Found this notification this morning on my pixel 6.
Firefox engines have telemetry since old ages. Do you know what even crazier ??? even other firefox browser like fennec has Mozilla telemetry.
PSA : disable it with Blocker (ROOT) for more privacyIt has a mozilla telemetry component, but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily reporting to mozilla - which wouldn’t make much sense anyway - nor that it actually functions at all. Most telemetry components in Firefox can’t simply be deleted because it causes stuff to break, so they are replaced with stubs that don’t actually do anything.
Assuming that’s all it’s really doing.
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For a novice, what exactly is Blocker (ROOT)? Is it an app, a setting, or a configuration?
Its app that you can downloaded in F-Droid, basically it’s a app that can control other app components. But before that you must Root/Unlock bootloader
Sending telemetry like crashes and what features you use/don’t use isn’t really in the same category as using location data for marketing purposes. It’s a very important distinction to draw.
Sigh
calyxos here I come
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This is not at all a pot kettle situation, there is no reason to warn about Firefox.
There is: default search results on FF have always legally been sold to Google, the public didn’t know since there were no terms of service or mention by FF whenever they uploaded the android version on the playstore that their users data would be collected and some be sold. Position is one of the data that may be sold as it could be used by Google to dermine which localised version of the search result is the best one to serve
And it’s not going to be Google in the future: it could be Bing, startpage, ecosia, qwant etc… As long as someone pays, then the results are sold and there needs to be a warning to users.
the public didn’t know
That’s not true, for many years Firefox was basically financed by Google for being the default search engine, because Google didn’t want Microsoft to monopolize Internet Browsers. Everybody who had the slightest interest knew that.
But that’s completely irrelevant, it’s a very marginal source of revenue today, and Firefox does not sell user info to Google. So it’s on Google to warn about using Google search.
The only reason for the change in Firefox privacy terms was for clarification. For instance any information given to Firefox, does not grant Firefox ownership of it. (opposite of for instance Facebook)
That’s a guarantee of user protection, not the opposite. Firefox has a very limited scope of “using” user data, like for instance storing links with Firefox, so they work across multiple devices.
There is no “harvesting” of user behavior or information.https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/03/mozilla-rewrites-firefoxs-terms-of-use-after-user-backlash/
I know, right, the fucking balls of Google to fucking say this
Because they are legally obligated to mention it?
Are they? What law?
Probably GDPR if I had to guess. Seems like anything decent these companies do can be directly traced back to GDPR.
Edit: guys, “probably” means that I’m unsure.
No GDPR does not require google to display app permissions like that…
Your just making things up.
Show me where I made something up, boss. Or do you not know what “probably” means?
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Do you? Because made up satistics are still made up.
This is how misinformation starts.
If your not sure, google it before commenting. For the sanity of the internet.
Do you want the short or the long version?
A link to it will do
…except they don’t for their own browser.
It’s literally there.
I stopped my donations to Mozilla.
Are you aware of Firefox’s changes to their privacy policy that has been in the news the past 2 weeks? If not you can easily find articles and youtuve videos on it.
You should just post the articles and videos.
They have been posted.
Edit:
Don’t call me unless I gave you my number
Why would anyone here call you, and how would they even have your number in the first place?
Or I was busy and gave a quick and still helpful response
That’s why I’m posting this 🤷♂️
I didn’t mean it to come across as insulting or anything. I meant it all genuinely to be helpful
Even if this isn’t entirely true, you know Google wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to reduce Firefox market share to scare everyone back to Chrome.
Firefox? You mean the company they give several hundred million dollars/year? Yeah I don’t think they’re too worried. They need some number of users on Firefox to prevent anti-trust issues. Which they’re on the brink of right now.
you’re right Google’s not worried.
as for anti-trust, they’re already in sentencing phase.
Given the current administration, I’d be very unsurprised if that disappears.
There isn’t to much to reduce. I don’t think Google is scared or afraid by Firefox, like at all.
I wonder if they say people should be careful with Chrome 😂
they don’t have to! they microsoft explorered that shit
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The story I heard was that by of California’s definition of selling data, doing anything with user data that could benefit the company was considered selling data. So they updated their FAQ to be in line with that definition. But I could be wrong, if someone could point me to a good article I’d appreciate it.
Here’s Louis Rossmann’s wiki where he details it. I hope that helps.
Thanks! Sounds like limiting risk from the California bill is a plausible reason, but it isn’t confirmed.
Legal Definitions of “Selling Data” Under the CCPA Are Broad: As noted above, the CCPA’s definition encompasses many data-sharing practices that may not align with common understanding of “selling data”.[16] Even if Mozilla was not directly selling user data, its search partnerships, telemetry data sharing, & sponsored content could have been interpreted as data sales if Mozilla received any financial benefit from them, all of which were actions that Mozilla has already been transparent & upfront about.
