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See what’s changing in Firefox: Better insights, same privacy (blog.mozilla.org)

submitted 6 months ago by neme@lemm.ee to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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To disable it in about:config

browser.search.serpEventTelemetry.enabled  =  false	
browser.search.serpEventTelemetryCategorization.enabled  =  false

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[–] kbal@fedia.io 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Most free software does not have telemetry, and when it does it's almost always opt-in. Firefox is the one major exception to that rule.

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Hmm, so what user-facing free software is at Firefox's scale? I think Ubuntu has telemetry, for example (though I think they even have fewer users).

[–] kbal@fedia.io 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ubuntu telemetry is fairly minimal, as of last time I used it a few years ago. Not remotely comparable to what firefox does. They just want to know what hardware you have, there's no user behaviour tracking, and it's fully opt-in (you have to deliberately turn it on when installing). KDE and Gnome have a little something like that as well now, I think. Almost everything else does not.

Debian has a list (last updated 2023-10) of software among the 97000 packages they distribute which have been found to violate user privacy by "phoning home" for telemetry or other purposes:

gnome-calculator - fetches currencies
Firefox - multiple issues
Thunderbird - opt-out telemetry that is not yet patched for Debian
Chromium - phones home in various ways
syncthing - version check and lots more
cura - phones home in various ways, patched out in Debian
azure-cli - collects "anonymous" telemetry by default
glances - connects to several online services to discover public IP
webext-bulk-media-downloader - loads the website and sends version info
Golang - planning on implementing enabled-by-default telemetry

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 1 points 6 months ago

there's no user behaviour tracking

I mean, that depends on how you define user behaviour. It tracks which packages are frequently installed, for example, or how often people install Ubuntu in the first place. All of which I think is pretty legit, in my opinion, since that only involves aggregate user statistics that help prioritise work and detect common problems - but that's essentially what Firefox is doing too.

Debian is a great example of relatively commonly used free software that doesn't really collect data btw.