The Firefox Browser is a privacy nightmare on desktop and mobile | Hacker News Reader

The Firefox Browser is a privacy nightmare on desktop and mobile

privateinternetaccess.com

21 pointsalmostbasic10 comments

This... still seems like a lot better than Chrome. No personal data is being collected, just basic telemetry data on browser function for debugging and an IP address. I'm going to call this Mostly Harmless.

Meanwhile, the article is coming from a company that's selling privacy on a for-profit basis, towards a non-profit focused on attempting the best privacy possible. Most of their products are in the same space as Mozilla.

Tracking when you load bookmarks, open new tabs, save a password and login, take a screenshot or download media, is not harmless basic telemetry imho.

Yeah, but it doesn't record what the bookmark is or its URL, just that you opened a bookmark. Same thing with the new tabs. It doesn't record the login or password or the URL of the page you saved a password for. It doesn't record anything about your screenshots or downloads either, aside from the fact that you did it.

They are very openly using the least amount of data possible in order to know how people use the browser so that they know what to focus on to make things better, or what to fix that isn't working. They don't care who you are, all they want to know is how you are using their product so they can keep making it better.

But at least you can disable it.

Forget this!!!

You can check everything that is being sent to mozilla at:

about:telemetry

and as you can see there is nothing that identifies you. And even if i'm missing something, you can always disable telemetry and be sure that (unlike others) firefox will respect your config and won't be sending any data

Sad that the corporate types even at Firefox have everyone believe this is necessary.

Not cool Firefox! That's the kind of thing I would expect to read about Chrome.

Don't trust PIA, verify yourself (and read the comments above).

Exactly. On the Firefox home page, it start off: "Get the latest Firefox browser. Automatic privacy is here."

However, I think this makes it clear that privacy is not automatic by default.

Watch out, this is coming from PIA, the company now owned by malware producer Kape, with a CTO who participated in the Mt Gox Bitcoin fraud. Not a company to be trusted.

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