Mozilla’s Search Engine Deals Could Be Considered Data Sales: As mentioned earlier, these partnerships could legally qualify as data sales under the CCPA definition, despite being an existing part of Mozilla’s business model that consumers are already aware of.[1]
Sponsored Content in Firefox’s New Tab Page Involves Data Exchange: Mozilla dReferencesisplays sponsored content and ads on the Firefox New Tab page, which may involve user interaction data being shared with advertisers.[11] Even if the data is anonymized, the CCPA considers certain types of aggregated data as personal information if it can be linked back to users.[16]
It sounds like a bullshit excuse, to me.
If they wanted to cover their ass, they could have changed their ToS any number of different ways than what they went with.
Let’s not be naïve. All corporations are the enemy, including Mozilla.
To be fair they are a company with bills to pay and they have to shield themselves from being fined or sued. At this point I assume almost everything has been backdoored to hell and I’d rather use the product from the company with better overall terms and principles.
i’m a person with bills to pay, but if i paid those bills by endangering people, i’d be a bad person.
corporations exist to protect people from the financial and legal repercussions of their business activity.
they should not exist, and so, I will celebrate if Mozilla goes into bankruptcy.
we do not need them. control of firefox should be in the hands of a not-for-profit group, not a company.
ACAB? C being Companies.
In short: yes.
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You’re saying “exploiting” user data might have been more precise than “selling”. Either way I don’t want them doing it.
terrible choice of link. There was a stack of reporting from various tech-news sites and blogs; but you’ve given as the nazi site.
There’s no need to reduce Firefox marketshare. Most people don’t even consider using anything else than whatever is default in their device.
Also, it’s not a Google scare tactic or a flex. Every application on the Play Store must disclose the general outlines of their data policy, including the sharing of data. Lying with those checkbox is not a good idea but they are completely informative and put there by the publishing party, so the people responsible for publishing Firefox on mobile just updated these, and this is what is shown when an app publisher say their app is sharing data with third parties.
tl;dr: it’s very likely that not a single soul at Google even looked at this, as this is just the regular behavior of the Play Store with apps that changes their data policy or indicate sharing user data with third parties.
Why the dichotomy between the chrome listing on the store then?
No idea, I’m not that obsessed with it. But do note that “The developers of these apps provided info about their data sharing practices to an app store. They may update it over time.” and “Data sharing practices may vary based on your app version, use, region, and age.”
The recent changes to Firefox terms of use (well, their introduction really) was supposedly meant to appease some regional lawmakers. Maybe it is a regional thing. Maybe they changed it again. Maybe it’s, as often with store page update, rolled out progressively to people (in either direction, whether it’s adding or removing these terms).
The point is, that’s neither a “Google” operation to put Firefox in a bad light, nor a Mozilla operation to… do whatever it is they’re doing these days. It’s just a regular message. Which, reading a lot of the replies here, is something that have to be said.
Lol if Google really wanted to kill FF they would just stop paying them half a billion a year.
Like chrome does something different?
Yes, chrome is doing something different. It is even worse!
It integrates into the Google ecosystem well, and if that has value to a person it may just be enough to bring them back to chrome.
Who would use the Google ecosystem? Yuck. 🤮
No but where are you going to go. The options are shrinking.
Fennec on mobile. LibreWolf on desktop.
Iron fox is another option.
Waterfox works great on Android.
Zen browser is great on desktop
Zen, at least from the few times that I’ve tried it, also has some major issues that I personally find to be deal-breakers. Like forgetting tabs in a window that has just been closed. If you accidentally close a window that you’re working, without quitting the browser, you lose everything in it. As someone who is prone to doing that when closing a tab, it’s not ideal.
That’s not the point they’re trying to make I think. It’s more of an attack on perfection. Like “the alternative is not perfect either so why not just stay with Chrome”. It’s not a very strong argument in general but it might be enough to keep people from switching.
exactly, when confronted with cognitive dissonance people look for any shitty excuse to avoid changing their minds.
the alternative is not perfect either so why not just stay
It does work for a lot of people. Seeing they need to change and adapt if they do change, and it seemingly seems to be as bad as what they’re using now, why change and face headaches and hassle.
So you’re advocating that Google shouldn’t broadcast that firefox is broadcasting your current location? Even though they do this for every other app available on Android, you’re saying they shouldn’t do this for firefox?
Why?
They want to scare people to stay on Chrome now that they discontinued support of uBlock (not that it was ever supported on Chrome for Android anyway)
So they do this for all apps. Every single app that is in the Android ecosystem. But in your mind they’re specifically targeting firefox with this to make people “scared” huh?
Must be nice to live in denial.
This notice is effectively added by the Firefox developers when they select the ability to enable location services and also tick a box thay they collect data.
God damn why’s the world so shit
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It really is. Literally everything is shit and I’m so fucking over it.
God damn why’s the world so shit
Society empowers and encourages shitty people that only care about their own kind/tribe, is why.
Society empowers and encourages shitty people that only care about
their own kind/tribethemselves, is why.
