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Neowin has a brief warning that Mozilla plans to collect anonymized user data. The given reason is to better understand how people use Firefox. Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this plan is that it is opt-out rather than opt-in. This is very far from the early days of Firefox when it had previously touted privacy as one of its main advantages.
As stated in the Google Groups announcement thread, they intend to use RAPPOR:
RAPPOR is a novel privacy technology that allows inferring statistics about populations while preserving the privacy of individual users.
This repository contains simulation and analysis code in Python and R.
[...] Publications
- RAPPOR: Randomized Aggregatable Privacy-Preserving Ordinal Response
- Building a RAPPOR with the Unknown: Privacy-Preserving Learning of Associations and Data Dictionaries
Links
[Update @ 20170824_152224 UTC: fixed bad link to Google Groups thread.]
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Mozilla Plans to Collect User Data, Opt-Out Not Opt-In [Updated]
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* m2 stares at the monitor... it looks like a hamburger...
m2 - that's a bad sign
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:20PM (12 children)
Here is a better idea, why don't you mozilla idiots actually go out in to the real world and see with your own eyes how users use it, and actually ASK people face to face how they think the browser could be better? There are still enough users you will get some volunteers.
Ah, right, then they would not be able to hide behind some meaningless statistic software and fudge the numbers to justify things when marketing wants some bullshit added.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:24PM (5 children)
Not defending them here, but people lie.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:33PM
Yep. Give me a statement that you're not selling the data, product produced with the data or otherwise profiting with the data. If improvements to Firefox are the only reason to collect the data, that'll be easy to do.
But like 'Free VPN' providers that are doing things like tracking which new 'net startups are gaining traction then selling that info to investment bankers, there is a back-end deal, isn't there?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:38PM (3 children)
Sure, but I don't think too many people lie about what they'd like out of a browser. Sure, few people are going to say "I just surf porn" but that doesn't matter. They can say "I stream videos" etc. Easy to build a non-invasive poll that does not reveal a user's precise usage.
I agree with OP, just ask people for fuck's sake! But that doesn't matter, nowadays these "UI experts" think the data is paramount and making decisions for those poor dumb users is for their own good. I understand such motivations, but that is how we end up with a 10 minute song of silence that people pay actual fucking money for!!
Swearing, scientifically proven to relieve pain :)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:23PM (2 children)
> nowadays these "UI experts" think the data is paramount and making decisions for those poor dumb users is for their own good
I've been using Skype for a really long time to call my parents.
Some asshole just decided that having a big green circle to tell them when I'm online, and a green phone and camera icons which start calls, was a bad idea. They replaced it with black-on-white stylized blobs, and they added a shit-ton of useless trendy socialmediaesque features. My mom can barely use it, especially not without her glasses. We may have to find her another solution.
I'm sure some designer is very proud of being a sheep following terrible trends, and will totally not understand when his new shiny concept doesn't drive people away from fucking FB or Apple products (nah, that doesn't require rewording).
Note that this implies there's a good deal of cash to take, by making UIs for people who need reading glasses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @06:16PM (1 child)
Should find an alternative if only to not go through MS servers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:45PM
yep. act like a slave, get treated like a slave.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:35PM (1 child)
As I programmer I find this to be a very scary idea. If I wanted to meet people face to face I would leave my mom's basement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:42PM
First documented case of honesty on this site? weird
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday August 24 2017, @07:37PM
Because then you end up with something like this happening: http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/know-your-audience [threepanelsoul.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Friday August 25 2017, @03:14AM (1 child)
It's OK, Mozilla has been ignoring its users for years, so gathering data that they can ignore as well won't make any difference.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @07:50AM
Fun thing with statistics is that it can be interpreted.
Developers: "We created this cool new way of doing the same thing, but people are still using the old way, so the new way must be made more prominent and the old way must be hidden in about:config or removed".
Users: The new way is terrible and doesn't do what we want.
Of course we agree that Mozilla doesn't want to listen to users, but collecting statistics allows them to do just that: Not listen to users.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 25 2017, @07:42AM
Problem is, if you ask, you get an answer.
Such as "I like the old way of doing this, and I'd rather use Chrome than the new way".
Where as with statistics, you can just see that people still use the old way, and so it becomes "the new way of doing this must be more prominent, and the old way must be hidden better or removed".
As we have seen lately, the Mozilla people really loves the second version.