Mozilla Slipped a 'Mr. Robot'-Promo Plugin Into Firefox and Users Are Pissed (gizmodo.com)

MarcAuslander shares a report from Gizmodo: Mozilla sneaked a browser plugin that promotes Mr. Robot into Firefox -- and managed to piss off a bunch of its privacy-conscious users in the process. The extension, called Looking Glass, is intended to promote an augmented reality game to "further your immersion into the Mr. Robot universe," according to Mozilla. It was automatically added to Firefox users' browsers this week with no explanation except the cryptic message, "MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT THAN YOURS," prompting users to worry on Reddit that they'd been hit with spyware. Without an explanation included with the extension, users were left digging around in the code for Looking Glass to find answers. Looking Glass was updated for some users today with a description that explains the connection to Mr. Robot and lets users know that the extension won't activate without explicit opt-in.

Mozilla justified its decision to include the extension because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy. "The Mr. Robot series centers around the theme of online privacy and security," the company said in an explanation of the mysterious extension. "One of the 10 guiding principles of Mozilla's mission is that individuals' security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional. The more people know about what information they are sharing online, the more they can protect their privacy."

Comments

Mr robot

[Anonymous Coward]

A rippoff of the movie fight club.

Re:Mr robot

[NicknameUnavailable]

Season 1 was nice, after that it just turned into artsy bullshit. I was expecting another post-apocalyptic storyline, except with an actual start to the plot. I got a season of mildly amusing schizophrenia followed by batshit communist bullshit.

Re:Mr robot

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for spoilers, asshole. I am still on Season 1.

Re:Mr robot

[Anonymous Coward]

I gave up about 3 episodes into season 2 - season 1 was ok, I'd stop there.

Re:Mr robot

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't find the episodes online through google so I tried yandex.com and I found all the episodes online. GOTTA LOVE THAT FREE MARKET!

Re:Mr robot

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is going to prison in a ripoff of the movie blade runner.

Re:Mr robot

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here -- except the shared TV seems to puke the show out from DVR every so often because my wife still likes it!

Re: Mr robot

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you shouldn't be reading an article about it?

When browsers jump the shark

[Lisandro]

Seriously, WTF?!

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Lisandro]

"The Mr. Robot series centers around the theme of online privacy and security. One of the 10 guiding principles of Mozilla’s mission is that individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional."

So yeah, let surreptitiously install plugins on everyone's browsers.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[grasshoppa]

This is what happens when you let Gilligan drive.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[KiloByte]

Don't forget disabling all existing privacy extensions. Oh, and mails you get from Mozilla are pure gold: "Keep trackers off your trail" blah blah "evade tracking technology" blah blah "https://click.e.mozilla.org/?qs=e7bb0dcf14b1013fca3820..."

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla has no business installing add-ons without user consent, especially when it's done quietly in the background. This is the type of behavior that one would expect from malware, and it may well be illegal. I am seriously considering filing a lawsuit against the Mozilla Foundation under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Privacy and security doesn't just mean protection from malicious third-party entities; it also includes not being screwed around with by the software you thought you could trust. This is just Mozilla trying to justify being defective by design, which really should not come as a surprise.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[rudy_wayne]

Mozilla justified its decision to include the extension because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy.

Bullshit. They did it because they got paid by the producers of that TV show to do it. This is what happens when a company is totally dependent on advertising for their revenue.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[retchdog]

good luck with that. remember to type it up; i hear the courts don't appreciate crayon.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[retchdog]

well, yeah, of course they can be. i'm just wondering what you're going to show them as damages.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

>people squawk about muh consents muh permissions
>click 'I agree' on everything

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget Mozilla's WTF decision to implement a dependency on PulseAudio on Linux.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[omnichad]

So if it was just a browser update with the same code it's fine, but as an add-on it's illegal. Sure...

Look, the outcry is real and fair. But let's not call it illegal, because it's their software and you clicked to agree to updates.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

But don't forget they quietly reverted to not requiring pulseaudio.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

That, unfortunately, is why I'm uncertain about suing them. They should be punished for this stunt, but that part of the statute does specifically mention damage caused by programs loaded without user consent. Courts have stretched the interstate commerce portion of the CFAA to include virtually any computer connected to the internet. What I need to find out is whether the part about damages has similarly been stretched. It's entirely possible, especially given that LinkedIn seems to think that TOS violations also constitute damages.

Without serious backlash like this, it's all too common to get some backtracking for a little while, then again pushing the limits of what users will tolerate. It's like boiling a frog in hot water. If the frog reacts, back off the heat a little bit, then slowly turn it up again. If there isn't some serious backlash that affects the Mozilla Foundation beyond negative press, they will probably do something like this again.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Narcocide]

Oh, don't worry, we won't be forgetting the fact they compounded their guilt by figuratively trying to sweep the mistake under the rug.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

> "The Mr. Robot series centers around the themes of violating online privacy, vigilantism and destroying others security. One of the 10 guiding hubris' of Mozillaâ(TM)s mission is that an individualsâ(TM) security and privacy on the internet are fundamentally at our whim and must be treated as optional."

You are welcome :)

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

This needs to be modded up. If you don't get it, read it again. Look at the URL. If you can't see it, get the hell off of my Slashdot.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Kjella]

Look, the outcry is real and fair. But let's not call it illegal, because it's their software and you clicked to agree to updates.

Legally they're in the clear, but I find that permission is given almost under duress. Like you can either agree to this or hackers can root your computer, steal your identity and blackmail you through cryptolockers. It's like refusing safety recalls to your car only worse because they're remotely exploitable, like if someone honks three times your brakes stop working. What sane, responsible person wants to run an Internet-facing piece of software with no support or security patches?

So I understand they need my permission for that but when I say "you do what you gotta do" it doesn't mean I'm happy when they replace my cup holder because the interior decorator doesn't fancy it anymore. Sadly more and more software is turning to the Darth Vaderesque style of updates, if you want to keep using it there's a new agreement, a new look and it works differently. Pray that I don't alter it further. You can wrap it in all the "constantly enhancing the user experience" marketing bullshit you want, but really I want my security-only updates back.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[rtb61]

Mozilla also have a pretty bad reputation for forcing stuff on people, a real clique arrogance. Your tabs, screw you, we want they where we want they, bugger your choice. Same as for appearance, like the old look, meh, we don't, new millennium style, don't like use IE suckers. They can be pretty bloody rude and like a lot of these types or orgs, a particular crowd worms they way in and it is all about serving their ego and fuck everyone else. Mozzilla certainly ain't what it used to be and it stinks of Google actively working to fuck up firefox in order to drive users to super invasive chrome, the chrome plated versions of Windows anal probe 10. The stink of the big shit at 'Alphabet' is string in this action, designed to damage Mozzilla's reputation and win a monopoly for chrome.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[ShanghaiBill]

I believe Mozilla probably can be sued under the CFAA.

Anyone can be sued for anything. But you aren't going to do it. If you were someone actually capable of preparing and filing a lawsuit, you wouldn't be anonymously blabbing about it on Slashdot.

Litigating a case like this could easily cost $100k. Justice isn't cheap. I doubt if you, personally, could show more than $1 in damages.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[mschwanke97402]

This is the type of behavior that one would expect from malware.

Actually, this is the type of behavior I’ve come to expect from Microsoft in Windows 10. Also lots of other software products. You clearly didn’t read the EULA, did you? We live in the age of no shame.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[mikael]

It seems to be a trend. I installed Chrome on a Linux partition and almost immediately, Yahoo tried to install their plugin into that browser.

Not forgetting Canonical's spyware which sent your local search queries for command options to their servers. It's anonymized they claim - well it isn't if your ISP decides to do a man-in-the-middle attack and deep packet inspection with your data.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/201...

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla seems to need to compete against Chrome. That's why they sneak in a SSDP server to compete against ChromeCast.

I tried switching to Waterfox, but it still seemed determined to connect to remote servers on port 443 all across the world, including RIPE and China Telecom.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

To move tabs, I created the directory c:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\(yourprofile).default\chrome and then put a file named userChrome.css in it with this content. Note the 1,2,3 order you can modify to change where tabs, etc. are at the top of Firefox 57. The order below is for navigation bar, bookmarks, then tabs:
/* Tab bar below navigation & bookmarks toolbars */

#nav-bar{
  -moz-box-ordinal-group: 1;
  border-top-width: 0;
}

#PersonalToolbar {
  -moz-box-ordinal-group: 2;
}

#TabsToolbar {
  -moz-box-ordinal-group: 3;
}

#main-windows[windowtype="navigator:browser"] {
background-color: transparent;
}

/* 2/1/3 - bookmarks, controls, tabs */

/* 1/2/3 - controls, bookmarks, tabs */

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it! I clicked the link from home, work, the pub and my hookers place! Nothing really worked for me. Maybe the hooker crushed my balls with her stilettos... still... nothing else.

Also, does day9 saying "the threat of blowing up their deck" sound homosexual to you too?

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

$1 damages to each of millions of people is why class actions lawsuits are needed. NOT to make the individuals whole (which they don't), NOT to make the lawyers rich (which happens sometimes), but yo PUNISH the power that arises millions for a few cents of dollars each.

In other words class actions are like the death penalty of prison sentences, a deterrent to rationalish beings.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[jellomizer]

I want a browser to be fast, secure and protect my privacy. I don’t want it to tell me what I should watch or think.
I may want Firefox for reasons different then the organization goals. I don’t appreciate getting stuff pushed on me.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[jellomizer]

It isn’t about if they can, but if they should.
I want to be able to know what is on my system and what sites I am connecting to. Having a plug-in vs a software update is a bit different. Because the software update fixes the software while a plugin esptthe one from this article is trying to push some idea.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Such an user-friendly piece of software!

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

It's illegal if local laws say it's illegal. They were trying to trick users.

