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Comment by verdandi | Hacker News Reader

Type about:config in the address bar and search for 'app.normandy.enabled' flag.

Well that's interesting. I see Normandy enabled, but if I go to the "Privacy and Security" section of the preferences page I see all the data collection and use stuff disabled. There's no obvious way to disable the Normandy back door.

Oh well, at least we don't have another season of Mr Robot spam to look forward to.

Presumably the logic is something like:

    if (studies.enabled) {
      if (normandy.enabled) {
        ...
      }
    }

> There's no obvious way to disable the Normandy back door.

???

It's a publicly documented feature with a publicly documented way to disable it.

With an obscure name and no correlation to all the other spying and backdoor ING Mozilla are doing. Is this really the best option tog etaprivacy focused browser? I think this is all very worrying.

Can you elaborate on what 'other spying' Mozilla does? Do you mean their telemetry?

Spying was the wrong word. But yes, the telemetry. The google analytics that are hidden on the extensions page, that only listen to the Do not track, but not the turn off telemetry checkbox. Sadly it just doesn't seem to stop.

It's named after a world famous beachhead of an invasion. The name isn't that obscure for a feature that invades the userbase with a takeover.

I am not sure what 'spying' Mozilla is doing, but I agree this should be better named and better highlighted.

here the flag is true but the extensions are still unsupported

It may take a little time for the partial fix to be distributed.

Not so in Firefox for Android. No normandy to find.

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