this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
343 points (98.0% liked)
Linux
48330 readers
599 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's only for the first run, to track downloads and installations. Pretty much every mobile app on both Android and iOS, and a lot of desktop apps, do the same thing as they want to know how many people install (and uninstall) their app.
It's also only if you download the installer from the Firefox site, so Linux repos are unaffected.
Dude, fire Wireshark, launch Firefox and then come back here. Just because others do it, doesn't mean it is decent nor should Mozilla do it and no, its just not once, Firefox is constantly going for their servers for multiple reasons, not all requests include the ID that's true, but calling 3rd party analytics companies... from a browser.. kind of questionable. We all know there are other ways to fingerprint a browser.
Stop believing on the narrative of the all savior Mozilla. They're full of shit, less than others indeed, but still shit.
All I was saying was that the unique download ID is only used once, not every time you start Firefox. I wasn't making any other claims as to what other analytics they use.
Having said that, Telemetry is important to making a good product. The developer needs to know about crashes and what causes them (to fix bugs), which features people are using the most and least (to know what to work on and what to potentially deprecate), etc. As long as it's anonymous, I don't see a problem in that?
Sure, but a lot of systems don't actually store it. Even if they do, erasing the last octet (for IPv4) or the last 32 bits (for IPv6) is sufficient to de-identify it.
You can't guarantee it is isn't stored somewhere or checked by someone between you and Mozilla and used against you. Even your ISP can use Mozilla's calling home against you.
OK, but what do you expect companies to do about this? There's literally no way to browse the web without revealing your IP address. Are you saying that every single company online is collecting PII?
Even just checking for updates (which happens in the background with all modern software) would connect to Mozilla's servers.
I except things to be kept on a reasonable level and that doesn't include the amount of connections Firefox does, nor contacting a 3rd party analytics company.
What I also expect is to have simple toggles instead of having to spend half an hour going over advanced config, disable everything that can be disabled and still having it making connections to 3rd parties. Is it that hard to be transparent and make things right?
Telemetry is the new age bullshit excuse and alternative to proper in-house software testing and money cuts. Why hire testers and have public testing programs if you can just deploy to the end users, let it break and then collect logs. You'll get tons of PII as a bonus :)
No amount of in-house testing is going to catch everything that can be experienced on a nearly-infinite amount of hardware/software configurations that are tested once a large userbase gets a hold of a product.
Yeah I guess NASA, Lockheed Martin and Airbus all use analytics for testing instead of actual testing. You seem to be very unware of the current corporate trend of replacing in-house testing by analytics as a cost cutting strategy.
I do wonder why billion dollar companies (or in the case of NASA, an organization that AFAIK is still funded directly by the government) can afford to do this.
I'd also argue that extremely rigorous testing is a bit more important in terms of life-or-death scenarios for the companies that you mentioned, rather than Mozilla - but hey, that could just be me.
I mean come on, your comparison might work for a company that can hold a candle to the ones you mentioned (ie, Google or Apple) but how large do you think Mozilla (who still has to take handouts from Google essentially) is? Even then, I'd still say it's probably a bad comparison given my second point.
Yeah, embedded systems for military applications is exactly the same as consumer software. You're right.
Have you ever noticed that when stuff was sold on CDs and internet updates weren't a thing software was properly tested and mostly bug free while today the end user has to be the beta tester and report bugs / have telemetry?
Software should be approached as engineering not as the shit show it is today.
tell me you're not a decent software developer without telling me you're not a decent software developer