this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023

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Privacy

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Firefox's new FakeSpot integration: the privacy problems (lemm.ee)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by LWD@lemm.ee to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Today, when I navigated to amazon.com on Firefox for Android, I received a jarring message that I could "try" a new service, Fakespot, on the app.

What's Fakespot? A review-checking, scammer-spotting service Fakespot for Firefox."

Among other things, FakeSpot/Mozilla was forced to admit:
"We sell and share your personal information"

Fakespot's privacy policy allows them to collect and sell:

Your email address
Your IP address
Account IDs
A list of things you purchased and considered purchasing
Your precise location (which will be sent to advertising partners)
Data about you publicly available on the web
Your curated profile (which will also be sent to advertising providers)

Right before Mozilla acquired them, Fakespot updated their privacy policy to allow transfer of private data to any company that acquired them. (Previous Privacy Policy here. Search "merge" in both.)

Who asked for this? Who demanded integration into Firefox, since it was already a (relatively unpopular) browser extension people could have used instead?

all 23 comments

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[–] oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Librewolf

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

deleted

[+] Zerush@lemmy.ml -7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I prefer the new Midori, I think the best Gecko browser ever.

[–] qfjp@lemmy.one 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

FYI, the new midori looks like a shameless clone of floorp. The only differences I can find are the default bookmarks and that floorp updates faster.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Maybem anywy I use it only for tests. I like to have browsers with different engines to test in a webpage issue if it is because Blink or is general for others too. Because of this I have also the Otter browser (the fastest browser of all I had tested, it has a own adblocker and good privacy, but there are no extensions for it)

[–] qfjp@lemmy.one 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I didn't know about otter, I was just starting to look for more since I miss the days of uzbl and all its inspirations. As far as I can tell, qute is the only one that survived

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

Otter is a nice and blazing fast browser (by far way more than any other), but even it blocks some ads, there sadly isn't any extensions store for it. Well, you can ad funcionalities with scripts.

[–] Asudox@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Midori Browser's motto is total privacy, because we don't spy on you, we don't sell invasive advertising, we don't generate profiles of you, because we provide you with tools like a VPN.

No thanks.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago

The privacy is the same as in FF, but it has some more features. The problem of all Gecko forks is Mozilla, since it is sponsored mainly by Google, even sending data to Alphabet.Inc. That means that FF and forks are only private, if you use other sync provider than Mozilla.

[–] jman6495@lemmy.ml 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

So jarring that you couldn't just... Press no?

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

deleted

[–] LWD@lemm.ee -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

deleted

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Librewolf is good for now. However I think its time we get a new web browser with a separate web engine

[–] bamboo@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Easier said than done, it’d take a large engineering team and a decade just to catch up with existing implementations. And in doing so you’ll probably stumble through all the same issues Mozilla has and end up as a large morally compromised nonprofit on the other end.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

deleted

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The real problem nowadays is, even though there are around 100 browsers to choose from, there are not much alternatives when you want to avoid big brother browsers, there are only Firefox or some forks (with some excepcions, mostly crappy and outdated), some indies, like Vivaldi and UR from small EU companies, Otter, SSuite Netsurf if you have Windows, and not much more, some text only browsers apart.