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Date:      Thu, 14 Jul 2016 21:10:15 -0453.75
From:      "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: borderline OT fireox question
Message-ID:  <5798a075-66eb-dc37-729b-ba8e72f2e1df@hiwaay.net>
In-Reply-To: <86poqfohta.fsf@WorkBox.Home>
References:  <5e4a20fe-51a4-ac10-4f72-23fcc3d04c15@hiwaay.net> <20160714002117.224b64ae@archlinux.localdomain> <8cd76e2e-ed11-7b3b-be75-de6bb4dcc092@hiwaay.net> <20160714063744.snaqwdbmzhd4ndb5@dijkstra.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de> <86r3awnh1i.fsf@WorkBox.Home> <20160714220944.2f05391f@archlinux.localdomain> <86poqfohta.fsf@WorkBox.Home>

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On 07/14/16 19:46, Brandon J. Wandersee wrote:
> Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions writes:
>
>> On Thu, 14 Jul 2016 14:41:45 -0500, Brandon J. Wandersee wrote:
>>> Google and Mozilla are competitors (and therefore Google won't be
>>> getting anything from Firefox)
>> Type   about:config   into Firefox's address bar, then after ignoring
>> the warning, in the search bar type   google  . How do you think works
>> safe browsing and what do you think are the URLs good for? What is the
>> geo location URL good for? Firefox shares high amounts of data with
>> Google.
> This doesn't record personal information. The geolocation feature
> certainly uses the IP address at which you're currently accessing the
> Internet to tell where in the world you are at this particular moment,
> but not *who* you are or what you're searching for. (Unless you're
> browsing from home, and your ISP is openly sharing your account
> information with others, then the IP address can't reliably say anything
> about the who is doing the browsing, just where it's being done.) The
> Firefox "safe browsing" setting refers to the Google database of
> malicious/suspicious websites for its anti-phishing protection. It's not
> recording your every keystroke and feeding it to Google.
>
> This is all beside the point. The first sentence in this thread was:
>
>> I notice that whenever I start typing text into the serch-bar of
>> Firefox ... it suggests completions for me, implying that Google has
>> my identity pegged.
> That's just downright fallacious. The mere existence of the "suggestion"
> option doesn't mean every Firefox user's browsing is being tracked, and
> even if we assume that it did mean as much it does not follow that the
> entity doing the tracking must be Google. The "suggestions" option has
> nothing to do with Google *unless* you use Google as your search engine
> via the Firefox interface.[1]
>
> Of course I retrieved that information using Firefox, and for all anyone
> knows I may have landed on the linked-to page through a Google search,
> and Google may have deliberately led me to a site chockful of
> misinformation in order to sustain the large-scale cover-up of its
> nefarious solar system domination scheme. So maybe that information
> can't be trusted.
>
> [1]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-popular-search-suggestions-firefox-search-bar?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Search+suggestions

As the OP, let me clarify the above. Whenever I start typing text into 
the search bar, it suggests completions *that I have typed in recently 
(last few weeks)*. My 2nd reply clarified that detail, not my 1st post, 
sorry.

-- 

	William A. Mahaffey III

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	"The M1 Garand is without doubt the finest implement of war
	 ever devised by man."
                            -- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.




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