My understanding is this is due to regions broadening the definition of “sell” to include any form of personal data transfer. So Mozilla giving location info (with consent if you enable “ask every time” in the permissions) to websites to look up local store hours or whatever is “selling data.”
AFAIK, nothing has changed in Firefox.
i know, thats some really late stage capitalism bullshit.
Looks like its enshittification continues unabated :/
Vivaldi is where it’s at
It’s closed source and chrome(ium)(?) based. I’m not entirely convinced by Vivaldi.
Nope. That’s still chromium based and further serves Google’s monopoly on the web platform.
That said I’m open to better alternatives. I’m working hard to protect myself.
I’m personally running on Librewolf, it strips out the Mozilla BS and gives you fairly strict default privacy settings. It’s sad that the free and open web is skating on thin ice.
Fennec. Ironfox. Mullvad. Tor.
Thanks!
Strips out all the tracking bullshit
No, it’s really not. Fuck chromium of all flavors.
Get ironfox?
fennec vs ironfox opinions?
- Fennec - Firefox build with some proprietary stiff removed; repo
- IronFox - Firefox fork (forked from Mull) with a bunch of hardening changes (notably
resistFingerprinting
enabled); repo
IronFox is more ambitious, which means higher maintenance load and more likely to fall behind. Fennec is much simpler, so less likely to fall behind, but also doesn’t change much from Firefox.
I would love to see a real comparison.
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I’ve not heard of ironfox before this thread! Could you possibly link it? Doesn’t seem like it’s on FDroid or IzzyOnDroid
IronFox is on F-Droid. That where I got it from at least
In addition to what others have said, it can be downloaded from the Accrescent app store:
Never heard of that, what’s the benefit over F-Droid?
The main difference is of philosophy of trust. With F-droid you trust F-droid to build the binary from the developers’ source code. With Accrescent, you trust the developers to build the binary from the source code.
So Accrescent is more like the classic play store or Obtainium?
In the play store you’re trusting Google and the developer.
I’m not sure how obtainium works. But if you download binaries from GitHub, you’re trusting the developer to accurately build their source code into the binary without adding anything. You’re also trusting GitHub implicitly – way back when, source forge was sometimes adding malware to downloads iirc.
F-droid is kind of cool in that they are saying, “we will ensure for you that the code you execute is the same as the open source code you can read”. But this added level of insurance comes with downsides – like sometimes it’s harder for the developer to make their code build properly, or maybe updates take longer.
And here I’m trusting Accrescent to actually deliver me an executable that has not been tampered with
With F-droid you trust F-droid to build the binary from the developers’ source code
Not when using a self-hosted F-Droid Repo - which is the case for Ironfox.
I wish more projects hosted their own F-droid repo and kept it up to date. FUTO has one for their stuff (Grayjay, FUTO Keyboard, etc), but it’s frequently outdated, whereas Bitwarden and a few others I use do a good job.
Maybe Accrescent is what I’m looking for. I just want a store that:
- automatically updates when devs push a release
- checks signatures
- has a good selection of FOSS apps
I basically want fdroid, but faster updates.
Yeah that’s like any 3rd party repository
GrapheneOS posted this on Mastodon about a month & a half back:
You have to add IronFox’s repo in F-Droid before you can install it from there. This is their Github link.
Thanks
its for android, mobile.
Duh
Iceraven hasn’t burned me yet
Does anyone know if Blockada mitigates this problem on Android?
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It doesn’t exist on Android AFAIK, so it’s irrelevant here.
Fine. I preferred Fennec over the two for quality of life and ease of use balanced with privacy.
Mullvad is really for anonymous sessions. It’s meant to blend in with every other Mullvad instance on the Net so it helps make users harder to identify. It’s not geared towards daily use.
On desktop, I switched to Librewolf and installed the Dark Reader add-on.
I will continue using Firefox on Android because I have absolutely no illusions about my privacy on this fucking thing.
GrapheneOS is pretty good, as a more private alternative to Android, though the downside is that it’s only available for Pixel phones. I bought a used one on ebay.
I wonder if Square would still work, for example? I haven’t flashed open source ROMs on my phone since like 2012.
Honestly though, I just consider the phone a lost cause when it comes to privacy & use it accordingly. Uncle Googs is always watching, even when the damn thing is turned off.
the thing about degoogled OS is lack of SafetyNet support and it is important for banking apps.
Thx, that’s exactly my concern as I remember it being an issue when I was flashing ROMs in the past.
FWIW, banking apps work fine on GrapheneOS.
if you mean this list that is quite concerning because each individual have difference banking preferences and it looks like it depends on the bank to support GrapheneOS directly But, I don’t think they bother because low market share (https://grapheneos.org/usage#banking-apps)
The bank doesn’t need to manually support GrapheneOS, the app just needs to behave appropriately - which, as you can see from that list, the overwhelming majority of them do.
If my bank stops supporting it, then I will move banks. But I doubt it will ever really become an issue.