefox continue to exist because they make money off of the completely optional things that this video is raving about.
There. Is. Not. A. Single. Browser. That. Values. Your. Privacy.
Then get off the internet, I guess? I mean, are you expecting one to come along at some point? Are you going to pay for it?
Mozilla is a non profit, which puts them leagues ahead of all competition in terms of trustworthiness. They have minor telemetry and sponsored things that can all be disabled, and that's entirely because they need to make some money somehow. No one donates, so what do you expect them to do?
They respect your privacy by giving you the option to disable everything. That is far more respect than you will ever get from any of the chromium browsers.
Important to note there are options.
I've been relatively pleased with the duckduckgo mobile browser. There are a reasonable amount of chromium forks that aim for privacy oriented browsing as well, although I don't have a specific one to endorse.
I guess in defense of Mozilla: it isn't really playing a different game in the browser space, they're just trying to mitigate some of the toxicity of ad revenue as a foundation. They're still a non profit hiring from the same pool as the tech industry money printing machine.
There's still a limited pool of support they have to pull from, and I like it better with them around so the big 3 don't have a total monopoly on browser architecture.
That said it's maybe the best example the model is flawed at the jump.
the DuckDuckGo mobile browser is brilliant, wish it had add-ons like Firefox though. the mobile Firefox browser right now seems to keep becoming more unstable over time :/
It'll get more support with some time. For now it's a nice browser to keep separate for not polluting what you doing mind putting out in public. I've had a lot more smooth experiences with PWAs I load through the ddg browser.
Actually one area I think it's got an immediate edge on firefox while the wild wild fediverse sorts out is just how many fewer attack vectors it's presenting with the pared back features.
which sends data back to MS, but sure.
Choosing a browser has been picking between terrible choices for a long time now. It's a shame.
Both sides are absolutely not the same, here. Drawing a false comparison between Firefox and Chromium because Firefox has some suggested content is an hysterically ridiculous take.
Mhm... bold statement from a YouTuber that uses YouTube, Google and fricking Windows 11.
He talks about Mozilla's official terms of their user's privacy. Doesn't matter what OS, search engine and video platform he uses.
All of these are about sponsored content. AFAIK in the current model of sponsored content have to inlude some tracking as they need to keep track of how many click goea through, acvording to that they will charge their client.
I kind of wish there would be non-tracking based ads, like burned in mid-roll ads on youtube: Just give a shout out and collect money. But it is pertty hard to convince others to switch to that model without solid data.
Finally, everything they mentioned are sponsored content and pocket, both can be turned off with one click. I call that a win in the distopian modern internet. And obviously there are more privacy oriented fork that strips these tracking content by default.
Just use Lynx.
Use IceCat browser plus do some about:config changes.
I have used bromite for ages it's a custom chromium fork but is no longer maintained.
One of the Devs forked it and now I use his version.
I knew that before but there's something you can do about it. At least I hope it helps.
In about:config find and set the following options:
extensions.pocket.enabled = false
toolkit.coverage.endpoint.base = "" (empty string)
toolkit.coverage.opt-out = true
toolkit.telemetry.coverage.opt-out = true
browser.region.update.enabled = false
browser.region.network.url = "" (empty string)
Block the following domains in Pi-hole, AGH, NextDNS or of you don't use any of that then in you hosts file:
spocs.getpocket.com
location.services.mozilla.com
contile.services.mozilla.com
getpocket.cdn.mozilla.net
Shout-out to my favorite browser Vivaldi
Orion, based on WebKit, for iOS and macOS looks interesting. Supports chrome and Firefox add ons. I would like it to get a little more refined, still early days. Looks very promising
Why not Safari, if you are on those two?
On Android I highly recommend Privacy Browser. It's on Fdroid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.stoutner.privacybrowser.standard/
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