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> Often the narrative is that big tech is malicious.

Chrome now sends all of your URL's you are viewing to Google by default.

So does Edge, to Microsoft.

Big Tech is Malicious.




I think the point is that it becomes malicious, rather than starting out that way.


Pretty sure Firefox does that by default. It gets highly annoying, sometimes.


It used to do that, but doesn't anymore.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-does-phishing-and-m...

> Phishing and Malware Protection works by checking the sites that you visit against lists of reported phishing, unwanted software and malware sites. These lists are automatically downloaded and updated every 30 minutes or so when the Phishing and Malware Protection features are enabled.

Although it seems they're still doing that for files:

> In addition to the regular list updates mentioned above, when using Malware Protection to protect downloaded files, Firefox may communicate with Mozilla's partners to verify the safety of certain executable files. In these cases, Firefox will submit some information about the file, including the name, origin, size and a cryptographic hash of the contents, to the Google Safe Browsing service which helps Firefox determine whether or not the file should be blocked.


> It used to do that, but doesn't anymore.

I work for Mozilla (on Firefox) and I was around when phishing protection was introduced. Pretty sure it never did that. Not leaking the user's visit has always been a top priority for us.

> Although it seems they're still doing that for files:

What exactly do you mean by "that"? What you quoted below for certain executable downloaded files never applied to phishing protection, I don't think.


It still uses Google Safe Browsing API as a secondary check to the locally downloaded list.


> Pretty sure Firefox does that by default.

Ahem, no.

> It gets highly annoying, sometimes.

The thing you made up gets highly annoying, sometimes?


> Ahem, no.

I'm referring to this: https://twitter.com/bert_hu_bert/status/1561650689474011136

Maybe it was removed after August, but it was in Firefox only a few months ago.

And for the record, FF android prioritizes Google searches over history leading to accidentally visiting the Google search for a web page I often frequent.


> I'm referring to this: https://twitter.com/bert_hu_bert/status/1561650689474011136

That doesn't seem to say anything about what gets transmitted to or from Google? Certainly it's not your visited URLs.

> And for the record, FF android prioritizes Google searches over history leading to accidentally visiting the Google search for a web page I often frequent.

For search suggestions we send what you've typed, not full URLs. I'm not sure what happens when pasting a URL but I would recommend using Paste & Go in that case. Search suggestions can be disabled too in the app settings.


> That doesn't seem to say anything about what gets transmitted to or from Google?

It makes a noise every time a request is sent to Google.

> For search suggestions we send what you've typed, not full URLs. I'm not sure what happens when pasting a URL

That's the issue. I type the URL and press Enter.

https://imgur.com/a/shEFR2w

I get sent to Google for no reason.


Firefox also has Safe Browsing and Pocket. How do these differ from what Chrome is doing?


> Firefox also has Safe Browsing

Safe Browsing checks against a local database. It doesn't leak the URLs of pages you visit.

> and Pocket.

Pocket doesn't do that either.




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