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A comment on Each Firefox download has a unique identifier. Parent comment

Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by idiotsecant on Thursday March 17, 2022 @06:28PM (#30716592)
They had to serve you the file, for which they needed your IP. If they're willing to assign each downloaded client a unique ID what are the odds they are not storing the IP address associated with that unique ID?
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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by zagrebian on Thursday March 17, 2022 @06:34PM (#30716631)
Why would Mozilla need the IP address?
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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by bobkazamakis on Thursday March 17, 2022 @06:58PM (#30716791)
...to respond to requests to their server? you can't establish a tcp connection without both ends.
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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by car_analogy on Thursday March 17, 2022 @06:39PM (#30716657)
Why would they need installer IDs? The question is if they collect it, not if they need it, and all their other behavior suggests that they do collect it.
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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by zagrebian on Thursday March 17, 2022 @06:40PM (#30716667)
The article explains why: to figure out why there are more installs than downloads.
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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by Zircom on Thursday March 17, 2022 @06:52PM (#30716752)
They can probably reach the same conclusions about why there might be more installs than downloads by thinking about it for maybe 5 seconds instead of tracking people.

Easiest explanation off the top of my head, without reading the article, would be IT departments including Firefox in their base image they use on all their standard issue computers, resulting in hundreds and possibly thousands of different installs having the same download ID. That alone by itself would cause an absolutely massive discrepancy between download and install numbers. My company includes Firefox in our base image and it's on at least 200,000 different laptops and desktops, with a handful of different download IDs between them depending on when they got issued the computer.

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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by jcynix on Thursday March 17, 2022 @07:05PM (#30716843)
Not just companies. I somtimes do this at home to save bandwidth / download time and then install software from usb stick.
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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by GekkePrutser on Thursday March 17, 2022 @09:28PM (#30717745)
The reasons are easily seen though. Corporate IT departments autodeploying, Linux packaging repos, people compiling from source.

Also, they could just ask, instead of adding more spyware. Like a survey.

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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by kreeben on Thursday March 17, 2022 @06:48PM (#30716726)
Playing your game, why would Mozilla need to know this?
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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by bbarnett on Thursday March 17, 2022 @07:13PM (#30716897)
I wonder of they are confused by apt-get install firefox.

(Joking, but only a little.)

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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by GekkePrutser on Thursday March 17, 2022 @09:26PM (#30717725)
Also, if they don't collect it, what's the point in even having it?
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Re:Each Firefox download has a unique identifier by ipaddr on Thursday March 17, 2022 @07:59PM (#30717200)
To figure out locale of users.
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