Oh and by the way, if you or anyone respond to this post, then that is tacit legal agreement that you will pay me $50,000 for my time.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

And every time Firefox updates itself (because a million automatic, buggy, micro-updates are all the rage with idiots and children these days), he's going to have to do all of that over again.

I won't use anything that forces me to constantly fight against it. That includes Firefox and Windows 10.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes when I'm bored I just randomly change the characters in those tracking URLs and see what that does. If I'm really bored I'll fire up a little shell script to WGET that URL about 100,000 times with random query strings and go through random open proxies so they can't filter me out as easily.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

A tracker like that run by the company itself is much more palatable than one run by a marketing company directly. The former is unlikely to get aggregated with other data and used to further create a sales profile. The latter, yeah.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean you actually GAVE mozilla your email address? What a rube!

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I don't feel like guessing which of the dozens of reasons you chose as the single worst (best?) reason to hate that URL.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Damages dont apply. CFAA is criminal and damages are thought of afterwards. They violated the integrity of a system by disabling security/privacy extensions and putting shit on your system without upfront notice and informed consent. Every element of the crime is provable. They would lose.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

If what instead they just added it to the main browser?

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. Did you have automatic updates disabled? Did you not agree to install the software where it explicitly states use at your own risk?

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me know where to wire the money. Just go ahead and post your bank details here.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't disable all of the existing privacy extensions. Practically all of the ones I use were ready to go when Quantum rolled out and the other ones weren't as important with the domain specific cookies.

The problems with Fx are less now than they were, but this kind of thing really harms trust and damages their image.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Stan92057]

Well its not installed on mine so im guessing they installed it on a small portion of FF installs. That,s no excuse, its a complete invasion of privacy and user trust. I bet they got plenty of adverting money though.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Rakarra]

Oh, don't worry, we won't be forgetting the fact they compounded their guilt by figuratively trying to sweep the mistake under the rug.

So fixing a mistake sucks too? Were they supposed to crawl back begging for forgiveness because they made an assumption that turned out not to be true in a few minor edge cases?

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Aighearach]

In Soviet Mozilla, shark jumps you!

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

CPU use counts for damages. Employers were successful at firing admins mining bitcoins in the background on company servers for that back in the day.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[KiloByte]

They didn't disable all of the existing privacy extensions.

All that I'm using; I find no replacements that are at feature parity. The API to reimplement them for webext aren't there.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Which ones would that be? Ublock Origin? Privacy Badger? Decentraleyes? Link Cleaner? HTTPS Everywhere? Smart Referer? NoScript? UMatric? They're all there.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[JohnFen]

Seems like it would be a lot easier to use a more reasonable browser instead.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[JohnFen]

It's anonymized they claim

Don't forget that any time someone claims data collected is "anonymized" they are implying something that is not true: that the data collected can't be tied to you.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[JohnFen]

This is the type of behavior that one would expect from malware.

Actually, this is the type of behavior I’ve come to expect from Microsoft in Windows 10.

Same thing.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[TheReal_sabret00the]

I believe you're mistaken, UserChrome.css changes aren't reset with updates.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not.

There's nothing wrong with saying you have an idea to do something, or thought it would be cool to do something...

Saying you did it does not improve the story.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between company policy and the law is massive.

I find many people make the claim "illegal" in day to day life when really it's just against corporate policy.

Sad really.

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Go talk to Stallman. He's been championing the cause for years

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Narcocide]

I think you know you didn't deserve 2 karma for this drivel. That's not what I said and you very well know it. "Fixing a few mistakes" is a gross mischaracterization of what happened here.

Re:When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you can't tell a tracking tag when you see it?
"qs=e7bb0dcf14b1013fca3820..." looks an awful lot like a GUID that can be specifically tied to the e-mail that was sent. Pair that with web server logs that can identify the IP address of your client and a user-agent string, and you can tell a person's ISP, web browser, often the make/model of their device, and a rough geolocation of the person who clicked on that link.

It sucks, but nearly all organizations that send out large amounts of e-mail do it. (For tracking "response rates", because marketers are horrible... :-P)

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you install Chrome on Linux instead of Chromium?

Re: When browsers jump the shark

[Rakarra]

It's 2017, I wouldn't blame any application-maker, certainly not a GUI web browser, for assuming that everyone who uses sound on Linux is using Pulseaudio. It might not even have been a conscious decision to put in a dependency, any more than it's a conscious decision to use an NSS library. That's how standard it is. Yeah, there were a few die-hard holdouts who ended up getting shafted, but they made a loud enough fuss that it got reverted. Given all the BS that Mozilla has pulled over the last five years, pulseaudio hardly comes close to a jump the shark moment.

One step forward, two back

[grasshoppa]

If they were trying to win back Chrome users, this is a pretty effective way to sabotage their efforts.

I hope they were paid a shitload of cash for this little stun, because it's gonna cost them.

Re: One step forward, two back

[LifesABeach]

Another surprise was hearing on NPR that Mozzilla trashed net neutrality, just wierd

Re:One step forward, two back

[Dutch Gun]

“Firefox worked with the Mr. Robot team to create a custom experience that would surprise and delight fans of the show and our users. It’s especially important to call out that this collaboration does not compromise our principles or values regarding privacy. The experience does not collect or share any data,” Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, chief marketing officer of Mozilla, said in a statement to Gizmodo. “The experience was kept under wraps to be introduced at the conclusion of the season of Mr. Robot. We gave Mr. Robot fans a unique mystery to solve to deepen their connection and engagement with the show and is only available in Firefox.”

So, no apologies for those of us who spotted it, freaked out, and spent a bunch of time trying to figure out WTF this was, and if it was malicious or not.

Seriously, on what planet do you essentially prank all your users with a stunt like this? I was actually pretty happy with Firefox after the Quantum update, as it went better than I was expecting. After that, I immediately turned off telemetry and experiments, because they've now abused my trust with this stunt.

And now comes this statement, doubling down on their incredibly poor judgment. This is the last straw for me. If Mozilla had been the least bit contrite, I might have forgiven this. I've been using Firefox almost since it's inception 15 years ago. That ends today.

Re:One step forward, two back

[retchdog]

"it's gonna cost them."

no it won't. no one is going to remember this in a month, and there are other much more significant variables in the browser "market" (such as it is).

Re: One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

Another surprise was hearing that NPR is still in business.

Re:One step forward, two back

[sasparillascott]

Dutch Gun I share your sentiment - this is so disappointing. Actually thought the changeover to Quantum would be bad, but it went well, I would have preferred the old customizable UI and plugins, but could live with it.

Saw Mozilla talking about not getting enough data from users for analysis of the browser, so they were considering having opt out on that (that got barked down quick). But I enabled it on mine just to help - no more.

Then this tone deaf - partner with the content megacorp / E corps to embed a plugin in your Firefox install (not something Mr. Robot would have liked). The fact such a thing happened shows how 4ucked their leadership is - to have approved and run with this.

Disabling all telemetry from now on - all installations. Will use Vivaldi more, was already using it more anyways (very nice customizable browser by the guys who made the original Opera).

Re: One step forward, two back

[taustin]

Did they cite primary sources that you can check yourself, like a statement on Mozilla's web site? Because otherwise, I don't find NPR any more credible (or less prone to propaganda) than Faux News, or any other tabloid.

Re:One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

What browser are you switching to?

Google is such a shining beacon of not-evil that it would take more than a statement from a marketing clown to justify switching to Chrome.

Re:One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, true, I probably won't remember this in a month once I will have switched over to Waterfox.

Re:One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people pay good money for that training...

Re:One step forward, two back

[grasshoppa]

You don't think so? With one stupid mistake, they turned their browser into adware. People were already flocking away from it, but their latest speed update apparently gave a few pause. Then this stunt...and suddenly, no pause.

They've compromised their integrity, plain and simple. Sure, Chrome snoops on you, but that's hardly surprising to anyone, and when was the last time Chrome served you an add as part of the browser?

Shit, FF just ranged into windows 10 territory, and it took MS employing every dirty trick in the book to even get to the market penetration they have now ( which isn't all that impressive, considering ).

No. Whatever community goodwill Mozilla earned recently is gone, and more besides.

Re:One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is that there are only 2 unique options any more in the browser market: Firefox (Gecko); and Chrome/Safari (WebKit/Blink). Everything else has died off (even IE/Edge is shrinking). Opera already switched to WebKit.

We need more diverse options in the browser market. As it is, Firefox is more supporting of privacy than Chrome so I'll be sticking with Firefox.

At least people notice this stuff when it's in Firefox. Chrome ships binary blobs all the time to/from your browser doing even more sneaky stuff (and experiments/telemetrics). Not that it's malicious/bad, just not transparent, which, to my understanding, is also the issue here.

Nobody complains when Google ships a silent Android update to Google Play Services that starts storing location history by default. At least Mozilla has a track record of trying to do the right thing where feasible. They still have to fight to remain relevant in the face of Google and Apple, and that means risking bad decisions sometimes. If Mozilla fails, we'll be down to a monopoly of WebKit/Blink based browsers run by Google and Apple.

Re: One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

Listeners like us keep it in business.

Re:One step forward, two back

[TuringTest]

> After that, I immediately turned off telemetry and experiments, because they've now abused my trust with this stunt.

If you had those turned on, how is this an abuse of your trust? You had given them permission to do anything with your browser. If you don't want anti-privacy measures in Firefox, don't turn them on.

Re: One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

Source? What I found is an interview with Mitchell Baker two days ago where she defends net neutrality.

Re:One step forward, two back

[retchdog]

see, to most people, browsers already are basically adware-delivery vehicles. they're going to hear about this, scratch their heads, maybe a few of them vaguely remember that one weird thing that happened on their browser, and then blip! they will never think about it again because they have much, much more important things to worry about.

