Hi,

The people who answer questions here, for the most part, are other users volunteering their time (like me), not Mozilla employees or Firefox developers. If you want to leave feedback for Firefox developers, you can go to the Firefox Help menu and select Submit Feedback... or use this link. Your feedback gets collected by a team of people who read it and gather data about the most common issues.

You can also file a bug report or feature request. See File a bug report or feature request for Mozilla products for details.

> Mozilla gets big money from Google

Google pays Mozilla to be the default search engine in Firefox.

Without that money, there would be no Firefox right now.

If you can think of another company willing to give Mozilla heaps of money (and please, not Yahoo again), let Mozilla know and Mozilla can consider whether what they want in exchange for their money is an improvement over the current situation.

> When klicking on the settings icon which previously directly brought me to settings, it now takes me to a stupid option that requires one more klick to open the settings

The Settings item on the main menu and the optional Settings toolbar button both should directly open the about:preferences page.

If you are clicking the identical looking button in the built-in Firefox Home / new tab page, that shows page-specific settings that used to require looking at the Home panel of the Settings page. Maybe we need more icons to distinguish them.

> each_firefox_download_has_a_unique_identifier

That's interesting. If you do not want to share technical data with Mozilla, there's normally a popup within the first few minutes of installing Firefox that links you to the relevant section of the Settings. See: Share data with Mozilla to help improve Firefox.

Mozilla tried to get away from using Google as the default search engine in many locales as they went with Yahoo in November 2015 however due to legal dispute it was removed completely from Fx 57.0 on and Mozilla reluctantly went back to Google.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/a-new-yahoo-search-experience-for-firefox-users-in-u-s/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-files-cross-complaint-against-yahoo-holdings-and-oath/ https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/712925

The contract with Google expires in 2023 and Mozilla may be looking elsewhere then for a new main default search engine. Bing is one possibility.

Alright look, ofc mozilla has to get money somewhere otherwise how could it exist? That doesn't change ANYTHING about the fact that being a "privacy browser" and at the same time taking big money from Google which is the opposite of privacy can't go well. Google will and propably already did influence Mozilla. Google cannot be trusted. Rumors say Google is working hand in hand with the American Government / CIA-NSA. I absolutly beleve those "rumors". So an alternative to goole is bing in 2023, by bing you ofcourse mean microsoft, obviously this aint no bit better, if not worse.

Say what you want, i think Mozilla is not the Mozilla that i used to know and like, those times are over. Moz://a is responsible for this, cant blame the users.

Im even surprised Google didn't acquire Mozilla yet. Maybe they dont need to...

Edit: I did opt-out of data-colletion, the problem here is that telemetry is still active and there is no option in settings to disable that, about:config has way more options than the settings menu, there are important options for privacy which cannot be found in the settings menu, most of humanity doesn't change settings in about:config which means they will ALWAYS have active telemetry. This is wrong. A privacy browser should not do that.

I am basically saying without editing about:config which majority of people dont do, we will never have a real privacy experience. there are settings we dont know about and those are the critical settings when it comes to privacy, we dont have time to learn and edit hundreds if not thousands of settings just to get the privacy which mozilla is promoting anyways.

What data is sent if you turn off sharing of technical data on the Settings page? That sounds like it would be a bug that should be reported and fixed.

What data is sent if you turn off sharing of technical data on the Settings page? That sounds like it would be a bug that should be reported and fixed.

When i disable data-sharing in the firefox-settings-menu, that will NOT set the telemetry options in about:config to false. Infact those options still remain set to true. And i doubt telemtry is the only thing to worry about, i honestly beleve there is alot of "secret under the carpet" tracking.

I lost faith in Mozilla. Promoting yourself as privacy browser and at the same time having telemtry enabled by default, but even worse that telemtry even exists in a so called privacy browser is disturbing. Not to mention the "unique identifier".

When i disable data-sharing in the firefox-settings-menu, that will NOT set the telemetry options in about:config to false. Infact those options still remain set to true.

There are lots of "enable" preferences that control an entire group of functions. Like how turning off a circuit breaker means you don't need to turn off individual light switches for your kitchen to go dark.

Not to mention the "unique identifier".

I saw a help article about the dowload-to-install identifer: About Firefox Desktop Attribution. It's interesting that you do not get the identifer if your browser has "Do Not Track" enabled when you request the download.

