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Mozilla Tests Improved Privacy Mode For Firefox
An anonymous reader writes: Firefox's privacy mode stops your computer from keeping track of where you've browsed, but it doesn't do anything about external tracking. A new feature just rolled out to the Developer Edition and the Aurora channel now actively tries to block online services from tracking you. "Our hypothesis is that when you open a Private Browsing window in Firefox you're sending a signal that you want more control over your privacy than current private browsing experiences actually provide." The feature uses a blocklist maintained by Disconnect.me to stop you from navigating to sites known to log your personal data.
or does this seem like an ass backwards way of "protecting" privacy?
"Our hypothesis is that when you open a Private Browsing window in Firefox you're sending a signal that you want more control over your privacy than current private browsing experiences actually provide."
I'd say people want more control over their privacy even when they aren't going full-tilt in Private Browser Mode.
You know what a contributing factor is in loss of privacy? A browser that has web services and features built-in that rely on third-party companies.
You can dig deep into your about:config settings and fix it there ((sorry - setting so obscure can't remember it! You might find it to turn it off but Grandmama won't)) and you are right!!! Firefox only pays lip service to privacy. And like their tieup with Adobe DRM https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-c..., their advertising page for "partners" http://adexchanger.com/ad-exch..., targeting you for advertising based on your browsing http://www.pcworld.com/article..., and now Disconnect.me, they're doing favors for businesses. Google was paying Firefox $300M a year http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/... before they pulled the plug and Firefox reached a deal with Yahoo, and they switched searches to Yahoo -- not because it was the better search engine, but because Yahoo was giving them cash http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
Firefox has become a megacorporation. They are not for profit http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb... so that money doesn't to shareholders but it goes SOMEWHERE like executive salaries and just like a megacorporation they care more about cutting deals with other businesses than they do the public because we are not their customers. They are!
I'm beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, panic has started to set in at Mozilla. They're starting to see that Firefox's marketshare has fallen through the floor.
We're talking about a browser that once had over 30% of the market reduced down to around 9% lately. Firefox for Android has been an abject failure at around 0.15% of the market. There's no presence on iOS. Firefox OS is totally irrelevant.
Chrome for Android alone has about twice as many users as all versions of Firefox have! iOS Safari has about the same number of users that Firefox does. IE 11 alone has almost as many users, and that's even after IE has suffered a similar freefall from its once lofty heights. Firefox's numbers are even approaching those of Opera Mini!
Mozilla only has any relevance today because of Firefox. We see very little use of Mozilla's other offerings. Thunderbird saw some use, until Mozilla essentially put it on life support. Firefox OS has been a complete failure. Bugzilla is seen as old and outdated. Servo is embryonic, and unusable. Rust was infected by Ruby hypesters fleeing the sinking Ruby on Rails ship, and took forever to get even a mediocre 1.0 release out.
Although Mozilla hasn't seemed too willing to acknowledge the massive problem facing Firefox, maybe it's finally starting to sink in. Maybe they've finally realized that when a browser has 30% of the market, then 25%, then 20%, then 15%, then 12%, and now only 9%, something is wrong.
When it gets to the point that almost nobody is using Firefox, Mozilla will lose what little influence they have left. The only reason that they have any influence today is because of their past success with Firefox, but that was an increasingly long time ago. Will Yahoo keep throwing money at Mozilla when Firefox only has 1% or less of the market? It's doubtful!
Maybe they're starting to realize the disaster that awaits them, as an organization. I think we're starting to see them panic. Instead of listening to their users, they're throwing shit against the wall in a frenzy, trying to see what sticks. That's what the ads in Firefox have been about. That's what Pocket has been about. That's what Hello has been about. That's what junk like this is about. It's just one knee-jerk reaction after another, as it becomes clearer and clearer that the future of Firefox and Mozilla is looking bleaker and bleaker.
I wanted to see Mozilla succeed. They used to be a very respected organization, up there with the FSF and the Apache project. Yet they've done so much to drive away so many of Firefox's users. Their smugness has become their undoing, throwing them into the self-destructive spiral we see now. The worst part is that none of this was necessary! If only they had listened to Firefox's users, rather than forcing one shitty thing after another upon these users, then Mozilla wouldn't be in such a bad position today. Firefox would still be seen as an innovative, powerful browser that people want to use, rather than the mockery and the awful Chrome imitation that it has become today. It didn't have to be like this!
Chrome is the herpes of web browsing.
Spied on faster, get Chrome.