Im Mai 2024 habe ich Mozilla über einen Datenschutzverstoß in Firefox (Android) informiert. Ohne Zustimmung des Nutzers wurden Daten an Adjust übermittelt. In der Version 129.0.2 (Android, iOS) wurde Adjust nun entfernt - vermutlich als Reaktion auf meine Analyse. Ich werde aber noch einmal nachhaken. 👇

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1913363

https://www.kuketz-blog.de/firefox-datenschutzverstoss-bei-der-android-version/

#mozilla #firefox #adjust #tracking #dsgvo #tdddg

#Linux Weekly Roundup for August 25th, 2024: Linux's 33rd birthday, #LibreOffice 24.8, #NVIDIA 560 hits stable, #KDE Gear 24.08 improves your favorite KDE apps, #GNOME 47 enters public beta testing, #SerpentOS alpha is around the corner, #ArchLinux installer gets COSMIC desktop support, #PipeWire default for camera handling in #Firefox on #Fedora Linux 41, #fwupd improves support for #Dell systems, and more https://9to5linux.com/9to5linux-weekly-roundup-august-25th-2024

#OpenSource #FOSS

New #Dillo plugin to sync bookmarks with #Firefox Sync.

https://github.com/dillo-browser/dillo-plugin-ffbm

It uses the ffsclient tool to access Firefox Sync data: https://github.com/Mikescher/firefox-sync-client

An update on Mozilla's PPA experiment and how it protects user privacy while testing cutting edge technologies to improve the open web.

I look left and right, and I'm the only one who…

TL;DR: Firefox used to have a great extension mechanism based on the XUL and XPCOM. This mechanism served us well for a long time. However, it came at an ever-growing cost in terms of maintenance for both Firefox developers and add-on developers. On one side, this growing cost progressively killed any effort to make Firefox secure, fast or to try new things. On the other side, this growing cost progressively killed the community of add-on developers. Eventually, after spending years trying to protect this old add-on mechanism, Mozilla made the hard choice of removing this extension mechanism and replacing this with the less powerful but much more maintainable WebExtensions API. Thanks to this choice, Firefox developers can once again make the necessary changes to improve security, stability or speed. During the past few days, I’ve been chatting with Firefox users, trying to separate fact from rumor regarding the consequences of the August 2020 Mozilla layoffs. One of the topics that came back a few times was the removal of XUL-based add-ons during the move to Firefox Quantum. I was very surprised to see that, years after it happened, some community members still felt hurt by this choice. And then, as someone pointed out on reddit, I realized that we still haven’t taken the time to explain in-depth why we had no choice but to remove XUL-based add-ons. So, if you’re ready for a dive into some of the internals of add-ons and Gecko, I’d like to take this opportunity to try and give you a bit more detail.

#Firefox 129.0.2 is out now to fix an issue with screen readers prompting "Alert" when hovering over tabs and an issue where drag-and-drop operations would not work as expected with extensions that rely on this functionality.

#OpenSource #FreeSoftware #Linux #Mozilla

Google ramps up its campaign against ad blockers on Chrome.

I changed emails on my Mozilla account, and then trying to log in again with it, it prompted me to create a new account. I made a Firefox support post 2 weeks ago but got no responses.

A Mozilla employee recently released a Firefox addon to change the user agent to Chrome on sites the user enables it on.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-mask/
• https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1eic7bj/chroe_mask_makes_firefox_wear_a_mask_to_look_like/

I'm actually pissed. I and many other users on the forum got an email from Chris Hayes on this:

Hello,

This is a friendly email to make you aware that your personal email address is currently visible to the whole internet via Mozilla's Discourse forum. It will show up in Google Search results. The affected email is the one that this email was sent to.

Many users may not be aware that their email address is publicly visible and Mozilla has not done anything about it in the 4 years it has been known, so I've taken this into my own hands to inform you.

What can you do?

You can update your profile name to be something else (actually, profile name is completely optional, so you can leave it blank if you want).

Steps to update profile name:

1. If you search for "Mozilla Discourse forum" it should be one of the first results.
2. Login. (Top-right)
3. Click on your profile picture at the top right.
4. Then, click on your username, at the top of the dropdown menu.
5. Click on the "Preferences" button.
6. Change the "Name" field, and click "Save Changes".

How did this happen?

There's a misconfiguration with Mozilla's Discourse forum that when you sign up with your Firefox account, it will by default use your personal email address as your profile's public name.

This is not a new issue, and has been known since 2020. The Mozilla Discourse forum is not actively maintained by Mozilla, so this has yet to be fixed.

You are one of 4,630 other users impacted by this privacy issue. It impacts 19% of all forum users, and 28% of new users.

More information:

There's a Discourse discussion about this problem here: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/email-is-displayed-by-default-for-the-new-account/92266

If you have connections to Mozilla, please help escalate this issue to the right people. This is a serious and long-standing privacy issue at an organization that should value "Privacy by default".

