Firefox Now Sends Your Address Bar Keystrokes to Mozilla
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Firefox now sends more data than you might think to Mozilla. To power Firefox Suggest, Firefox sends the keystrokes you type into your address bar, your location information, and more to Mozilla’s servers. Here’s exactly what Firefox is sharing and how to control it.
    • loki
      73·
      3 years ago

      people who hate firefox are eating it up. it’s so stupid

    • nlfx
      12·
      3 years ago

      No, you are the one providing misinformation. The explanation you linked to is completely wrong. “offline” actually means that you are silently and automatically “opted-in”, so basically what everybody except Mozilla calls opt-out.

      However, this does not change anything to the fact that these “suggestions” were silently enabled in Firefox 92, and that the opt-in dialog box was introduced only in Firefox 93. In addition, this opt-in dialog is not shown if you left your locale as the default “en-US” (“offline” = opt-out).

        • nlfx
          21·
          3 years ago

          And how would that support your claim that this post is:

          misinformation. No data is sent by default, you have to opt in.

          The relevant parts from this code comment about the “offline” mode are:

          Firefox Suggest suggestions are enabled by default.

          The onboarding dialog is not shown.

          Which correspond to the code I’ve already linked to.

                case "offline":
        enabled = true;
        defaults.setBoolPref("quicksuggest.shouldShowOnboardingDialog", false);
        defaults.setBoolPref("suggest.quicksuggest", true);
        defaults.setBoolPref("suggest.quicksuggest.sponsored", true);
        break;

          The code you cited just says that users with locale “en-US” are enrolled in the “offline” mode.

          Basically:

          • locale = “en-US” => “offline” => opt-out
          • locale != “en-US” => “opt-in” with all possible dark patterns to trick the user into accepting it: user has to click the small “Not now” text which does not look like a button on the top right corner to disable Suggest.

          To summarize, the “offline” / “online” Suggest Scenario have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Firefox sends data to Mozilla or not, it only defines if the Suggest feature is opt-in or opt-out. Is this naming extremely confusing? Absolutely! But at this point it’s clear that Mozilla has done everything possible to mislead users about what their “suggestions” really are.

          So please, stop spreading misinformation while claiming that people trying to bring awareness about this awful “feature” are the ones providing false information. A code comment is not proof, your completely wrong interpretation of it even less so. If you don’t agree, please link to the relevant source code which would contradict the one I’ve linked to.

            • nlfx
              11·
              3 years ago

              Telemetry and Suggest are two completely separate things.

              The only different between “online” and “offline” is that in “offline” mode what you type in your URL bar is not included in the telemetry sent after you have selected a suggestion. But this changes absolutely nothing to what is sent to the Suggest API endpoint when you type in your URL bar.

              I’ve repeatedly provided clear evidence of what I said, you just keep mentioning a random code comment and interpreting it in a way which completely contradicts the actual code and what countless people have observed. So at the risk of repeating myself:

              • A code comment does not prove anything.
              • Your completely wrong interpretation of it even less so.
              • Link to code supporting your claims or GTFO.