Re:One step forward, two back

[retchdog]

"Firefox is more supporting of privacy than Chrome so I'll be sticking with Firefox."

yup, that's what i was getting at. one little gaffe versus an entire business model. rofl

Re: One step forward, two back

[sacrilicious]

I don't find NPR any more credible (or less prone to propaganda) than Faux News, or any other tabloid.

Yeah! And Roy Moore rocks! And Trump Rulez!!!! LIbral Media can suck my dickzzzzzz!!!!! Did I get that right, homeboy?

Re:One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like having 5 tabs open for 9 hours, at which time you have to reboot to get control of Firefox because it no longer responds? Is that what you mean by 'more important things to worry about.'?

Re:One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, on what planet do you essentially prank all your users with a stunt like this?

The same planet where it makes sense to scrape political contribution databases for the names of your employees and fire any you find who have political views that aren't approved by management.

Re:One step forward, two back

[retchdog]

i was thinking more prosaic things like not being fired, feeding your kid, finding health insurance, not being evicted, etc. you know, all those things tech employees generally don't have to worry about.

Re: One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

LIbral Media can suck my dickzzzzzz!!!!! Did I get that right, homeboy?

Well now, that depends. How many "dickz" do you have, exactly?

Re:One step forward, two back

[AvitarX]

It doesn't need to be remembered in a week to have a lasting effect.

Switching browsers has a cost for the end user, it's an annoyance.

If Mozilla looses 5% of it's userbase from this one action, it will take a long time to recover that.

It will cost them 5% of their revenue for the foreseeable future.

Re:One step forward, two back

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

If Mozilla had been the least bit contrite, I might have forgiven this.

Really, this.
I get that the concept would've seemed like a great idea, and there may have been a way to make this work, but not by installing anything uninvited. I don't get why they didn't do something on their "new tab" page - yeah some people will have customised that so they wouldn't see whatever, but at least that way it's not actively pushing unexpected code.

Not in a malicious way, but I do think someone who made this decision at Moz needs to at the very least, take a little break from their position because this really was a terrible decision.

Re: One step forward, two back

[Rakarra]

Another surprise was hearing that NPR is still in business.

It's a pretty good business. If you're going to listen to radio, it's hard to get better. Except when they air some crazy stuff after midnight, and not whenever Prairie Home Companion is on.

Re:One step forward, two back

[Rakarra]

no it won't. no one is going to remember this in a month,

Nerds can have a long memory. With every article that mentions Sony, there will invariably be a few 5-modded comments saying "remember when Sony included that root-kit on audio CDs? Never again, Sony!"

Of course, non-nerds never heard about that, nor will they hear about the Mr. Robot thing.

Re: One step forward, two back

[Aighearach]

You've got some derp on your chin... no, stuck your neckbeard... no, there's more...

Re:One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

"Will use Vivaldi more, was already using it more anyways (very nice customizable browser by the guys who made the original Opera)."

what kind of dumb fucking slave runs a closed source web browser? probably a happy windows user too...we're so screwed.

Re:One step forward, two back

[Dutch Gun]

Well, I see you'd fit right in at Mozilla.

Re:One step forward, two back

[doom]

I think the post-57 "Quantum" firefox does a little better than that. It doesn't freeze up completely, it tends to completely crash-- weirdly enough, this is actually much preferable behavior, it saves me the trouble of trying to run "xkill" when firefox is eating most of the system resources.

It's a good thing I like to complain or I would've given up on Firefox a long time ago.

Re:One step forward, two back

[doom]

see, to most people, browsers already are basically adware-delivery vehicles.

Look, most people have already given up on Firefox, at this point the firefox user base is the few, the proud, the masochistic.

Have you ever asked a firefox shill why you should use firefox when it's just become a fork of chrome? They invariably start going on about getting away from google's evil surveillance ad-supported clutches.

Either we're supposed to care about this, or not. Is mozilla.org a lesser evil, or just a different evil?

Re:One step forward, two back

[TuringTest]

Why because I'd take your statement of "I allow Mozilla to run experiments in my browser"at face value? If you make a public statement like that, have the courage to stand by it, and don't go whining that people followed up on your offer.

Re:One step forward, two back

[Anonymous Coward]

Important to point out its not Telemetry and Experiments - its Telemetry and Studies.

I think most folks weren't thinking the "Studies" thing meant Marketing Campaigns with big content owning corporations...

Everyone in the organization that approved that idea to the highest level should be fired - they do not belong in something to proclaims to honor user privacy.

Re:One step forward, two back

[JohnFen]

no one is going to remember this in a month

I probably won't. Here's how it works with me -- once a company has violated my trust enough, I just remember not to use their products or services anymore. I don't bother remembering why (because it doesn't matter at that point). I just won't be going back to them.

"privacy-conscious users"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah... I don't think there are any such naive users of Crapzilla left. I only use Firefox because there just isn't an alternative, but I hate every second of it. It continues to baffle me beyond comprehension how everyone is able to go on pretending as if computing isn't dead at this point, with unremoveable hardware backdoors built into every CPU/other hardware, nothing but spying in all OSes (including Linux and likely Qubes OS) and garbage software such as Firefox all around. Keyloggers, ads, bloat... it's dead. Computing is dead. Anyone who thinks they have any amount of privacy and security is sadly delusional.

And the worst part? Virtually nobody even recognizes this, let alone cares about it. Certainly nobody with pockets deep enough to have a physical factory making secure hardware and a secure OS and custom-made software to go with it. I'm tired of typing things like this, though, because not even hardcore geeks seem to get this through their thick skulls.

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[sgage]

This, this, a thousand times this.

Nobody cares about privacy, or really even about security, as long as they get their new fresh modern stuff.

The dream of the web died years ago, and the dream of personal computing is dying right now before our very eyes.

It was inevitable. There is nothing that the corporate shitheads can't co-opt, corrupt, and ruin - the genius of Capitalism at work.

Oh well, it was fun there for a while...

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[Sperbels]

You can have my insecure porn viewing apparatus when you pry it from my cold dead (left) hand.

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[omnichad]

Nobody cares about privacy, or really even about security, as long as they get their new fresh modern stuff.

These more or less have to go hand in hand. Things are changing so fast and so broadly that the only way to keep up is to make that trade off. Of course the smart move might be to not keep up.

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[sgage]

Exactly. It has become a fashion industry. What people will give up in order to be shiny and modern is astonishing. Oh well.

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[Luckyo]

Fun part. In your spiel, you misspelled "communism". This movement to spy on every citizen through backdoors of every kind imaginable started in China as a tool to maintain population control by their Communist Party about two decades ago. This funded a lot of research into knowhow, that was quickly put into use in China.

And once people in power realized just how easy it is to spy on everyone, for profit and/or control, it snowballed very quickly and since most of the ground work was already done, all you needed was to put the tech into essentially everything. But don't put the blame on capitalism for this. This is very much a communist initiative.

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Things are changing so fast and so broadly that the only way to keep up is to make that trade off.

What an odd thing to write. We used to compensate people who provided new things we liked to have by paying them.

The reason privacy is dying is because invading privacy has become profitable, and that in turn is because it provided a way to monetize people using a service or enjoying some digital content online without them having to do anything or even necessarily realising what was going on.

Google and Facebook, with their culture of spying-for-ads, and Apple, with its app store culture of software-costing-$3-is-expensive, have much to answer for.

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[110010001000]

Things aren't changing fast. What is the difference between the web now and 10 years ago? Nothing. Just more ads.

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[Anonymous Coward]

10 years ago, we had ads on pages. They were often Flash content and annoyingly Flashy.

Then we got rid of Flash because iPhone. We got new HTML5 shiny and now instead of simply being embedded in the page content, the ads are shoved in my face while I'm trying to read.

The web is a very different experience today than it was 10 years ago, even if the base technology is mostly the same. I'm often tempted to say 'fuck it' and just go read a book.

(BTW yes, I use an ad blocker - the greedy assholes in charge of web development keep finding new ways around it. It's an arms race.)

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[Rakarra]

What an odd thing to write. We used to compensate people who provided new things we liked to have by paying them.

Yup, the Internet definitely changed that.
The default assumption is that things are "free" and you have to put up with advertising. Advertising gets more invasive the more money that needs to be involved. It's because we decided that we don't need to pay for the newspaper anymore, we just get it for free.

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yup, the Internet definitely changed that.
> The default assumption is that things are "free" and you have to put up with advertising.

Oh yes, that revolutionary model which was unprecedented in other media like print, radio, tv...

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[MrL0G1C]

If your eye is in your left hand whilst you are viewing porn then you really are doing it wrong.

Re: "privacy-conscious users"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Spying is full on capitalism. We just used to have a government that usually protected the freedom of its citizens. Corporate misbehavior, corruption, and general anti-human behavior is much older than the communist governments of the 20th century. Sure, communist governments also do that, but they didn't invent it and hardly have a monopoly on it.

Re:"privacy-conscious users"

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Ironically, it looks like some of the better newspapers and magazines are now making some of the most successful transitions to a subscription/paywall model online. Several of the organisations that produced original, high quality content in the offline world are now able to do so in the online world, still funded by real money from real readers. No doubt it helps that the target audience for these publications is probably both relatively wealthy and interested enough in good information and analysis to pay for it.

What drives me crazy as a software and web developer is when you get people expecting anything you make, no matter what it does or how much work is necessary to make it happen or how much it costs to produce any original content it includes, to be basically free if it's accessed as a web site or no more than a dollar or two if it's standalone software. In a world of $1 torch apps and low budget, free-to-play games loaded with pay-to-win in-app purchases, consumer expectations for what it takes to produce something original and significant are wildly out of sync with the real world, which means a lot of the time you simply can't do it any more and the cheap junk with indirect revenue models is all that's left.

