Since the integrity environment gunk, I’ve switched all boxes over to use Firefox as primary. This took a lot of configuring, as Firefox out of the box brings… a lot of stuff I don’t want.

One of those things is telemetry — whatever that means to Mozilla — that was tamed only with a combination of an enterprise profile (hi sudo!) and user.js hacks.

However, the policy and user.js changes don’t work on the Ubuntu box, where I’ve installed Firefox from the PPA to get it out from under Snap (and thereby usable with a password manager). The policy locks down and disables the right configs and the configs all have the right settings, but it keeps pinging incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org. Two Macs and a Pop!_OS box don’t ping Mozilla at all with these settings.

No harm no foul, I just blocked them in NextDNS and laugh in their general direction. I just wonder what else is different in the PPA.

    • pootriarch@poptalk.scrubbles.techOP
      82·
      1 year ago

      i did try that but the never-dark mode blinded me. i understand the reasoning, but absolute anonymity isn’t my own threat model; i’d like to be able to use themes and resize the window

      • CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        1 year ago

        That can be fixed at the cost of making yourself easier to fingerprint. There’s nothing LibreWolf does regarding privacy settings that you can’t undo, to my knowledge. But it will always be missing telemetry no matter what options you change.

        • pootriarch@poptalk.scrubbles.techOPEnglish
          51·
          1 year ago

          thanks, i’ll look again. it’s not that i love the idea of being fingerprinted; i just think that five mylar bags, four tin hats and a partridge in a pear tree won’t save me from that. i need my password manager, and once that’s in, enforcing a generic screen is silly - cow’s out of the barn. but not having the arms race against pocket and telemetry would be a big bonus.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
      74·
      1 year ago

      Phoning home isn’t necessarily a bad thing (but I agree that it shouldn’t do it without express consent) because a lot of app development nowadays is supported by analytics. Crash reports, A/B testing, feature discoverability, etc.

      If anything, I generally trust FOSS projects that ask for analytics more than I trust the typical data farm.

      the unique id is probably also not meant to be sinister either but that’s definitely more of a red flag than phoning home in principle imo

  • Knusper@feddit.de
    3·
    1 year ago

    One of those things is telemetry — whatever that means to Mozilla

    You can type about:telemetry into the URL bar to see what it sends.

    • pootriarch@poptalk.scrubbles.techOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      well i feel stupid now for not doing the obvious. but…

      Blocked Page

      Your organization has blocked access to this page or website.

      on the PPA box, this is what it showed me (meanwhile it was attempting to connect to incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org). another symptom of displaying respect for enterprise policies but in fact ignoring them. (as i had mentioned, on this box all of the settings look locked down as they should be, but it’s still attempting to send telemetry.)