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Comment by TrevorFSmith | Hacker News Reader

The support page about it shows that they don't send any information about users to the advertisers: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/navigate-web-faster-fir...

Also, I have it turned on but I can't seem to actually get it to show me an ad. Has anyone seen an ad in their suggestions?

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It says that they're partnered with adMarketplace: https://www.admarketplace.com/

Their site uses the word "privacy" a lot but

But they did basically give a third party marketing company a key logger on your address bar.

I can see how this could be true, and I can see how it might not... who serves the ads, for example?

If it's anything like Pocket ads, all of the processing is done on-device.

It's nothing like pocket ads. They send everything you type and the item you click on. Take a look at the "What data is shared if you enable contextual suggestions?" section.

This is the section:

>To help you find information faster, Firefox Suggest uses a service provided by us to offer relevant suggestions to the text you are typing. When contextual suggestions are enabled, Mozilla receives your search queries. When you see or click on a Firefox Suggest result, Mozilla collects and sends your search queries and the result you click on to our partners through a Mozilla-owned proxy service. The data we share with partners does not include personally identifying information and is only shared when you see or click on a suggestion.

I don't think it reads the way your comment implies.

You may be right, but it's very unclear. I came to my conclusion because Firefox calls every result a "Firefox Suggest" result (see the title at the top of the results).

From https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2021/09/15/data-and-firefox-su..., it looks like Firefox (currently) matches your search terms against a local list before forwarding them. So not everything is sent, but anything including a term specified by the advertising agency.

It's unclear if it includes the entire search query or just the single word. That same blog post seems to indicate that mozilla "may" send the entire query. It also appears that Mozilla is sending city level location data.

Of course, that same blog post implies that the feature is opt-in (which it definitely isn't).

Another of their pages uses "vans" as an example, and I do see a "sponsored" suggestion when I type that. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/fi... (search the page for "vans")

Ok, thanks. Yep, when I type "vans" in the URL field I see a link to eBay marked with a "sponsored" flag.

I'm glad it's clearly marked, at least.

The sponsored eBay URL I'm given has these parameters: _nkw=vans mkevt=1 mkcid=2 mkrid=711-4011-10148-0 keyword=conducive crlp=318361097US282021100618 MT_ID=562786 geo_id=10232 device=computers cmpgn=216223

I'm not sure what each value means.

The crlp looks like it has a timestamp and geo_id appears to be a zip code. The rest is non-trivial to decode.

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