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Mozilla Will Delete Firefox Crash Reports Collected by Accident (bleepingcomputer.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: Mozilla said last week it would delete all telemetry data collected because of a bug in the Firefox crash reporter. According to Mozilla engineers, Firefox has been collecting information on crashed background tabs from users' browsers since Firefox 52, released in March 2017. Firefox versions released in that time span did not respect user-set privacy settings and automatically auto-submitted crash reports to Mozilla servers. The browser maker fixed the issue with the release of Firefox 57.0.3. Crash reports are not fully-anonymized.
At least they're doing better than Windows 10.
In the past bugs meant that the product was _not_ doing what it was supposed to do. For example a bug would mean that Firefox would fail to collect the reports.
Same with Google's voice-activated assistant: a bug would mean that it does not record conversations.
However, recent bugs mean that the Firefox collects everything, and that Google's assistant records 24/7. Or when Google's cars doing the mapping for Street View "accidentally" slurped all wi-fi passwords they could find.
I think a new word should be invented to describe this type of "mistake". How about "gub" instead of "bug" ?
But what about the copy of the data that was made in transit by the criminals in secret services fishing in the upstream? When will they delete it?
It's a stupid idea to send raw contents of a crashed process over the internet, no matter how you frame it.
Slashdot loves to hate Firefox, with Waterfox, Palemoon and now Basilisk available there is no reason to use Firefox anymore. Mozilla took their credibility and smashed it up. Only losers now use Firefox in 2018.
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ffs tom what were you thinking
where is the use case
I have been doing searches for "mozilla.org" deleting telemetry related URLs and any other privacy leaking addresses for a long time now just to be on the safe side. Unless those addresses are hard-coded, that should stop any telemetry info going to mozilla regardless of the privacy settings.
Since they're being open about a bug that "accidentally" captured user telemetry data, would Mozilla now care to share what they've done with that data since March of 2017 when v52 was released? Who else has that data? Has it been bought and sold already?
When it comes to controlling not-so-anonymized information, a half-assed effort is essentially fucking worthless.
Do the crash reports go straight to Mozilla's servers, are are they fed into google analytics that moziila uses? (and yes, as of last year Mozilla does use GA for some stuff. But don't worry, they have a iron-clad contract with google to protect your privacy).
Is there any reference to an official Mozilla statement?
Because Catalin Cimpanu didn't mention any sources in his BleepingComputer article.
I wasn't able to find anything at Mozilla either. Did they really say that last week?
Who the fuck needs telemetry in a fucking browser.
To the paranoid weirdos here: Cut the FF devs and leadership some slack. They're coming clean about an accidental collection of some crash data - which has only been going on since 52.x, and they've said they're not selling that data to anyone in the past.
Yes, they're far from perfect. They ARE, however, the only browser left that at least tries to respect user privacy (even to their own UX's detriment). You should all be thanking them for even still working on the project vs. abandoning the project altogether and leaving you with Chrome's or Edge's data collection.
This bug was also fixed in Firefox 52, on the same day that they released the FF 57 bugfix. So if you want to keep crash reports off, receive latest security updates and still have all your old extensions work then Firefox 52 is still an option.
What about 52 ESR, the version meant to be used in corporate environments? Will a fix be issued?
Obligatory bad car analogy in 3...2...1...
Some accidents are truly accidents. They could not have reasonably been foreseen, and they could not have reasonably been prevented.
I don't classify this "accident" as being such an accident. This "accident" should not have even been possible!
Firefox should not include any sort of user data collection or transmission of this kind. None at all. It doesn't matter what it might have been tracking. It should not have collected this data. It should not have sent it to Mozilla. Mozilla should not have stored it. None of this should have even been possible.
If Firefox crashes, have it write any relevant information to a text file. Request that the user submit it manually, perhaps by email or by uploading it to a web site. But this data submission should never happen automatically.
This "accident" should not have happened, because the mechanisms that allowed for this disaster to occur should never have existed in the first place.
Tor Browser removes all telemetry/crash reports and it's optimized for privacy.
Also add MITM blocker to know about your connection.
no telemetry bullshit
Is Mozilla trustworthy?