Firefox_Beginner said

When i disable data-sharing in the firefox-settings-menu, that will NOT set the telemetry options in about:config to false. Infact those options still remain set to true.

There are lots of "enable" preferences that control an entire group of functions. Like how turning off a circuit breaker means you don't need to turn off individual light switches for your kitchen to go dark.

Not to mention the "unique identifier".

I saw a help article about the dowload-to-install identifer: About Firefox Desktop Attribution. It's interesting that you do not get the identifer if your browser has "Do Not Track" enabled when you request the download.

That's interesting. So from reading the article which you sent, let me copy paste it here:

When you download and install Firefox from Mozilla’s website, we record and store information about how you originally reached our download page (such as the referring website or advertising campaign). This information is stored in the version of Firefox that you download and then made available to Mozilla through our telemetry system. It helps us understand the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns and improve them. See Mozilla's Firefox Privacy Notice for more information.

- I think this is somewhat disturbing since majority of browser users are not aware this is happening and never will be. - Also i have a local shortcut on my pc to directly go to mozilla download, what are they going to track even if donottrack is disabled? Just curious will they even know i came from a local shortcut?

Mozilla does not track you across third party websites to provide targeted advertising.

- Ah no tracking on third party websites, and what about first party websites?

How do I opt out of this reporting before download and install? This data is not recorded or sent if you’ve enabled Do Not Track when you download the Firefox installer from our website

- If this is true, it's good to have this option.

- Are you saying if i turn off data-collection in firefox settings this means telemetry will also be turned off? - If so, why is it still set to true instead of false, how can i be sure that it's really off? - To be honest i dont know how much tracking is built-in to firefox, i beleve this is only the the tip of the iceberg.

I have contacted Mozilla staff who have been able to confirm:

Every day, people download the Firefox browsers from mozilla.org. There are times when they download it through a third party site. When that’s the case, we want to understand which sites new users are coming from and whether they stick around to install Firefox. Understanding this user journey can then help us design a better installation process and improve the experience of new users.

In order to gain this better understanding, we created a download token, i.e. an identifier, that would be associated with the unique download event. This allows us to capture that the download has happened which in turn helps us understand how many installs come through third-party sites and what those sites are. We disclose our "Campaign and Referral Data" in the Firefox Privacy Notice, where we say: “Firefox by default sends Mozilla HTTP data that may be included with Firefox’s installer. This enables us to determine the website domain or advertising campaign (if any) that referred you to our download page. Read the documentation or opt-out before installation. That "documentation" link includes a disclosure of the download token and a description of it.

We do not keep the download token with any personally identifying information, and we store the download token in a database that is separate from other telemetry information under a strict access policy.

If a user is interested in removing their association with the download token they can opt out of Firefox telemetry once they have installed the browser. We delete all of the historical telemetry data that we have collected for that user’s Firefox profile, including all records containing the download token. This makes it impossible for us to associate the web site visit with that profile, even for activity that took place before the opt out was specified. Alternatively, users who want to prevent a download token association from ever happening in the first place can download Firefox from our FTP site at https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/.

Alternatively, users who want to prevent a download token association from ever happening in the first place can download Firefox from our FTP site at https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/.

Just a note that this is not actual FTP as the ftp:// protocol was discontinued on their servers since August 5th, 2015. Also Mozilla prefers you use https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/

Alright i understand i have the option to opt-out by directly downloading from mozilla and not a third party site and also use do not track. A unique identifier soundes pretty scary in terms of privacy browser, however your explenation seems trustful.

But... What about Telemtry? How much built-in telemtry does firefox really have..? There are SO MANY settings in about:config, it will take me a life-time to understand everything. Like i said before.. I dont know how much tracking is built-in to firefox, but i beleve this is only the the tip of the iceberg.

Opting-out of mozilla data-collection/telemtry and analytics surely doesn't turn off everything, does it..?

You can read more about the telemetry from Firefox (in some depth) at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid

The link you sent says exactly the same as jscher2000 already mentioned.

Opting out of those settings is the first thing i do after installing firefox, hell i unplug my ethernet-cable before even installing firefox so it cant send any signal before i modified it to a certain "privacy".

I mean... will removing those 3 checkmarks really disable all the telemtry? I mean ALL of it? I dont think so. Honestly i can't beleve it. It would be somewhat naive to beleve klicking your mouse 3 times will truely remove all tracking/telemtry/analytics.

Am i wrong?