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Comment by rcMgD2BwE72F | Hacker News Reader

wow, that should indeed be highlighted!

https://support.mozilla.org/kb/navigate-web-faster-firefox-s...

It's even worse then I thought - every website you visit and every search query will be sent to them! They can basically create a whole shadow profile of you based on your browsing data (like Google already does when you enable search suggestion):

> To help you find information faster, Firefox Suggest uses a service provided by us to offer relevant suggestions for what you’re typing. When you opt-in to improve Contextual suggestions, Mozilla receives your search queries. When you see or click on a Firefox Suggest result, Mozilla collects and sends your search queries and the result you click on to our partners through a Mozilla-owned proxy service.

Wow, that last bit. Would have been easier to swallow if Mozilla did the ad brokering and promised to not store them, but no, they do actually ship off the queries to partners.

So if a person decides to opt in to this feature, they get to use said feature?

Oh wow, stop the presses everyone.

It's not opt-in, many people here have reported it was on already.

I don't see it myself at all but that's because it was only enabled in the US so far

Looks like my pihole will be getting some new entries. I have no doubt I won't be able to police all of my family's devices.

Not just every search query: apparently location data too.

>When contextual suggestions are enabled, the feature uses your city location and search keywords to make contextual suggestions from Firefox and our partners, while keeping your privacy in mind.

Says Opt-In.

I think the comments have merit if it was on by default but it's not. You have to explicitly give permission. I honestly don't see an issue with that.

Obviously a lot of HN people would probably prefer it not exist at all, but if you accept that the train has left the station on all this tracking on the Internet being here to stay, then explicit opt-in is still a massive improvement to the current status quo.

I checked my settings and it was on by default for me too. I had to opt out.

Interesting. I updated and yeah I had to opt out too. So get the pitchforks, I was wrong. Could be the installer on linux?

I was opted in without permission on macOS, so not just a linux thing.

Who the hell at Mozilla thinks that:

1) this is a good idea? 2) that they can sneak this by all of Firefox's tech-savvy users?

I mean, it just seems like such a low risk:reward ratio, what's the point? There's no way that this makes them enough money that it could be worthwhile.

Yeah this is unacceptable.

I'm running 92.0.1 on Mac OS.

It's not opt-in, it was turned on by default in an update (at least for me and everyone else in this thread).

Sleazy PMs tell the devs it'll be "Opt-In" to get them on board, then when it comes time to roll it out whoopsy everyone's opted in by default!

No, it doesn't say that. It says it's on by default. Go read the support article.

The best version of Firefox is the Tor Browser with Tor disabled. Avoids the “features” Mozilla insists on.

As I pointed out in the other thread, Chrome has been doing this for a long time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28781981

Doesn't make it a good idea. Chrome is a user hostile browser.

The browser with a hard-coded DoubleClick backdoor doesn't respect privacy?

People don't use Chrome because they care about privacy. They use it because they don't care.

Big difference and they can't be held to the same standards.

Then they have the audacity to open to this when the update loads: https://i.imgur.com/EohIanD.png

There is no war on privacy. It's gone, the war is over and we lost. This is a true "Et tu, Brute?" moment. I'm really disgusted.

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