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Mozilla Plans to Collect User Data, Opt-Out Not Opt-In [Updated]

posted by martyb on Thursday August 24 2017, @02:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the choices dept.

canopic jug writes:

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

Links

[Update @ 20170824_152224 UTC: fixed bad link to Google Groups thread.]

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:38PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:38PM (#558470)

    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 :)

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:23PM (2 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:23PM (#558511)

    > 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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @06:16PM (#558536)

      Should find an alternative if only to not go through MS servers.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:45PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @08:45PM (#558585)

        yep. act like a slave, get treated like a slave.