Re: "privacy-conscious users"

[Luckyo]

Capitalism is an economic system, not a system of governance. Communism on the other hand is both an economic system, and a system of governance by the simple necessity of totalitarian governmental control to achieve the economic "flattening" of population.

As a result, capitalism has no intrinsic interest to spy on people, unlike communism which needs to maintain control over people to maintain the system. The reason why capitalism ended up producing the systems for communist regimes and eventually migrated them to Western governments is in the fact that capitalism attempts to find the most economical way to meet any needs that can be profitable to meet.

That means that once the needs of communist and other totalitarian regimes are met, the know how becomes available to much less totalitarian regimes, including capitalist ones as essentially a surplus.

Strike one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Strike One!!
(P.S. I'm not playing a game)

its fine, just disclose one thing

[nimbius]

Did you get paid to ship this? If so, your privacy explanation is the purest bullshit since ajit pai claimed net neutrality repeal helped promote internet freedom.

Re:its fine, just disclose one thing

[Desler]

Of course they did.

Re: its fine, just disclose one thing

[Lisandro]

You bet they did. Hell, they're even remarking how the plugin is a "Firefox exclusive" right in the explanation press release.

Re: its fine, just disclose one thing

[arth1]

Hell, they're even remarking how the plugin is a "Firefox exclusive" right in the explanation press release.

Another way of saying nobody else were that stupid?

Re:its fine, just disclose one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Dems are still whining about the election, over a year later. The temper tantrums of frail egos seem to last quite a while.

Re:its fine, just disclose one thing

[Waffle Iron]

Oh good lord, get over the net neutrality bullshit already. You lost. It's done. Nothing bad will happen.

If nothing bad will happen, then why were the big telecom companies and their government puppets so hell-bent on shoving this through? Are you really so naive as to think that they were antsy to make this change for any other reason than to extract more fees from their locked-in customers, as well as inflict brand new fees on content creators?

Re:its fine, just disclose one thing

[Rakarra]

Oh good lord, get over the net neutrality bullshit already. You lost. It's done. Nothing bad will happen. Stop drinking the kool aid already.

"Nothing bad will happen?" Were you asleep for the decade before Title II's implementation? Forgot about about Comcast's war with Netflix, resulting in higher prices for Netflix when they had to pay extortion money?

I guess everything is ok when it's only "opportunity cost" that is lost due to high prices? In which case Conservatives can shut the hell up whining about "job killing regulations," since they're totally fine with a legal monopoly like Comcast skimming off everyone else's revenue streams.

Shitty Show

[Anonymous Coward]

Shittier Browser
Fuck your stupid chic "causes."

Does the plugin actually *do* anything?

[gman003]

So I disabled the addon as soon as I read the article, and I am legit mad that Mozilla would do this, but... what does the addon actually do? I didn't notice any difference before disabling it, and I've dug through all the links and nobody seems to be saying what it does.

Even if it was just a blank addon, no effect other than putting what's essentially an ad into my addon list (pun unintended), that would be bad, but it would be less bad than if it actually disrupted the browser in some way.

Mozilla's half-assed apology seems to indicate the addon only starts doing things once you "opt-in", with no mention of how or where one would do that. Which is probably the least evil way you could do this, I'll admit.

Re:Does the plugin actually *do* anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here' s link to a discussion on the Reddit sub /r/firefox:

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7jh9rv/what_is_looking_glass/

Reading through this discussion makes what Mozilla did much more worse that simply doing an ad placement for a TV show.

Re:Does the plugin actually *do* anything?

[bigdavex]

The plugin downloads U2 albums.

Re:Does the plugin actually *do* anything?

[unrtst]

According to https://github.com/mozilla/add..., it does:

* sends header "X-1057" to sites
* if the page contains certain strings, it flips those strings upside down for 2-6 seconds and then reverts to normal (ex. "privacy" and "control"). It'll also put an on hover box on them with a link.

Dunno if that's really the right plugin, test plan, or full list of what it does, but it was linked from the parents link, which was waaaay more to read than the above two bullet points. If someone sees the above and knows them to be wrong, please reply and correct me.

Re:Does the plugin actually *do* anything?

[thetaco82]

This is the best comment in the history of the internet.

Re:Does the plugin actually *do* anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

The plugin downloads U2 albums.

That's a helluva lot better than being rickrolled (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling).

Re:Does the plugin actually *do* anything?

[Mal-2]

The plugin downloads U2 albums.

With or without you.

Re:Does the plugin actually *do* anything?

[Rakarra]

I'll take Rick Astley over Bono any day.

Re:Does the plugin actually *do* anything?

[doom]

In addition to everything else, mozilla.org has some of the absolute stupidest public relations strategy imaginable... could it be the they're being run by plants intended to destroy the place?

That's really dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

Why include something for the niche market. If mozilla is getting as paid advertising it should say so. I am not a fan of Mr Robot so it shouldn't be included. If mozilla is trying to win back the browser this is a really stupid move. This feels like some fanboy running the leading mozilla browser without oversight which looks really bad and unprofessional.

OH BULLSHIT

[Anonymous Coward]

They put a paid ad in their browser and are trying to wrap themselves up in their self-righteous diatribe of "training the user"

BULL

SHIT

And if they'll lie about this what else are they doing with my data and browsing habits?
Firefox is off my desktop.

Reason #234324324 to disable autoupdates.

[Anonymous Coward]

Number of times in my life things mysteriously broke due to malware etc.: Almost none, and literally zero since I developed basic internetin' common sense.
Number of times in my life things mysteriously broke because I didn't (or wasn't able to) disable autoupdates on something: Countless.

Security bedwetters can fuck off. Aggressive adblocking and generally not being a moron online keeps you 99.999% safe. In the rare instance (i.e. once per decade) that you fuck up or something gets past you, formatting and reinstalling the OS and restoring backups is still less cumulative work than years of suffering through updates.

(*advice may not apply to businesses or people sharing space with idiots or anyone who might be directly targeted for whatever reason)

Re:Reason #234324324 to disable autoupdates.

[JohnFen]

I could not agree with this more.

Never seen it...

[Kernel Krumpit]

Thanks for all the Headzup but I've never seen it in my Add-ons. And it's still not there in v. 57.0.2 64-Bit. Is this maybe just a US thing?

Re:Never seen it...

[Dutch Gun]

If you hadn't enabled telemetry and studies, you wouldn't see it. Also, given that it's some sort of marketing tie-in to Mr. Robot, it might very well be US only.

Re:Never seen it...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not US-only.

Re:Never seen it...

[K10W]

It's not US-only.

I wondered that because it is weird I didn't get it in either blue nor standard orange versions I use. FWIW I am a fan of the show, in a big way to the point I've often been one of the first to decypher and share the more difficult easter eggs on the two main reddit groups and the like which I couldn't be arsed with for most shows. Despite that I'd still have been pissed if this auto installed on me. The eastereggs are quality as is attention to detail, wont go into them for skae of spoilers but never seen another show have such niche and high quality eastereggs like that.

That's a strike for me...

[cmeans]

I noticed the plugin a day or two ago and couldn't remember installing it (I don't watch Mr. Robot though wifey does), but assumed I must have installed it and simply forgot.
Definitely not happy that Mozilla installed it without my express permission. Nothing from me in their stocking this year.

What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[ewhac]

So if Mozilla can remotely jam new extensions in to my browser without so much as a dialog, that means malicious actors with even fewer scruples will be able to do it in about a week. Short of firewalling all of mozilla.org, how do I turn this shit off?

(I wonder if this has anything to do with the weird XSS blocking dialog NoScript threw three times earlier today. It was blocking an XSS attempt between two domains, neither of which was open in any browser tab at the time.)

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[ELCouz]

Simple.... https://www.google.com/chrome/

Never ever trust again a browser that can pull stunts like this.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Dutch Gun]

Presumably only Mozilla has access to this sort of system. But then again, that's just an assumption of mine.

You can turn this off in the Privacy section: "Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla", and under that "Allow Firefox to install and run studies".

It's the latter one that allows those experimental add-ons to be added and run. I had those both enabled, because I thought that Mozilla would be responsible in how it used them. Obviously, I was mistaken. So, at the very least disable the latter if you don't want more mysterious add-ons showing up. As soon as you uncheck that box, the add-on disappears.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[suss]

Chrome has this ability too and has abused it in the past.
And it phones home all the time.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it actually uninstalled, or is it just hidden? A hidden extension can still be active.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a Firefox Study. Disable the studies from the privacy settings. Remove all domains from the add-on installation exception list. That's a start.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Sorry, can't logon from AC on this machine)

I really don't mind phoning home anymore since literally everything does it. At least Chrome provides useful reasons for being online like url auto completion and integration with my google cloud stuff like remembering my bookmarks.

What I REALLY FIND OFFENSIVE is when products (whoever they are, Google, Mozilla, Apple, whatever) install things without telling me, ESPECIALLY if they're written by a third party. I may trust Google, or Mozilla, but that doesn't mean I magically trust whatever third party they whored themselves out to.

It may be an illusion that we control our PCs anymore. But any actor that intentionally violates that illusion (like Apple downloading a free U2 album to your phone) feels like a violation. It's like someone walked into your home while you were asleep and baked you a cake. "Hey, you've got a free cake! Why aren't you happy?" ... "Because you came in without asking while I was asleep!" and then these companies are asking us, "Don't you trust me?"

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that Mozilla would be responsible in how it used them.

Fool you once...

Fooled you twice this time.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because Google's whole mission in this world is to respect privacy and know as little as possible about their users...

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[WaffleMonster]

So if Mozilla can remotely jam new extensions in to my browser without so much as a dialog, that means malicious actors with even fewer scruples will be able to do it in about a week. Short of firewalling all of mozilla.org, how do I turn this shit off?
(I wonder if this has anything to do with the weird XSS blocking dialog NoScript threw three times earlier today. It was blocking an XSS attempt between two domains, neither of which was open in any browser tab at the time.)

