It’s funny how the mind works. We tend to accept the far greater risk of allowing automated software updates (either in-app or blindly trusting your package manager e.g. apt-get upgrade) but the Firefox Studies mechanism which does a minuscule, strict subset of what any automatic update can do is somehow a “crazy security risk”.

Normal update channels usually ask me (or let me set it so that they have to ask me) if I want to apply the update and I make sure to at least read the changelog if not skim through the source. In addition to that I trust the Debian team much more than I trust the Mozilla team. The studies in contrast are both for anti-user things such as telemetry and the mr robot thing, are inconvenient to disable, are not transparent (it would be difficult for me to find the source of a specific study), happen silently, and skip the Debian team's judgement.

I love it. You read the changelog and what, you reject the update for some trivial thing you don't like and stay on that previous version forever?

Seriously, look at how studies operates. If you're using firefox, go to about:studies and see for yourself.

No, I reject the update for non-trivial issues which I feel that violate my privacy or could pose some other serious threat and move to some other browser as soon as possible.

> look at how studies operates

It works on the background and without asking you anything. Is that correct?

> If you're using firefox, go to about:studies and see for yourself.

It says "You have not participated in any studies." - probably because I have them disabled.

I chose to run apt-get to install packages. I have never opted-in to, nor even known about, how Firefox was running "studies" on me before this event. It's like finding out the TV you bought last year has a hidden camera and it's been recording you the whole time.

It's not really fair to call it "studies" in quotations. It's better described as software micro-updates which can be progressively deployed in case the change has a regression. They do little more than enable/disable features already shipped in the binary you're running.

In my own browser, if I go to about:studies, I have two Studies running. One is the hotfix for the add-on signing issue. The other is:

  prefflip-push-performance-1491171 • Active
  This study sets dom.push.alwaysConnect to false.

If you equate that to a camera hidden in your TV, you might want to consider giving up whatever drugs you're on.

In case you're curious, that other one is part of https://blog.mozilla.org/services/2018/10/03/upcoming-push-s...

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)

In the case of apt-get, there's a release process with signed packages and open source code that the distributions adhere to, publicly visible oversight etc. End users specifically make the choice, either to run the upgrade process themselves, or set up automated upgrades on the understanding of what processes things have gone through, and the ability to verify.

The Studies mechanism occurs silently, running private code, without specific user action, and with "extensive access to Firefox internal APIs".

The Studies mechanism is clear, public and fully transparent. You can see what they've done. You can see what they plan to do. It's all out in the open.

At the end of the day the question is whether you can trust Mozilla. I trust them more than most entities, including many that push changes through apt-get.

Yes, Studies, that mechanism so open that end users didn't know about it until they found they were participating in some random Augmented Reality marketing collaboration with a TV show.

I would love to see a link to the code related to various Studies. So far I've not been able to find any. All you seem to get told is the name of any studies you're in, and only if you go over to about:studies and go looking.

This is not to say I don't trust Mozilla. I do. I trust them far more than I do Google / Chrome. It's hard not to see Studies as a privacy nightmare, though, and the level of power it has is disturbing.

You can see the bugs filed for past and upcoming studies at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?list_id=14712186&re...

When the study involves an addon, I think the bug will link to its code.

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)

As far as I understood the installed certificate still has to be signed by a root certificate? So wouldn't it also be valid if served by any other party? Why studies need access to internal apis is a good question, i had studies enabled and the only ones i saw switched a setting...

I guess I am just a bit more optimistic about Mozilla as a company than you might be. Sure they could abuse the study mechanism to spy on people and hack my browser. I just assume that they have neither the motivation nor the lack of ethics to do so. And I have automatic updates enabled anyway, so they can already install whatever binaries they want on my machine.

The other thing is that it's not like there are many other options for me. The only mainstream browsers I could realistically use are Chrome, Firefox and Edge. Out of those I think Firefox probably cares the most about my privacy.

If you're using Firefox, and don't trust them not to collect data you don't want them to, then some "study mechanism" on/off switch isn't going to stop them.

If you don't trust them at least a little bit, you shouldn't be using their software full stop.