Sincerely,@chrisA fellow Mozillian

I am not Mozilla: This is not an official Mozilla email, I do not represent or work for Mozilla. This is an email from a fellow community member spreading awareness of this unaddressed privacy issue.

I recently tried to implement push notifications, but it does not seem like fennec is supporting them. The same code works fine on vanilla firefox on mobile, Librewolf and Firefox on desktop.

Does anyone know whether Fennec should support push notifications?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/19635922

Especially ones that you find useful on android Firefox, as they seem to be less popular?

Recently got to know about bookmarklets due to a thread here in this community itself:
https://lemm.ee/comment/12623456
^An unrelated question: Is there some way to link comments so that they are automatically opened in home instances for eveyone, like how we can link communities and usernames currently?^

Some interesting/useful bookmarklets that I know of:

1. Bullshit.js as mentioned in that link
2. dotepub. It does say that data is sent to their server.
   For some sites it's better than the inbuilt save as pdf option.
3. A bookmarklet that opens the current site in G-translate
4. Saw a bookmarklet which works like reader mode.

The freecodecamp article on bookmarklets maybe useful for those new to it(It helped me). It seems cool.
https://wiki.greasespot.net/User_Script_Hosting links to sources for userscripts. Most of them seem to be desktop-centric.

Which are your favorites? Any cool ones that you have made on your own?

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Discussion

Right. I'm getting tired of seeing people dump on Firefox and Mozilla about this thing in the release notes:

Firefox now supports the experimental Privacy Preserving Attribution API, which provides an alternative to user tracking for ad attribution. This experiment is only enabled via origin trial and can be disabled in the new Website Advertising Preferences section in the Privacy and Security settings.

What is this? And why is it not something to get heated about?

Attribution is how advertisers know how to pay the right site owner when someone clicks on their ad. It's important for ad-supported sites that clicks get attributed.

Right now, attribution is basically incompatible with protecting privacy. Advertisers use every method of tracking you can name, and some you can't, to provide accurate attribution.

The Privacy Preserving Attribution API is an experimental way of informing an advertiser that someone clicked on an ad on a given site without leaking that it was you, specifically, who did that. Specifically, ads using the API ask Firefox to remember that they were seen, on what sites, and to what sites they lead. Then, when the user visits the destination site, the destination site asks Firefox to generate a report and submit it via a separate service that mixes your report with reports from other people and forwards these aggregated reports in large batches. Any traces that might be unique to you are lost in the crowd.

This is still experimental, being enabled by Mozilla on a site-by-site basis as developers request it. It's not a free-for-all yet, and I can only find one entry on Bugzilla of a site who's requested it.

Mozilla's latest changelog confirms that Firefox now has support for an Android 14 feature designed to consolidate passkeys and third-party sign-in tools. As of version 128, when you create a passkey for an account on supported websites, Firefox can pass these credentials along to your password manager — even if you're using a third-party password manager, provided that app also supports Android 14's upgraded Credential Manager.

"In the next few days, we will start the Nightly experiment which provides easy access to AI services from the sidebar. This functionality is entirely optional, and it’s there to see if it’s a helpful addition to Firefox. It is not built into any core functionality and needs to be turned on by you to see it.

If you want to try the experiment, activate it via Nightly Settings > Nightly Experiments (please see full instructions here).

We’d love to hear your feedback once you try out the feature, and we’re open to all your ideas and thoughts, whether it’s small tweaks to the current experience or big, creative suggestions that could boost your productivity and make accessing your favorite tools and services in Firefox even easier."

The most requested Vertical Tabs will make an appearance in the upcoming Firefox. The feature can now be turned on in Nightly itself without the need to rely on third-party extensions or separate Nightly builds.

Mozilla did their biggest Reddit AMA yet on Thursday, June 13, with eight members of the Firefox leadership team. With 400 total comments on the post, they c...

In 2023, a significant portion of Firefox downloads came from unknown sources. We believe many of them came from 3rd party websites that let you download Firefox. While some websites are okay, others can put you at risk of downloading an old version or a build with the wrong locale, leading to security risks, a bad user experience, or even malicious installations. Help the Firefox team to uncover this mystery by taking part in the Firefox 3rd-party installer campaign!

There used to be an option called browser.privateWindowSeparation.enabled, which ever since Firefox 106 back in October 2022 resulted in separate taskbar icons for normal and private Firefox windows. In version 127, this option has gone away, removed in this code change. Users complained on Mozilla's forums and on Reddit at the time, but it was at least possible to recombine the icons with the option in about:config – but no longer.

As you might imagine, people are not happy, although according to the official response in this complaint, it looks like the change will be reverted in Firefox 128...

"Working at Mozilla has taken my shopping habits to new heights. I feel armed with information and shortcuts and have a world of add ons at my fingertips. Keep reading for more on Fakespot and other hacks to shop smarter on Firefox."