Look around in about:config

Searching for 'http' and '.enabled' ... is usually a good starting place.

Personally I modified most of the URLs to point to a local web server just out of curiosity so I can get a better idea what Mozilla is up to but they can just as easily be sabotaged... http://0.0.0.0/...

As for the XSS browsers have retarded heuristic filters which in my view are dangerous and should be disabled. The filters are naÃve it is basically impossible because the browser lacks necessary context to make a reasoned informed decision.

They work mostly by looking for "reflections" which can easily triggered false positives by random coincidences. They are also easily bypassed by attackers. They don't do jack against stored XSS which is what fucks most people over when using insecure sites and there is a long history of vulnerabilities in XSS filters being used as an actual attack vector.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[WaffleMonster]

Simple.... https://www.google.com/chrome/

  Never ever trust again a browser that can pull stunts like this.

Chrome is one of the worst browsers imaginable from a privacy perspective.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing of this sort in Privacy Settings whatsoever.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Dutch Gun]

Nothing of this sort in Privacy Settings whatsoever.

I'm looking at it right now under Options -> Privacy & Security -> Firefox Data Collection and Use.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, wait, you are not using the ESR version. That explains this mess.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if Mozilla can remotely jam new extensions in to my browser without so much as a dialog, that means malicious actors with even fewer scruples will be able to do it in about a week.

If other posters are correct you only got this if you agreed with user data collection on install. So they asked and you agreed.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[doom]

It may be an illusion that we control our PCs anymore.

It was always an illusion, but it was one that we used to work very hard to support. Now the pretense is long gone-- the central message is always, and forever "we own you, don't you forget it".

(Me, I use linux software so I can have it my way... then some pinhead at redhat fucks with libgtk, I upgrade my debian distro and my user interface is messed up in some random way that's supposed to be better for a "smart" phone, which I'm not actually using, and have no plans on using.)

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go through about:config and search for mozill.org domains. Then replace those with, "Fuck off you bought-and-paid-for open source saboteurs". Or whatever string you might prefer.

Or use the Pale Moon browser.

(Seriously Mozilla -- how much are Google, Microsoft, et al, paying your board to try and destroy open source software?)

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Rexdude]

Get rid of Firefox, install Palemoon and import your Firefox profile into it. It comes with the standard desktop UI that was there before Australis, continued full support for XUL extensions and no telemetry or bundled bullshit.
Basically everything that was good about Firefox until version 4. And no, it's not abandoned or obsolete or anything, it gets regular updates and fixes.
And it's had a 64-bit version on Windows for long before Firefox finally offered one.

Re:What Config Key Do I Disable/Delete?

[Anonymous Coward]

Palemoon is sloooooowwwww....

The final straw.

[Anonymous Coward]

And now i'll be using chrome. :(

I won't like it. But i won't like it a lot less than the stupid idiotic shit that mozilla does.

So long firefox. It was fun.

Re:The final straw.

[belg4mit]

Try waterfox, drop-in replacement for Firefox 52 or so.

Re:The final straw.

[sgage]

Chrome? Chrome?! Out of the frying pan, into the fire. I will not have anything to do with any Google product whatsoever.

Auto-update abuse

[duke_cheetah2003]

You know it's crap like this that encourages end-users to find ways to block auto-updates, because of abusive use of it.

Need to reel that BS in, it's not a good idea, auto-updates should be a good thing. Don't be muddying the waters any further, it's getting pretty obnoxious as it is.

Palemoon

[Anonymous Coward]

The Firefox alternative that's not going to Cosby you to prove a point. Think Firefox interface before their version number escalation phase but updated regularly all the same and uses 1/4 of the RAM.

Re:Palemoon

[NicknameUnavailable]

Waterfox is a little better, but Palemoon isn't bad.

I think it's great

[dbarclay10]

I know a lot of people are going to be upset, I think they're wrong to be. A lot of people have been wondering if Mozilla has turned on their users, if a historic FOSS project has been totally corrupted. I think Mozilla is awesome to include advertising like this - I mean think about it, they're getting paid to advertise for alternatives and forks to Firefox. Plus now we all know for damned sure that Mozilla is a sinking ship and we need to hop on the nearest life raft.

Re:I think it's great

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad news, all those life rafts have punctures in them.

Re: I think it's great

[Anonymous Coward]

But at least they got rid of Brendan Eich, and that was clearly more important.

Tired of Mozilla fake privacy crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is a shell of what it once was in terms of open source, privacy and users concerns. The entity of Mozilla went mainstream a long time ago when it decided doing a reasonably good unique browser was not enough. Then it went to bed with Google, then Yahoo and finally back to Google search in FF57. If this does not tell you how fake Mozilla is about privacy I don't what is.

Re:Tired of Mozilla fake privacy crap

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet has been neoliberalized, and it's not pretty. It was better before corporations took it over. Capitalism screws everything up bad.

Re:Tired of Mozilla fake privacy crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla is a shell of what it once was in terms of open source, privacy and users concerns. /p>

Mozilla hasn't cared about those things for 10 years -- when they first got into bed with Google.

Re:Tired of Mozilla fake privacy crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism screws everything up bad.

Capitalism might screw everything up bad, but just remember: so does everything else.

Mozilla makes me sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Send them your feedback here:

https://qsurvey.mozilla.com/s3/FirefoxInput/

I let them know that I am removing Firefox and will not be downloading it ever again. They get zero trust from me now.

Whoever thought that was a good idea needs to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, heads must roll for stupid crap like that. Fire the idiot.

because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy

[NicknameUnavailable]

Bullshit, that should read:

Mozilla justified its decision to include the extension because "the people marketing Mr. Robot paid us."

Re:because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy

[DivineKnight]

Mozilla: "We did it for money!"

Re:because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy

[DivineKnight]

Most of us want IE 6 to die more than we hate what Mozilla has just pulled here.

Re:because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy

[fustakrakich]

Oh no, why would you think I was talking about IE?

Re:because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy

[NicknameUnavailable]

Mozilla: "We did it for money!"

When you put it that way they sound like hookers, just less attractive.

Re:because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Because otherwise you would have said a perfectly good 25 year old browser

Re:because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy

[fustakrakich]

This one is actually 23. I will grant that the UI on lynx has been just a bit more consistent over the years, but not by much. Firefox is its bastard child with various limbs amputated to make it "lightweight".

Firefox Studies

[zenbi]

The extension was able to be installed if you had the "Firefox Studies" checkbox selected. To prevent Firefox Studies from installing extensions on your behalf:

• Navigate to: "about:preferences#privacy"
• Scroll down to the "Firefox Data Collection and Use" section
• Uncheck the "Allow Firefox to install and run studies" checkbox (and the others, if you wish)

Re:Firefox Studies

[Anonymous Coward]

Settings specified do not exist at the location specified.

Re:Firefox Studies

[sasparillascott]

Have to add I had that unchecked (no studies) and did not get this.

Funny users we didn't know by "studies" Mozilla management doublespeak actually meant "marketing campaigns". Disable all 3 things they don't deserve to get them.

Re:Firefox Studies

[cdu13a]

I love the fact that that setting is just slightly above the warn you about unwanted software option.

Re:Firefox Studies

[trawg]

This must be a v57 option as it's not in v56.

(I upgraded to v57 and downgraded a few days later because I couldn't live without my extensions. I'll have to try again later if/when the ecosystem has solidified a bit. )

Re:Firefox Studies

[Anonymous Coward]

This must be a v57 option

I'm running 57.0.2 and don't have that option. There are only two options for me: feedback and crash reports.

Are Mozilla lying through their teeth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. I switch to Chrome a year ago and have been delighted with it. The new supposedly faster Firefox got my attention but now I'm glad I stayed with Chrome.
 
If Firefox really care about privacy they can promote the EFF and ACLU. That they would promote a TV series doesn't make sense.... unless they were paid a shitload of cash to do this. Not disclosing that in the official "apology" shows they are a pickup truck of pigs assholes.

Re:Are Mozilla lying through their teeth?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the gist I get from your post is that Mozilla didn't harvest ENOUGH of your personal information and now it's too late to the party.

Firefox is for losers

[Anonymous Coward]

True that Google is becoming evil but they don't pull shit this stupid or obnoxious.Google give smart users the option to opt out of their data collection, but Firefox's target market are supposedly smart users so they say fuck you we'll slip this one anyway.

Re:Firefox is for losers

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not a very smart person, are you?

That's it! I demand my money back!

[CFD339]

I demand the Firefox people refund all the money I've paid for their product, and do so immediately! Oh, wait...

Thanks for the meme, nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate needed a reason to avoid a browser developed by chucklefucks, you gave it to them.

Re:Thanks for the meme, nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is painfully underrated.

Disable Firefox "shield" studies.

[fahrbot-bot]

A little Googling leads me to think the Looking Glass add-on was installed via the Firefox built-in Shield Recipe Client Feature, also described here: Firefox/Shield/Shield Studies, which is documented as:

Shield is a Firefox user testing platform for proposed, new and existing features and ideas.

Shield Studies is a function of the Shield project that prompts a random population of users to help us try out new products, features, and ideas.

I have this disabled via the following pref.js settings:

// Disable Shield Recipe Client
user_pref("app.shield.optoutstudies.enabled", false);
user_pref("extensions.shield-recipe-client.enabled", false);

Re:Disable Firefox "shield" studies.

[TheRealMindChild]

Tools->Options->Privacy & Security->Firefox Data Collection and Use... uncheck all of it

Re:Disable Firefox "shield" studies.

[AHuxley]

Thanks fahrbot-bot. That extensions.shield-recipe-client.enabled was still set to true even after the Allow Firefox to install and run studies was not selected.

