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Mozilla, reading the room extremely well, seemingly just recently flipped the switch to enable-by-default sponsored weather results from AccuWeather in every new Firefox tab you open. Clicking "Learn more" takes you here, with zero information on if your location is sent to AccuWeather every time you open a new tab: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-items-on-firefox-new-tab-page

Probably only noticed because I normally have a blank new tab page but this showed up after updating Firefox!
a blank new tab in Firefox, with a weather widget that reads 72F and cloudy. When you hover over it you get a hamburger menu and the tiny label text "AccuWeather - Sponsored". Clicking the menu gives you the options: Change location, Switch to Celsius, Switch to detailed view, Hide weather on New Tab, Learn more

Customize items on your Firefox New Tab page | Firefox Help

Learn how to customize different items on your Firefox New Tab page.
support.mozilla.org
Ten wpis został zedytowany (2 miesiące temu)
Ryan Baumann
Furthermore, would "hiding weather on new tab" actually stop this feature from still regularly sending my location to AccuWeather? Great question! I have no idea
Ryan Baumann
After checking about:config, "Hide weather on New Tab" sets the config value "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.showWeather" to "false", but leaves "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.weatherfeed" as the default of "true". So, my suspicion was correct, #Firefox is still sending your location off every 30 minutes to get the weather in the background by default even if you disable this new widget: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/newtab/lib/WeatherFeed.sys.mjs #infosec #privacy
a screenshot of Firefox's about:config after hiding the weather widget, showing weatherfeed unmodified as true and showWeather modified to false.
#firefox #privacy #infosec

3 użytkowników udostępniło to dalej

Ryan Baumann
I think "constantly broadcast my location to a 3rd party by default and don't tell me about it or what's happening with that data and then keep doing it when I think I've disabled it" is pretty obviously a terrible privacy default
Ryan Baumann
Even more concerning than just the privacy issue this presents on its own, is that this feature made it all the way through to wide release without these objections being heard or maybe even raised https://digipres.club/@ryanfb/113125414314546768

Ryan Baumann

2024-09-12 16:00:34


@Osmose Yeah I would expect 1) clicking "Learn More" tells me *exactly* what's happening with my location info and at what granularity and 2) disabling the widget disables sending my location (bonus points for using the widget display space with a placeholder to *ask* if I want a weather widget with a link to learn more instead of just enabling it by default)

Ryan Baumann
"Why complain publicly about this instead of just trying to contact Mozilla privately first?"

1) Affected users need to be aware of this
2) A mere 2 months ago when people made an uproar about Firefox adding a new completely different privacy-sensitive default without user consent, their official response included:

"We consider modal consent dialogs to be a user-hostile distraction from better defaults"

Here's their better defaults.

(source: Firefox CTO Bobby Holley https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1e43w7v/a_word_about_private_attribution_in_firefox/)
Osmose
I dunno if it's documented anywhere and I'm not a fan of the widget, but according to someone on the Mozilla alumni Slack server it sends location data through a proxy such that your location is never tied to your IP address or any other info before AccuWeather sees it.

I really wish they put that on the settings for it, instead of just... not mentioning it. Ugh.
Ryan Baumann
@Osmose Yeah I would expect 1) clicking "Learn More" tells me *exactly* what's happening with my location info and at what granularity and 2) disabling the widget disables sending my location (bonus points for using the widget display space with a placeholder to *ask* if I want a weather widget with a link to learn more instead of just enabling it by default)
@Osmose
noodlejetski :verified_gay:
looks like they've edited the article a few hours ago:

"Do you share my IP address?

When weather suggestions are enabled, Firefox doesn’t share your IP address or any personally identifiable information outside Mozilla servers. When weather suggestions are disabled or hidden, Firefox doesn’t share your IP address or any PII related to the weather feature with Mozilla servers."
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