Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2016 19:39:45 -0500 From: Brandon J. Wandersee <brandon.wandersee@gmail.com> To: Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@rocketmail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: borderline OT fireox question Message-ID: <86poqfohta.fsf@WorkBox.Home> In-Reply-To: <20160714220944.2f05391f@archlinux.localdomain> 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>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
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 -- :: Brandon J. Wandersee :: brandon.wandersee@gmail.com :: -------------------------------------------------- :: 'The best design is as little design as possible.' :: --- Dieter Rams ----------------------------------
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?86poqfohta.fsf>