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this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Why disable telemetry?
Originally, i too, have thought that Mozilla's telemetry would be limited to only technical aspects, such as crash reports. I mean, they are using privacy as their main selling point. But of course, that was a lie. Read this. You may think that only Spyware Watchdog and Dig Deeper dislike Mozilla, but no. By searching around, it's possible to find information about this on countless sources. And again, why do projects like LibreWolf and Arkenfox exist, if Firefox's tracking is not an issue?
Firefox makes unsolicited connections on startup, uses Google Analytics, and connects to their website when opening every single page. They are not leaking all of your data, like Opera and Chrome do, but such behaviour is very concerning. Why do they need to know how many times i have opened my bookmarks, or when i cleaned my browser history? Extremely suspicious, and on top of that it makes the browser a bit slower.
I believe that what happens on your PC, should stay on your PC, the pages you open in your browser, stay in the browser.
The article you sent me is totally absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding or will to understand.
Librewolf and Arkenfox exist for the exact same reason this article exists: unbridled paranoia. They are actually by fat less secure than Firefox because of the risk of a compromised build chain which is lesser for an established browser.
The first example of "phoning home" your article gives is merely the get request Firefox uses to check if you are online and redirect you to a login portal if you are on shared WiFi.
The article also then makes a complaint about Firefox making requests to the sites you visit most frequently, which maked absolutely no sense, because if you visit them so frequently that then end up in your new page, then what is the problem with Firefox preloading the content?
On Google analytics, it is not part of the browser, but just used on Mozilla's website with an explicit exemption from Google not to use that data.
The "safebrowsing" requests are to download the list of known malware sites in order to keep you safe. They are not used for tracking.
The health report telemetry is the only thing that could be vaguely construed as actually being problematic, but it literally collects no personal data and is used to improve the browser.
Finally, the entire paragraph about pocket is bullshit: or course, if you create an account and start saving web pages to pocket then it is going to be stored on pocket's servers... What would you expect? The solution is simple: Just don't use pocket, nobody is forcing you to.
It is infuriating to see these lies repeatedly perpetuated online by people who have no understanding of what they are criticizing
None of the points mentioned even vaguely constitute a threat to user privacy.
To make matters worse they actually weaken users security by driving them to forks that risk them not recieving timely security updates.