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Comment by chairmanwow | Hacker News Reader

I think I'm only surprised to see this comment and not that Firefox bundled analytics into their app. What's controversial about anonymized usage statistics in 2017?

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Well, about the very same moment you see "Browse like no one's watching / Automatically block online tracking while you browse" app starts to silently send some data to app.adjust.com and incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org.

If that's not controversial, that's at least ironic.

(Just to clarify: this particular behavior was observed on a version from a Play Store, not FDroid. And this was about 1.5 months ago or so. But I doubt things had fundamentally changed since then.)

Honestly, if you're browsing through your ISP or carrier's data service, you're not anonymous and people are watching. That point of view is the only way to operate.

Ah. I see your point. I failed to consider the context of this application in particular.

Checkout the histograms: https://telemetry.mozilla.org/ Do other vendors let you see their metric dashboards?

And if you feel statistics of time to FIRST_PAINT invades your privacy you can disable telemetry reporting.

You can also see what your browser collects in about:telemetry, but don't equate performance measurements with surveillance -- that's FUD.

Gosh. It's not about what's being sent, and why.

It's about a certain promise^W marketing statement and behavior that at least partially contradicts it.

Just because everyone is doing it does not mean it is ethical and ok. There is nothing anonymized about sending info about my browsing behaviour to one of the world's biggest corporations that monitors vast amounts of the internet. Mozilla should be doing the good thing, not feed a data kraken.

Windows 10 peed in the pool when it redefined "telemetry" to include core dumps, documents, keystrokes, and even remote terminal access for MS engineers.

Now, people are rightfully suspicious of any software that phones home at all.

MS did take it to the next level, but for me any application which phones home without users consent is in the wrong. This is one of the major reasons I don't use Chrome. Anywhere.

Remote access for MS engineers? Can you explain please?

I'm not sure from your comment whether you're just being pedantic in pointing out that while regrettable this isn't surprising (in which case your comment is not very constructive), or whether you actually think it's OK for Firefox to do this.

Since you've used the term "anonymised" quite pointedly, I'm guessing the latter. I do find it surprising that anyone would assume data Google is collecting on your usage is somehow anonymous.

More along the lines of: I now fully expect the cost of entrance for free applications to be data the developers collect of my usage. It's naive to assume otherwise.

EDIT: grammar

That's the case for some, but (1) most applications that lean that way are likely to be closed source as there is a certain sense of apparent moral high ground that comes with open sourcing and (2) more importantly Mozilla sells themselves on respecting privacy, first and foremost.

> I now fully expect the cost of entrance for free applications to be data the developers collect of my usage.

Apparently this is also true of applications & services you pay for these days too. Includes ISPs, cell companies, cable apps where you input your customer code, paid subscriptions to online news... the list is endless.

Man people have really lowered their standards with privacy these days.

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