this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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It's only for the first run, to track downloads and installations. Pretty much every mobile app on both Android and iOS, and a lot of desktop apps, do the same thing as they want to know how many people install (and uninstall) their app.
It's also only if you download the installer from the Firefox site, so Linux repos are unaffected.
Dude, fire Wireshark, launch Firefox and then come back here. Just because others do it, doesn't mean it is decent nor should Mozilla do it and no, its just not once, Firefox is constantly going for their servers for multiple reasons, not all requests include the ID that's true, but calling 3rd party analytics companies... from a browser.. kind of questionable. We all know there are other ways to fingerprint a browser.
Stop believing on the narrative of the all savior Mozilla. They're full of shit, less than others indeed, but still shit.
All I was saying was that the unique download ID is only used once, not every time you start Firefox. I wasn't making any other claims as to what other analytics they use.
Having said that, Telemetry is important to making a good product. The developer needs to know about crashes and what causes them (to fix bugs), which features people are using the most and least (to know what to work on and what to potentially deprecate), etc. As long as it's anonymous, I don't see a problem in that?
Sure, but a lot of systems don't actually store it. Even if they do, erasing the last octet (for IPv4) or the last 32 bits (for IPv6) is sufficient to de-identify it.
You can't guarantee it is isn't stored somewhere or checked by someone between you and Mozilla and used against you. Even your ISP can use Mozilla's calling home against you.
OK, but what do you expect companies to do about this? There's literally no way to browse the web without revealing your IP address. Are you saying that every single company online is collecting PII?
Even just checking for updates (which happens in the background with all modern software) would connect to Mozilla's servers.
I except things to be kept on a reasonable level and that doesn't include the amount of connections Firefox does, nor contacting a 3rd party analytics company.
What I also expect is to have simple toggles instead of having to spend half an hour going over advanced config, disable everything that can be disabled and still having it making connections to 3rd parties. Is it that hard to be transparent and make things right?