This post is misinformation. No data is sent by default, you have to opt in.
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2021
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people who hate firefox are eating it up. it's so stupid
These people are all mostly either from closed source Chrome clone camp or are Brave BATshit lovers. Some of them may be from GrapheneOS toxic racist community as well, who always cry about Tor adopting Firefox as base.
After a lot of regular Firefox users got converted into above due to BLM political whining (because white lives matter) and some actually sane criticisms regarding default Proton UI (which are changeable via userchrome.css), an atomic sized portion of people is left sticking with Firefox, like me. I have been a user since Firebird days.
I have a lot of legitimate criticisms regarding their aligning with the NSA spy company Apple, and the (default) Cloudflare DNS option for DoH (that led to the idiot nextbern giving me a 6 month ban on r/firefox because he got pissed by downvotes he got), as well as their greedy CEO and her bunch of PR and HR minions. What Firefox has though is Tor upstreamed security benefits, and a customisable user.js and userchrome.css, and extensions that are not crippled by Manifest V3 changes, or any of the FLoC or IdleDetection API spyware.
No, you are the one providing misinformation. The explanation you linked to is completely wrong. "offline" actually means that you are silently and automatically "opted-in", so basically what everybody except Mozilla calls opt-out.
However, this does not change anything to the fact that these "suggestions" were silently enabled in Firefox 92, and that the opt-in dialog box was introduced only in Firefox 93. In addition, this opt-in dialog is not shown if you left your locale as the default "en-US" ("offline" = opt-out).
Quoting from source code comment:
Sets the appropriate Firefox Suggest scenario based on the current Nimbus
- rollout (if any) and "hardcoded" rollouts (if any). The possible scenarios
- are:
- history
- This is the scenario when the user is not in any rollouts. Firefox
- Suggest suggestions are disabled.
- offline
- This is the scenario for the "offline" rollout. Firefox Suggest
- suggestions are enabled by default. Search strings and matching keywords
- are not included in related telemetry. The onboarding dialog is not
- shown.
- online
- This is the scenario for the "online" rollout. The onboarding dialog will
- be shown and the user must opt in to enable Firefox Suggest suggestions
- and related telemetry, which will include search strings and matching
- keywords.
Related source code:
async _updateFirefoxSuggestScenarioHelper() { let scenario = this._nimbus.quickSuggestScenario; if (!scenario) { await Region.init(); if ( Region.home == "US" && Services.locale.appLocaleAsBCP47.substring(0, 2) == "en" ) { // offline rollout for en locales in the US region scenario = "offline"; } else { // no rollout scenario = "history"; } }
I think this should be self explanatory.
And how would that support your claim that this post is:
misinformation. No data is sent by default, you have to opt in.
The relevant parts from this code comment about the "offline" mode are:
Firefox Suggest suggestions are enabled by default.
The onboarding dialog is not shown.
Which correspond to the code I've already linked to.
case "offline":
enabled = true;
defaults.setBoolPref("quicksuggest.shouldShowOnboardingDialog", false);
defaults.setBoolPref("suggest.quicksuggest", true);
defaults.setBoolPref("suggest.quicksuggest.sponsored", true);
break;
The code you cited just says that users with locale "en-US" are enrolled in the "offline" mode.
Basically:
- locale = "en-US" => "offline" => opt-out
- locale != "en-US" => "opt-in" with all possible dark patterns to trick the user into accepting it: user has to click the small "Not now" text which does not look like a button on the top right corner to disable Suggest.
To summarize, the "offline" / "online" Suggest Scenario have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Firefox sends data to Mozilla or not, it only defines if the Suggest feature is opt-in or opt-out. Is this naming extremely confusing? Absolutely! But at this point it's clear that Mozilla has done everything possible to mislead users about what their "suggestions" really are.
So please, stop spreading misinformation while claiming that people trying to bring awareness about this awful "feature" are the ones providing false information. A code comment is not proof, your completely wrong interpretation of it even less so. If you don't agree, please link to the relevant source code which would contradict the one I've linked to.
Can you read the below stuff?
This is the scenario for the “offline” rollout. Firefox Suggest suggestions are enabled by default. Search strings and matching keywords are not included in related telemetry. The onboarding dialog is not shown. online This is the scenario for the “online” rollout. The onboarding dialog will be shown and the user must opt in to enable Firefox Suggest suggestions and related telemetry, which will include search strings and matching keywords.
"offline" - Search strings and matching keywords are not included in related telemetry.
"online" - user must opt in to enable Firefox Suggest suggestions and related telemetry, which will include search strings and matching keywords
Telemetry and Suggest are two completely separate things.
- telemetry goes to: https://incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org/submit
- URL bar "keylogging" goes to: https://merino.services.mozilla.com/api/v1/suggest
The only different between "online" and "offline" is that in "offline" mode what you type in your URL bar is not included in the telemetry sent after you have selected a suggestion. But this changes absolutely nothing to what is sent to the Suggest API endpoint when you type in your URL bar.
I've repeatedly provided clear evidence of what I said, you just keep mentioning a random code comment and interpreting it in a way which completely contradicts the actual code and what countless people have observed. So at the risk of repeating myself:
- A code comment does not prove anything.
- Your completely wrong interpretation of it even less so.
- Link to code supporting your claims or GTFO.
I linked the code and the comment. You are the one claiming opposite and wrong stuff that I cannot even quote from FF source code. You are the dishonest one here. You GTFO.