Give an inch of market share

[Anonymous Coward]

And they think they can plugin their "edgy content" into our backdoors?

Irony, thy name is Mozilla

[fahrbot-bot]

So, Mozilla, a company that claims privacy is important to them and in their web browser product Firefox, silently mass auto-force-installs an add-on into already installed software, using a built-in feature that almost no one knows about (that comes enabled by default), that promotes the television show Mr. Robot, in which just about everyone in that show routinely breaks the law, breaks into other people's computers (installing backdoors, trojans and root kits), and violates people's privacy. Nice going.

This is precisely why I fret about every new FF release wondering what new crap, I mean "feature", I need to disable. For fucks sake Mozilla, just concentrate on making a good *web-browser*. Seriously, what's next - [spoiler] an axe to the head?

You know that's just as bad, you bastard.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that's just as bad, you bastard.

An opportunity appears

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to design a plugin that alerts Firefox users to changes in their plugin configuration.

i can't say i'm that surprised...

[retchdog]

after seeing mr robot crap at def con 24 (rofl), this isn't that surprising i guess. i wonder how much actual money the showrunners shell out for this.

Security/privacy/SPEED from outside browser

[Anonymous Coward]

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Avoids DNSChangers in routers/IP settings & dns redirect (99++% of ISP DNS != patched vs. it) + DNS tracking & lighten DNS load & resolve faster via local RAM!

* Via what u NATIVELY have in a FASTER kernelmode IP stack (does more w/ less).

APK

P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/ (self checking vs. infection of it built-in)

because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy

[fustakrakich]

OMG! Please! Pull the other one! Show me the money! Let's see the contract that provoked this. I hope it was worth it.

And I have to ask, is there any reason at all to use Firefox when we have a perfectly good 20 year old browser at our fingertips?

Mr. Robot promotes user privacy?

[fahrbot-bot]

Mozilla justified its decision to include the extension because Mr. Robot promotes user privacy. "The Mr. Robot series centers around the theme of online privacy and security," the company said in an explanation of the mysterious extension.

Have they even *watched* the show? I'm not sure the word "promotes" is apt here - unless they mean "promotes violating user privacy". The protagonist Elliot Alderson has violated *everyone's* privacy and broken into everyone's computer, as has just about everyone else who owns a keyboard -- though they all do seem to get really pissed when *their* privacy and systems get violated, hmm ...

Functionality to silently install/enable add-ons

[Anonymous Coward]

Annoyed as I am by the infraction of what they claim is one of their 10 guiding principles, privacy, I am forced to wonder about the mechanism to silently install add-ons itself. Thanks for admitting that the browser has a backdoor.

Addendum: Told you for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Told you for years major browser makers are turning their ware into ADVERTISING SYSTEMS (this proves it) - the rest was proven to MYSELF @ least when I saw that UNLIKE "Classic Opera" (not "ChOpErA" based on chrome/webkit), you can't TURN OFF JAVASCRIPT from inside many browsers anymore (javascript - the main deliverer of ads that's often abused to deliver malicious code to infect OR track you) - tell you anything in & of itself?

* Does the commandline switch WORK to turn it off in Google Chrome?

NOW - does that even MATTER??

Most folks will NOT "dig into" a program's "esoterica" @ commandlines & they KNOW this! Most 'ordinary users' use softwares, as-is, by default!

(Not original chromium, but CHROME (or Opera now sadly based on that same engine base))

IF NOT? It's further proof of my suspicions...

APK

P.S.=> ... My suspicions aren't that suspicious anymore after all that... apk

WTF is a MR. ROBOT?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason I use Mozilla Firefox is BECAUSE I want a browser I can install ad blocking software, and NOT have ads shoved down my throat. I'm not interested in what someone ELSE thinks I should read or listen to or watch or drink or eat-- I DECIDE THAT.

If I see this fucking add-on, install itself, bring itself to my attention, etc., and I have to go looking around and untinstalling shit, the first thing I'm going to uninstall is Firefox, and I will switch to another browser. I consider the browser's MAKER going and INJECTING advertisements a MASSIVE invasion of my privacy. It would be like if the company that made my door locks exploited the fact that they made them to enter my home without permission, to show me a window lock they think I'd like. Fuck ALL that shit.

UNFOR-FUCKING-GIVABLE!

Mozilla is evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a website known as Internet Explorer is evil, but Mozilla has become even more evil. It broke 15 years worth of extention compatibility, now putting in unwanted extentions and scrapped Firefox OS leaving mobile users to suffer with Spydroid. Pale Moon is not much better, with extention censorship. The desire to control the web is too great, and any “free” browser will sell out in some way. The web is lost, with evil browsers and no net neutrality, and what will replace it will become evil too.

They lost the smart users with their pocket BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Mozilla started putting built-in extensions with no options to uninstall them(Hello pocket) that had a separate TOS for just enabling them... well, the smart users knew then that Mozilla was full of it.

Even before then you should have known Mozilla doesn't care about privacy. Just try to disable 3rd party cookies, yup, hidden away now when it used to be easy to find. Send "do not track" by default? wouldn't a company do that if they cared about user privacy... well, I guess not Mozilla.

Re:They lost the smart users with their pocket BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Mozilla started putting built-in extensions with no options to uninstall them(Hello pocket

Really? Did you look under \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\browser\features?
Sorry, windows only as I don't remember right now where do they store it under Linux.

Fake news

[Whiteox]

Fake. No such thing.

Why are we surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corruption is, possibly, the most insidious of human foibles. When Mozilla (whom I like) talks out of one side their mouth about security, privacy, etc., becomes, for reasons they can justify away so easily, an advertising platform for a media/entertainment company. (As much as I enjoy the show) it doesnâ(TM)t make me blink. Welcome to unexamined capitalism.

Fine, I'll say it

[slashmydots]

Putting Yahoo as the default search setting was worse.

That's right

[OrangeTide]

Just shut up and give us our free browser.

A new add on is needed

[AHuxley]

Time for an add on to block pushed content?

Defcon jumped the shark 20 years ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes *20*.

I was at Defcon X and it had already jumped the shark even then. That was the year before/after skylarov, which should have already sent a message to any hackers visiting it who weren't currently off parole and working on going legit.

Somebody else had mentioned a bunch of maker merch at the last defcon, so it has really turned into something anti-thetical to the old hacker ethos, just like 2600 magazine and lots of others.

Mozilla: Insufficient and poor management

[Futurepower(R)]

Mozilla is badly managed and badly communicated.

Re:Mozilla: Insufficient and poor management

[doom]

If only there was some criteria for slashdot posts.

Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousness

[jbn-o]

Mozilla certainly didn't handle this as well as they should have but it's important to keep sight of the bigger picture: switching to another comparable browser risks switching to a nonfree browser. I hope (for your own software freedom) you won't make that bad choice in a hasty emotional decision. That would be quite ironic: to give up on a free browser that can be made better because of an immature stunt ostensibly aimed at increasing user privacy.

Real user privacy simply cannot be had with nonfree browsers. No matter how willing and able you are, you aren't allowed to know what the nonfree browsers do, alter them to suit your needs, or help others by sharing your improvements. Don't throw out your own software freedom because of Mozilla's ill-handled stunt.

v57

[ISoldat53]

Is this a v57 only issue? I never upgraded to because v57 doesn't support one of my addons and didn't get this installed. How ironic that the new version installs an addon that nobody wants.

Re:v57

[Anonymous Coward]

possibly 57+ only; but also only if you enabled the option to let mozilla install test/experimental extensions (don't know if that's the default, but probably)

Re:That's it! I demand my money back!

[Duckeenie]

The Greek Trojan horse was free too.

Re: Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousne

[Lisandro]

There's always Chromium, you know.

Pocket and Hello all over again...

[Anonymous Coward]

When will mozilla ever learn?

The arsehole principle

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually all companies succumb to this phenomena, they show their true natures and become arseholes. Mostly deliberately but sometimes accidentally. All we can do as consumers is to boycott their products and services.

Mozilla is going the way of the dodo

[Anonymous Coward]

Brave is the future.

Manjaro saved me

[basecastula]

good thing Firefox has been broken on Manjato for 2 months

Re: Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousne

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera 12 was closed source and had better privacy than any browser ever made.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck off shill

Brilliant strategy just keeps getting better

[Anonymous Coward]

First, we got to see FF turn into a Chrome clone (29.) This was made tolerable because some random individual wrote the classic theme restorer which gave us the option to avoid the shit show that is Australis. It's been a steady slide downhill since then, culminating with the great extension break (57.) I especially love how they also said NPAPI plugin API was going away, but then they decided to make an exception for the Flash player, aka the single biggest security hole that has ever existed on the web.

While we're talking about unwanted advertising, let's also not forget about the pocket adware that comes installed with every Firefox 57 and is enabled by default. This shit I'm reading about in this article seems like a logical extension to that. If you were surprised to see this, then you haven't been paying attention.

No more

[teranine]

sudo apt-get purge firefox-esr

Re:No more

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do that? The ESR version isn't affected.

well here goes my karma....

[iwbcman]

Sorry folks, but Slashdot just revealed it's true colors. The chorus of OMG! WTF! down with Mozilla, witnessed in this thread is, sadly, proof that the Slashdot audience has become those who the hackers of yore were hacking against. Is there not an ounce of rebellious spirit left on this site? Whether you like the show, Mr. Robot, or not, I just can't fathom the reaction here.

For those those who say this is the last straw for Mozilla-good riddance, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Look there are lots of things I could complain about regarding Firefox, but a chance wanderer coming to Slashdot would think this site is full of nothing but chrome shills and misanthropes who actually *hate* Free software. What made this site so interesting in days long ago was the tension between the rebellious spirit of Free Software and those who made their living working for the man or trying to make a living selling proprietary software. Nowadays corporate shills and libtards reign supreme on this site and the very notion that technology can actually be a source of societal change is completely and utterly lost.

