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mcc

Followup to mastodon.social/@mcc/112775362 :

Today I booted a new/fresh copy of Firefox from tarball to test something unrelated, and the first thing I saw was this screen. Absolutely dumbfounding.

And yes, when I looked in the prefs, "Ad measurement", the feature specifically designed to secretly follow you around the web and report the results to ad corps, *was* turned on in this copy. Well, I guess it's half true: Instead of the companies following you around, Firefox will do it on their behalf.
14 July at 22:38 | Open on mastodon.social
7 comments
mcc

Okay wait, wait, wait a minute. I've just noticed something.

*Is the ad measurement feature actually reflected in Firefox's privacy policy?*

The act of booting up this new Firefox somehow opened this copy of the Firefox privacy policy:

mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/fire

"Effective May 13, 2024".

(Not sure how this opened. If I click "privacy policy" in About, I get this other URL:

mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/?utm

Which is marked "September 9, 2020". That seems extremely out of date. Unsure what THAT'S about)

Okay wait, wait, wait a minute. I've just noticed something.

*Is the ad measurement feature actually reflected in Firefox's privacy policy?*

The act of booting up this new Firefox somehow opened this copy of the Firefox privacy policy:

mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/fire

"Effective May 13, 2024".

14 July at 22:45 | Open on mastodon.social
mcc

Anyway, May 13 is fairly recent, but it's two full months before the ship of Firefox 128. I'm skimming this policy and I do not see an explanation of, or reference to, the Ad Measurement feature (am I missing something??)

Did Firefox actually ship, *and enable by default without user notification*, a feature specifically designed for reporting to advertisers via a backchannel what ads the browser has seen, *without first updating their privacy policy to disclose it???*

14 July at 22:49 | Open on mastodon.social
funnymonkey

@mcc In addition to the Privacy Policy mess, they are coming awfully close to -- if not over - the line for Human Subjects research.

groups.google.com/a/mozilla.or

14 July at 22:55 | Open on freeradical.zone
mcc

God, the Firefox download page is so funny now given what I've learned in the last 72 hours

(And yes, the "firefox privacy notice" link at the bottom of this page links to the May 13 privacy policy.)
14 July at 22:58 | Open on mastodon.social
In Re: the 🏳️‍⚧️✨ of Rylie

@mcc this isn't the topics API, though, right? It's not summarizing all your browsing and offering it, according to the description I read.

14 July at 23:01 | Open on hachyderm.io
mcc

@Specialist_Being_677 It is not analogous to the Google Chrome Topics API. It appears to be (modulo minor things about the process by which the data is reported back home) functionally identical to the Google Chrome Ad Measurement API. It reports purportedly anonymized data about what ads were seen and what ads were clicked on.

14 July at 23:02 | Open on mastodon.social
WhistlingStella

@rynchodon should I do anything about this?

14 July at 22:50 | Open on c.im
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