Did Mozilla just sell all Firefox users' location data to AccuWeather without our consent?
from AeroLemming@lemm.ee to privacy@lemmy.ml on 03 Sep 23:50
https://lemm.ee/post/41369580
from AeroLemming@lemm.ee to privacy@lemmy.ml on 03 Sep 23:50
https://lemm.ee/post/41369580
This just showed up on my home page after an update. I wasn’t asked and never gave any sort of consent.
#privacy
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The weather is sponsored?
is this a serious question? the weather forecast is the question
No, sponsored in this context means that AccuWeather paid Mozilla to put their little widget on everyone’s New Tab screen.
Why am I not seeing it on my new tab screens?
It might be regional.
This thunderstorm brought to you by Carl’s Jr
Idiocracy quote?
Are you implying Mozilla paid AccuWeather to have placement on it’s browser? It’s always the other way around, think about Google paying to be the default search engine on Safari. If anything, I have to think Mozilla was paid to incorporate AccuWeather and not the other way around.
They also payed to be the default on Firefox ._.
No, AccuWeather paid Mozilla. Mozilla sold the data to AccuWeather. Mozilla made money.
Have you got a source that shows that data of FF users actually went to AccuWeather or is this purely speculation?
Why would Mozilla pay AccuWeather in user data? This would cut into their revenue and be horrendous press. Doing so makes no sense, legit entirely illogical. AccuWeather paid to get placement on the new tabs page. But, if you’re this worried about it and haven’t spent time in about:config to prevent fingerprinting, tracking, and location data collection, start there for sure. Either way, this seems like a huge stretch and wouldn’t make sense for Mozilla try and pull off.
I think you are saying Mozilla sold tabs screen placement to Accuweather, which means Accuweather gets user IP addresses (and therefore approximate location among other things) when the user launches the browser. So I guess the answer to OP question is yes.
And yes, opt-out is possible, but a pro-privacy approach would require opt in.
Oh, I see, I interpreted the statement as Mozilla handing over previously collected user data as payment for getting AccuWeather’s widget.
However, any webpage visited in a bowser provides this info. So if you haven’t stopped it happening from the get, you’re handing this data over in mass. But thanks for clearing that up for me!
Sure. Normally I think of visiting a site in a browser as navigating to that site on purpose. If Mozilla sells placement in the browser so that the browser navigates to that site automatically (unless you disable that), it’s invasive. That said I do remember Mozilla sets the default start page to something annoying and I had to reconfigure it to about:blank when I set up the system.
They are probably just using your IP address to determine the location. That will show the location of your ISP, not your location. That’s not much more info than any other server gets when you are connecting to it. Also does not require Mozilla to send any geolocation data.
Yeah, I hope so. Them buying an advertising company and then pulling this shit has got me feeling paranoid.
I wouldn’t know.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/21f0265b-31e1-4bef-9992-c1f37656d669.png">
I like the big search bar in the middle of my screen
This is an Intresting one. I’m curious what the deal was.
Assuming accuweather is paying Firefox, thats probably a good thing because Firefox definatly needs to diversify its income.
I wonder what exactly AccuWeather gets. Is only for more web traffic (which is significant) or is it something else?
That’s a great question. I couldn’t find anything online, presumably because it just happened.
It’s not on my browser.
It might be regional.
I just updated firefox and am not seeing it anywhere, including on the new tab page before I type in a URL or something.
It might be regional.
Just use Librewolf + Mullvad with extensions. Problem solved