Plex recently caused controversy by changing its privacy policy so users could not opt out of data collection — although the company backed down after assessing the level of concern it raised. Now Mozilla looks sets to raise the hackles of privacy advocates as well.
Plex recently caused controversy by changing its privacy policy so users could not opt out of data collection — although the company backed down after assessing the level of concern it raised. Now Mozilla looks sets to raise the hackles of privacy advocates as well.
Mozilla engineers working on the Firefox web browser are concerned that the current opt-in system of data collection does not allow for the collection of unbiased data about which websites users visit and so on. As such a test period of telemetry which is opt-out is planned.
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In a discussion on Google Groups, Georg Fritzsche from Mozilla says: “for Firefox we want to better understand how people use our product to improve their experience. To do that, we are planning to run a new SHIELD study that tests how we can collect additional data in a privacy preserving way.”
Among the questions Mozilla is seeking to answer with telemetry data are: “Which top sites are users visiting?”; “Which sites using Flash does a user encounter?”; “Which sites does a user see heavy Jank on?”
Fritzsche proposes the following:
The responses in the discussion are somewhat mixed, but the first reply sums up what many end-users are likely to feel: “I believe Opt-in is pro-privacy, while Opt-out is anti-privacy.” Another said: “If this will be implemented, I’ ll have to file a complaint with the relevant Landes- and Bundesbeauftragten für Datenschutz, and, possibly, escalate this to the EU Data Privacy commissioners office.”
What are your thoughts?
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