jman6495, 2 years ago

The article you sent me is totally absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding or will to understand.

Librewolf and Arkenfox exist for the exact same reason this article exists: unbridled paranoia. They are actually by fat less secure than Firefox because of the risk of a compromised build chain which is lesser for an established browser.

The first example of “phoning home” your article gives is merely the get request Firefox uses to check if you are online and redirect you to a login portal if you are on shared WiFi.

The article also then makes a complaint about Firefox making requests to the sites you visit most frequently, which maked absolutely no sense, because if you visit them so frequently that then end up in your new page, then what is the problem with Firefox preloading the content?

On Google analytics, it is not part of the browser, but just used on Mozilla’s website with an explicit exemption from Google not to use that data.

The “safebrowsing” requests are to download the list of known malware sites in order to keep you safe. They are not used for tracking.

The health report telemetry is the only thing that could be vaguely construed as actually being problematic, but it literally collects no personal data and is used to improve the browser.

Finally, the entire paragraph about pocket is bullshit: or course, if you create an account and start saving web pages to pocket then it is going to be stored on pocket’s servers… What would you expect? The solution is simple: Just don’t use pocket, nobody is forcing you to.

It is infuriating to see these lies repeatedly perpetuated online by people who have no understanding of what they are criticizing

None of the points mentioned even vaguely constitute a threat to user privacy.

To make matters worse they actually weaken users security by driving them to forks that risk them not recieving timely security updates.