Re:Firefox Hardware Report for Web Developers
by rebelwebmaster on Thursday December 15, 2016 @11:19AM
(#13185656)
All telemetry probes have to go through a Data Review which includes Mozilla's Legal team vetting it.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Data_Collection
There's also a Medium post that went out with the Hardware Report that details more about the process behind it. https://medium.com/mozilla-tech/https-medium-com-mozilla-tec...
Re:Firefox Hardware Report for Web Developers
by cpeterso on Thursday December 15, 2016 @04:06PM
(#13188382)
Most of Firefox's telemetry is opt-in for the Firefox Release channel. You can see the few opt-out metrics by searching for "releaseChannelCollection": "opt-out" in https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/toolkit/comp....
Re:Firefox Hardware Report for Web Developers
by rockdoe on Thursday December 15, 2016 @01:05PM
(#13186632)
What you say is only true for personal information, for which you do need to opt-in in Firefox. Broad stats about the users' system wouldn't fall under that. You already leak most of this information to every web site fwiw.
Re:Firefox Hardware Report for Web Developers
by Sylos on Thursday December 15, 2016 @12:38PM
(#13186401)
AFAIK you only need opt-in for personally identifiable data.
Firefox would also definitely not be the first piece of software to run in Germany that has opt-out instead of opt-in. Most software does it that way and usually much sneakier than Firefox.
Ouch. I'm pretty sure that here in Germany they could be sued for that. Regarding privacy law there we have a general consensus that out-out is too weak in almost all cases. You need opt-in, or in some cases double opt-in.
Also, I wonder why Mozilla is playing the game that way. Aren't they afraid that actions like this may damage their reputation?
On the other hand, this may simply be the continuation of their "pragmatic" policy that led them into feeding Google Analytics with their sites and making Google the default search engine (instead of privacy-friendly alternatives).