Well duh maybe that's why most here don't even get what Mozilla is, what it represents and how much it actually changed the world around us.

But oh my God they rendered my extension useless, oh my God one of my 80 tabs is leaking memory, or Oh my God it takes a full 1.7 seconds to launch on a modern computer.

Oh well I guess I am just a fanboy, forgot to check the mail and get my check for promoting not only Firefox but Mozilla as a an organization, foundation and corporation. Am I the only idiot here who jumped for joy back in January of 1998 when the mozilla source code was made free and downloaded it just so I could see the code?

My guess is that anywhere from %30-50 of all currently existing jobs in software development wouldn't even exist without Free Software, and Mozilla did more to promote and garner mainstream acceptance of Free Software than the GNU movement ever dreamt of. In all likelihood there would be no Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon etc. without the courage and commitment that founded Mozilla. Alas without Richard Stallman and the GNU movement there probably would never have been a Mozilla.

Long live Mozilla

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch the usage numbers. They do not lie.

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen. How I wish to see more comments from those hackers who know what Free Software really means and truly understand why it matters.

Seriously slashdot comment threads make me sad these days. I still look through them for a hint of what slashdot used to be.

Let me try something. I'm sad about the fate of Net Neutrality! (Cue the mob of oddly politically motivated slashbots suddenly jumping into this discussion with no provocation.)

Re:well here goes my karma....

[110010001000]

You are an idiot. Just because they use a Open Source business model doesn't mean they shouldn't be chastised for pushing advertisements in our face. This extension isn't even Open Source. Yes, they are pushing CLOSED SOURCE software to your machine without you knowing about it.

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

a chance wanderer coming to Slashdot would think this site is full of nothing but chrome shills and misanthropes who actually *hate* Free software.

You misunderstand. Chrome users don't care in the least about Firefox and most likely don't even know it exists. The people who hate Mozilla are Firefox users. This is just the latest in a long string of abuses by Mozilla and if you don't know why everyone here hates Mozilla then you haven't been keeping up.

I would very much like to switch to another browser, but there isn't a great deal of choice. With browsers it's a case of picking the least bad.

Re:well here goes my karma....

[QuietLagoon]

... Is there not an ounce of rebellious spirit left on this site?...

Yes, there is an ounce of rebellious spirit left on this site. Unfortunately, Mozilla (through their poor management decisions) is mischanneling said rebellious spirit against the Firefox developers, and not in the manner you hope.

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

I love mozilla and firefox. Theyhave done great things and can use all the public support they deserve. Long live free software!

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree about your point that this is a very bad move by mozilla, your second claim is simply untrue, the source is available at: https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

For those those who say this is the last straw for Mozilla-good riddance, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Oh look. Mozilla's shill team is here. Is the budget for your social media work out of the MSF or the taxable corporation? I'd hate to think that donors to the Mozilla Foundation are paying for this tripe when they intended it to be used on open source software development. Tell your bosses to keep managing their business using metrics other than performance. Bonus points for hiring fat, lazy, purple-haired, unqualified Hillary voters because of who they are instead of what they can do. Your market stats are a testament to the effectiveness of managing a software business by the politics of prospective employees.

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that was a different Mozilla. The new one is interested in only profits. Obscuring privacy settings, and making the default settings more akin to what advertisers want and not users. Enabling autoplay, and then hiding the option to turn it off. Adding extensions and then hiding the options to turn them off. Shoving down advertisements by default on a new tab page.

This is the shit of AOL, not of the open source movement.

Re:well here goes my karma....

[doom]

I can remember when trolls tried to be clever.

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, just fuck you. 'Libtards" have nothing to do with this. You always have to make it political dontcha? Guess what? Hillary lost. Get over it.

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats to you and the 10 people that still use Firefox. I promise not to laugh to hard when you finally get forked right into Chrome, because Firefox sucks and has been sucking more and more for 2 years now.

Re:well here goes my karma....

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone baked me a cake yesterday, it doesn't excuse them if they punch me in the nose today. This was an inexcusable stunt, and they deserve every bit of outrage in the hopes that nobody tries to do this again.

Didn't they mean Mr. Roboto?

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[thegarbz]

Blah blah non-free blah blah. At least I know where I stand with Google.

With Mozilla I'm never quite sure. I saw an update the other day, well spin the barrel and pull the trigger, what did they screw up today.

Fuck Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

"One of the 10 guiding principles of Mozilla's mission is that individuals' security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.

They forgot to add "But we'll look the other way if you give us a big suitcase of money, then we'll push your shit onto all our users"

Mozilla have been going downhill for ages doing stupid shit that users don't want. But this takes the biscuit, it's right up there with Patreon's "How can we really piss off our users" idea from last week.

So Mozilla can take this half arsed "apology" and shove it. They've done it once, now they've set a precedent that their priniciples fly outta the window as soon as enough money comes along.

OK, so who's left that we can trust browser wise now ?

firefox is dead anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

... since it enforces PulseAudio for Linux users. That's the freedom firefox provides. This Looking Glass incident is another hint that Mozilla doesn't care about users, only about the number of installations. Does Mozilla care about privacy? Enter about:config and search for 'google'. A bunch of hypocrites!

Re:firefox is dead anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Before anyone points it out: the rollback on the PA requirement is implied to be temporary. (Different AC, btw.)

Uninstalled...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been holding out since Netscape... I'm done with Firefox. I can't take this crazy mixing pot of third party features embedded in to the browser anymore.

fight club

[Anonymous Coward]

the movie ironically was made by an israeli spy

is this coincidence

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[pots]

There are forks of Firefox with more sense than this. Plenty of free options available. This is typical for free software, after all - when the maintainer gets too drunk on power, you fork.

Mozilla was never REALLY Pro-Open Source.`

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the whole reason for them doing a customized license, eventually relenting to triple licensing after a couple years with weak non-mozilla development.

And then once they did open it up enough to spur others to start using it, they shit all over the community, acting like they knew better than the community what the community wanted, First with the Netscape Browser Suite (and its horrible original UI, when people wanted more like the old simple Netscape Browser UI, or the modern SeaMonkey UI made to emulate it), then with their changes to firefox (originally a native GTK app without XUL!) then Pocket and company as mandatory apps from their nepotic relative's companies, and finally with Quantum and this Mr. Robot addon, showing they flaunt the very principles they claim to espouse.

The only real solution at this point is 'forking the non-profit corporation', but practically speaking nobody in the past 5 years or so seems apt to start new non-profit open source companies, or try and hunt down the donations to keep them operating, preferring instead to crowdfund, then sell out to vulture capitalists or a bigger corporation while milking the crowdfunders for whatever they are worth based on the company's hype.

How low will Mozilla sink?

[QuietLagoon]

...Mozilla justified its decision...

The decision cannot be justified. Period. Full stop. Are the completely wrong people in charge of, and making decisions at, Mozilla? Do those people care not one iota about what the customers want? OK, that last question was rhetorical because these past few years Mozilla has shown a stunning indifference to what the Firefox users want. Stunning indifference.

I didn't get the extension

[movdqa]

I'm on the Firefox nightly beta channel and it apparently doesn't install this plugin.

Update Version?

[notb666]

I'm on 57.0.2 and haven't got the said extension. Even the main article hasn't mentioned the update version.

Re:That's it! I demand my money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

This complaint is a legitimate chance to remind them, us, and other readers that simple good communication can go a very long way.
Having that message prefaced with:
1) "Firefox is now updated with this cool new AR plug-in. Check it out now or visit their website!"
2) Then the cute message of "My reality is just different than yours" from Mr. Robot itself.

Otherwise it's a communication ambush.

For years companies are buddying up to us customers, forming closer & more social relationships, and being less of a distant commercial entity or LLC. Inc. etc. Then they should not be surprised when they mis-relate on that same human level by spouting cryptic nonsense, that only they know what it means.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[sacrilicious]

At least I know where I stand with Google.

For my education (please), where do you stand with Google? I'm looking for an answer in a context larger than a rehash of this (admittedly upsetting) Mr Robot thing.

who ever is pissed is an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

yep

miffed

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish they'd add a 'browser.unsolicitedExtensions.allowInstall' entry to about:config.

Re:That's it! I demand my money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the product.

Sneaked????

[Anonymous Coward]

It just snuck in there I guess.

So long and thanks for all the fish

[Anonymous Coward]

I used IE until it let malware drive-by install on my computer.

I started using Mozilla Phoenix at version 0.3 or 0.4.
I used it when it became Firebird, then Firefox.
And there have been API changes and plugins that broke on updates and "CUZ WE SAID SO" impoverishments to the UI.
And landscapes have changed and altered, operating systems have come and gone, and I have still been using Firefox.

One of my key rules of "Is it malware?" is "Does it install crap on my PC without my approval?"

That rule just got broken. I don't care if it is harmless. It is a canary in the coal mine signalling a change in direction.

The adage about reputation takes a lifetime to build and seconds to destroy holds true.

Here's the thing...

I use an iPhone for work. While it was supremely annoying to wake up and find U2 "helpfully" added to my iPhone (do not want) - it is a work phone and I put up with Apple's shenanigans because I have to.

Google spies on everything I do - I expect this; Google is a known quantity. I understand this is a downside to using Google; I put up with their shenanigans because I feel they have the best search results, and also niceties like free email, maps, translation, etc.

I use Windows and Office for work. That means I have to put up with the shenanigans of Windows/Office maliciously trying to break/change/install things. In Microsoft's case it means that 7 will be my last Windows OS. My Windows applications on my next computer will either be in a Win7 VM or running under wine. 10 will never happen because of how Microsoft aggressively pushed it out.

I don't have to put up with Mozilla's shenanigans - they are not the only fish in the sea.

