Over a decade of anti-tracking work at Mozilla

Will I actually be able to use their phone number for verification, or will it be rejected everywhere? I couldn't even use my (primary, stable, long-term) Google Voice phone number to sign up for ChatGPT because is was categorized as a VoIP number and therefore distrusted.

A primary benefit of the phone verification systems is to force bad actors to burn a costly identifier in order to create a distinct account. VoIP numbers are available quite cheaply or even free from a number of providers. Even prepaid GSM-connected cell phone numbers are sometimes distrusted (see Blizzard's Overwatch 2 phone verification scandal).

Many people also do not realize how much information is available from just a phone number from data brokers. Companies can get the associated name, billing address, and sometimes even near-real-time location data (see the 2017 scandal over Verizon and AT&T selling this).

These are all great steps toward making the internet a less surveillable space. I'm curious if any work is being done to obfuscate credit card info in ways similar to what Firefox is doing for cell phone numbers. It would be great if individual transactions could use a unique dummy number linked to a private account.

Since one of the last updates of firefox mobile pushed advertisement back on my home screen (without me consenting to it) I was reminded why I do not trust FF anymore.

At least it was not a "study" again, meaning intensive tracking of everything I do, which is enabled by default btw.

So it is nice, that they work on anti tracking features in general. But you have to pay for most of them, which is alright, but not in combination with pushing advertisement and tracking by default from the browser itself.

So to block all the shitty ads who want to track me, I just continue to use UBlock Origin. So as long as it works, I will continue to use FF - but not for this fake privacy orientated branding.

Rules for thee but not for me. Anti-tracking except Mozilla which has its browser, even will telemetry off, phoning home tons of user data in the background, especially when launching and closing FF.

It’s still the best choice but I find these defaults so upsetting because Mozilla is almost an organization I can believe in, in a world where that’s sadly so rare.