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Does Firefox sell this data? That would be bad and should be able to turn off. But there's other uses for telemetry that can help free software.
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Like with any software, you can't ever really be sure if they share this data with other entities. That's part of why I don't let software phone home, FOSS or not.

Why gather this much data if you are not monetizeing it?

It has a cost and can also become a liability. You don't do it just for fun.


Because it's useful in aiding in development. "Telemetry" is not "spying" or "collecting personal information" or whatever else uninformed people like this blog author try to dramatize it as. Telemetry is anonymous crash reports, how many users are using vertical vs horizontal tabs, how many people engaged the AI killswitch, etc. If it's NOT anonymized/bucketized usage date, then it's NOT telemetry. People need to stop conflating the two.

Ironically, it's the people who disable all telemetry out of ignorance and paranoia that end up crying every time a developer deprecates their favorite feature or they have an issue with a new release. If you don't vote you don't get to complain. Mozilla's PM's in particular have repeatedly published and cited telemetry data in their decision making, and have referenced crash reports in proactively filed bugs.


> "Telemetry" is not "spying" or "collecting personal information" or whatever else uninformed people like this blog author try to dramatize it as.

Whether or not telemetry counts as spying depends on whether or not informed consent was obtained before data is sent. If any data is collected about me, my machines, or my use of my machines, and I have not explicitly been told about and agreed to it first, then I'm being spied on.


Historically thet have done so but I have no idea if thet currently do.



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