
Firefox Pioneer - binaryanomaly
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-firefox-pioneer
======
some_account
I have all kinds of anti tracking installed in Firefox but I'm going to sign
up for this.

Why? Because I want Firefox to be the best browser. Mozilla is not Google and
not Microsoft. They have a very different view on privacy and how they would
like the internet to evolve.

~~~
fixermark
> Mozilla is not Google and not Microsoft.

... right now. How many years do you trust them to hold the data they harvest
from you? Through how many CEO transitions? ;)

~~~
kevingadd
It may be helpful to understand how Mozilla's operations are structured:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation)

However, anything's possible with the way businessmen tend to bend the rules
to make money, so it's certainly within the realm of possibility that within
10 years the Foundation will sell the Corporation to Amazon-Comcast-Warner LLC
and then they'll monetize the data.

~~~
fixermark
Precisely. If one is concerned about not giving data like this to Google, MS,
et. al. for privacy reasons, I wouldn't trust Mozilla's guarantees without
actual contractual language declaring the lifetime of the data and under what
circumstances the data will be destroyed (including but not limited to
"company is purchased by another company").

~~~
jopsen
> I wouldn't trust Mozilla's guarantees without actual contractual language...

Then go read the fine print:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/firefox-
pioneer/...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/firefox-
pioneer/privacy/)

But more importantly understand that this probably isn't for everybody. I
think it's a fair guess to say they just want a small population, not
something in the millions.

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sevensor
Isn't Shield the same system that pushed a marketing gimmick late last year?
I'm still feeling sore about that fiasco. Not sore enough to stop using
Firefox and switch to a worse-for-privacy alternative, but sore enough to be
grumpy about signing up for their studies.

~~~
mythmon_
Yes, this is using the same system as the Mr Robot marketing gimmick last
December. That isn't very worrying to me though, since that platform is
basically a generic "do something in the browser" capability, where "do",
"something" and "the browser" are fairly loosely defined. Both the Mr Robot
promotion and the Pioneer program could be done through other avenues. Shield
is the most convenient mechanism currently available for this sort of fine-
grained deployment.

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joombaga
> The data you submit is encrypted in Firefox and not decrypted until it is on
> a server that is not connected to the wider internet.

Okay, stupid question: How does it get there? Sneakernet?

~~~
scrollaway
User's computer => Encrypted => Sent over the internet => Mozilla's public
servers => Mozilla intranet gateway => Mozilla non-internet-facing server =>
Decrypted here

It doesn't say the server is completely offline. It can be connected to
through a server which can connect to both that server _and_ the wider
internet, but the machine in question cannot.

~~~
joombaga
Hmm. If I was describing a server behind a bastion host I'd feel dishonest
saying it's "not connected to the wider internet".

~~~
bashinator
I agree. A more honest and accurate way of putting it would be, “not
accessible from the wider Internet.” On the other hand, with immutable
servers, giving them no route to the wider Internet actually could be
possible.

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fwdpropaganda
Companies like this data to improve their products. As long as it's opt-in, we
should have no ethical issue with it. Doesn't surprise me that Mozilla is
dealing with this ethically. One of the few organizations I trust.

~~~
slater
$5 say their marketing dept will "accidentally" install/push something that
will "accidentally" opt-in everyone.

~~~
CJefferson
How about $500, over the next.. 8 years (you have to stop a bet eventually).
Or just $5 if you don't have the confidence in a mistake.

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dmix
> The data you submit is encrypted in Firefox and not decrypted until it is on
> a server that is not connected to the wider internet.

This is a good approach.

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JadeNB
> Once you’ve opted in, you may be enrolled in additional studies without
> potentially annoying prompts.

Ha. "Once you've opted in, you will not have explicit control over enrollment
in future studies" is a less sunny way of saying this.

~~~
walid
Check the "How do I opt out?" part of the article.

~~~
JadeNB
Indeed, I didn't mean to suggest that it was a permanent decision; but rather
that opting in to the program as a whole explicitly and clearly, but
nonetheless perhaps undesireably, amounted to opting in to in to not just the
present but also the future parts of it—perhaps such as, without any guarantee
to the contrary, future stunts on the order of the Mr Robot promotion.

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8bitsrule
I see that this personal information, too, doesn't pay like what pioneers used
to get paid ... in land, gold, animals.

"if you meet the criteria."

No. I don't.