I have been trying Vivaldi for a while. Looks like it becomes the new browser.

The ripple effect is important. This is "News for Nerds". However, when the friends and family ask me - the resident nerd - what browser they should use, I am not going to recommend something that I don't feel is trustworthy.

Not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

This shit doesn't surprise me. I want my browser to be a tool, not a promotional platform. Firefox is going downhill and fast. I fear the time may be soon where there are no usable decent browsers.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[thegarbz]

Where I stand with Google is they collect a whole lot of information. This information is their critical bread and butter, it's their equivalent to the recipe for coke. They use this information to provide services to advert companies and to provide services to me with the benefit of knowledge that gives their services an edge over others. Their core competence is the strategic management of information.

Where I stand with Google is that they don't pull stupid shit like this. They protect my privacy by only selling aggregated services. The same can't be said for most other companies who's core business is not information management, as such they have no incentive not to sell my data in its raw form.

Google also has a LONG history of managing data, and in that long history they have shown to be quite trustworthy with it. They have from the start been quite consistent in their actions, unlike say Mozilla the bastion of privacy and openness suddenly doing stupid shit like this (and it's not the first time either).

Mozilla is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Google is a wolf in wolf's clothing.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[Rakarra]

Blah blah non-free blah blah. At least I know where I stand with Google.

With Mozilla I'm never quite sure.

Right, with Google, your privacy is always getting screwed. With Mozilla, you're sure that sometimes your privacy is going to get screwed over without your knowledge (or with it), but sometimes you'll get these weird periods where they don't screw you over at all. Much preferable to getting fucked all the time with Google!

Re:No.

[Rakarra]

And the males there would be too excited.

I guess that's one way to defeat those sorts of guys.
When a pervert masturbates at you, acting offended is what they want. Instead, masturbate back! It will freak them out and ruin their fun.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[Aighearach]

switching to another comparable browser risks switching to a nonfree browser.

Horse shit. If it is Free Software it will be labeled as such. Details about that are in the license.

Free Software users don't just accidentally stumble and land locked into a proprietary product, that isn't how choice and freedom work.

Screw "experiences." Fix the bugs first.

[imjustabigcat]

I am sick of having "experiences" pushed in my face by marketing drones who think I need to know what's "cool" or "interesting." The "experience" I'm really interested in is a browser that functions properly, doesn't crash, supports standards, and which doesn't eat all of the available memory or CPU. I'm even willing to PAY for something like that. If the management team at the Mozilla Foundation has time and resources to surreptitiously load unwanted extensions hyping some television show on the browser, they sure as hell have the time and resources to fix some of the more egregious and annoying bugs.

I sure hope Firefox isn't about to plummet into "form over function" irrelevancy like Skype recently did ("The most expressive Skype ever!"). Bugger "expressive" or "experience"...just make the damned thing work properly.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[Aighearach]

I trust google with my data, but I don't trust their browser to have the configurability I desire, nor can I trust them to let me make my own changes if necessary.

So I trust them a lot more in the browser, than on the browser.

Mozilla may be a wolf in sheep's clothing, and Google may be a wolf in wolf's clothing. I like wolves just fine. But I don't want my computer to act like a wolf. It doesn't even matter which clothing it wears if I already know they're both wolves.

Which is why I'm not going to update Firefox every again; when my version has some security problem causing me to want an update, I'll select a fork. Easy, easy, easy. My computer is like a sheep, and I it's shepherd; it rests in the pastures of my choosing.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, we need a user funded fork with a clearly defined set of goals/features, etc. with governance built into the browser. want to add a bunch of bullshit the users don't want? get the votes or go to hell..

Re:That's it! I demand my money back!

[CFD339]

I agree. It's a legitimate beef. The outrage is useful, but I also believe that we as consumers of the product should not expect that it will always be created without our best interest in mind.

Re:That's it! I demand my money back!

[CFD339]

I completely agree. I just can't get all that outraged when I know I'm the product, that someone wants to make money from it. It's good that its been found and the information published. Frankly, their "explanation" (read: excuse) doesn't ring true to me at all.

Re: Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousn

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof in the source code or it didn't happen.

Public Service Announcement

[varmint jerky]

What a cheap stunt on the part of Mozilla. It's things like this that help keep Firefox from being adopted in corporate settings. Anyway, I look at this as yet another reminder that you shouldn't give anyone any resource or information that isn't absolutely mandatory for your use of the service. Do you think I'm wearing a tinfoil hat or something? No, here's why. Even if the recipient doesn't actively abuse your information, they can't protect it anyway. Whoever steals your data absolutely will misuse it, so in my mind there's very little if any difference. So what should you do?

* turn off all the telemetry, crash reports, and sharing of diagnostic information that you can, everywhere you can (apps, OS, browsers, etc.). If you run Windows 10, good luck

* whenever a field says "optional", don't fill it in. This goes for paper as well as virtual. Never share full SSNs, no matter what the form says.

* opt out of all the data sharing you can do and get off all the lists you can - whether Internet-based, phone call, or even letters. Budget time to periodically do this

* get free email addresses and give those out if you have to register. Give out your crappy VoIP number that you don't need and give that out if you have to. It's better than a fake number because it's actually yours (and some losers out there actually use a phone number like a unique identifier)

There's a lot more that can be done, but this is the absolute minimum and you don't have to be technically savvy to do these things. You may still lose the information that you had no choice in sharing, but at least they can't lose what they never had. Regardless of what you do, privacy is dead and has been for a long time. If you want any chance at that, you're going to have to do things like use Tor/Tails (and keep in mind that there are significant functionality trade offs when you go down that road). Ironically, this starts to get into Mr. Robot territory.

And speaking of irony, yes I do realize that in posting this I violated my own rule. But I guess it's worth taking the hit if anyone is inspired.

Re: Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousne

[Anonymous Coward]

I trust Google with my data

If that's your starting premise then you're already screwed. I trust Google with absolutely nothing.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[Anonymous Coward]

A free browser that won the Internet from the tyranny of IE.

A free browser that shamelessly copied Chrome's version scheme. (Why?)

A free browser that repeatedly tried to tell users what they really want. (Ubuntu dying off should've taught people like this to quit trying to be Steve Jobs)

A free browser that continued to tell users what they should want (breaking plugin support, removing options, adding useless social networking features)

A free browser that managed to lose nearly all of its market share because they were too arrogant to listen to their own users.

The fact that Firefox even still manages to exist today is only because Mozilla Corporation is working so hard to make it so. And taking money from Google, cough.

Mozilla should close shop and give up. They failed. Let another free company give it a shot, without the numerous arrogant misteps. Sometimes it's good to let the experiment end and pave the way for another try.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[thegarbz]

Actually it's not getting screwed, because Google are one of the few companies I trust to keep my information entirely to themselves and not wholesale sell it to a third party.

Again: I know where I stand with a company that has been consistent. I don't with a company that seems to come up with new stupid ideas every few months.

As for getting fucked? Yeah not feeling it. The other amazing thing about Google is for all the information they have gathered over the past 20 years they've done very little actual fucking. We don't hear an endless string of cases of data breaches, no leaks of personal information, no Google employees getting caught going through people's records, no people finding software fubars breaking up marriages due to strange suggestions, they don't send maternity product adverts to families of teens who haven't revealed they are pregnant, all in all I'm actually feeling a bit left out of the outrage. Maybe they just forgot to fuck me?

What they did do is provide a whole lot of products and services based on the information they collect that makes my daily life easier. But maybe that's what you're talking about when you say getting fucked? Heck I know my wife enjoys a good fucking, so maybe you were talking about the positive aspects.

I'll add this

[JohnFen]

I'll add this to my list of reasons why I'll never use the new versions of Firefox.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[JohnFen]

Actually it's not getting screwed, because Google are one of the few companies I trust to keep my information entirely to themselves and not wholesale sell it to a third party.

So because you're personally OK with Google's spying ways, that means everybody should be OK with it?

They were just planning to fund themselves....

[Anonymous Coward]

By mining monero in the browser using the installed addon. Or maybe they were planning for some lulzsec action, given that Elliot had just gotten through pwning the entire dark army and their botnet.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[thegarbz]

So because you're personally OK with Google's spying ways, that means everybody should be OK with it?

No. Please read the thread from the top, it'll save you the embarrassment of posting irrelevant garbage next time.

What delusion you have. You are a Useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

What delusion you have. You are a Useful Person.

Not. Fucking. Acceptable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not. Fucking. Acceptable.

What were they thinking?

[mnt]

It is obvious to me that such a move (installing a piece of software without asking the user) is a breach of trust.

Why did they do it? Are they THAT stupid? Or was the sum payed to Firefox THAT big?

So today...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla has officially gone Full retarded.

Changing to Mozz//a was step 1.

Removing all extensions was step 2.

And here we are today ...with a Chrome clone that mimicks the very worst of Windows 10.

Every Mozilla page makes a mozilla connection

[Anonymous Coward]

at least when looked with Fiddler. Check it out. Every single page creates a mozilla.org connection

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[JohnFen]

I re-read the thread from the top. I don't see how it renders my question irrelevant. Care to explain?

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[thegarbz]

Let me highlight:

At least I know where *I* stand with Google.

Look English may not be your first language but understanding the difference between personal and collective pronouns is like the first lesson you lean in every language. It may be time for you to go back to basics and understand why someone talking about what they think doesn't automatically apply a requirement to third parties.

That my friend is why your post is irrelevant. At no point did I talk about anyone but myself. At no point did I ask someone else to do anything, ... except when I asked you to try and follow a conversation without applying a faulty generalisation that never existed in the conversation in the first place.

Re:Don't throw out SW freedom in self-righteousnes

[JohnFen]

Thank you. It might have been easier and faster if you just stated your counterargument instead of trying so hard to be insulting that you ended up being obtuse.