Got this notification when I opened Chrome when coming back to my desk after lunch.
“We changed our privacy settings to allow us to snoop on what you’re looking at and shove you ads accordingly. Feel free to opt out, but we’ll probably opt you back in when you aren’t paying attention.”
I never understood what is so problematic about anonymized telemetry, especially for a open-source product.
It provides a really valuable feedback for developers regarding feature usage, performance and error logs – you get the product for free so give something back.
Exactly! It’s more “Help me help you” than anything nefarious.
While it is mostly helpful, I still do it. To be honest, I would have been alright with it if it was a little more relaxed. What I mean by that is I’m okay with opt out, as long as it’s a product I trust, and I would say I do trust Firefox as a project (Not too sure about the Corporation, the Foundation is fine). What I’m not fine with is the “Data will be deleted within 30 days”. What if someone does not want to give that data in the first place, huh? I’m okay with it, because it’s Firefox, but many people arent, so it’s a matter principle for the people that aren’t. So if someone didn’t want any telemetry collected on them, that telemetry has not only been collected, but is now stored on Mozilla servers for 30 days, which means they can use it for analytics, whether you like it or not. Again, I don’t care, because it’s Firefox, but for the people that do, at the very least, don’t give me or them or anyone else fhat “We will delete within 30 days” thing. Automate it and do it now.