TR Forums

Redocbew wrote:

Firefox gained its popularity by avoiding exactly these kind of stunts. Even if IE wasn't so poorly behaved it was still backed by the megacorp while Mozilla was very much the underdog. That alone would have caused some people to take notice, but the software they provided was actually good as well. Now they're acting like the megacorp without actually being one, and they don't seem to care much about the software its self.

Let's not forget that people are willingly giving over their personal information to the likes of MS, Apple, google, FB, and even cell phone companies to be sold to data miners. Mozilla made it an option and people failed to make a choice, or rather failed to take a look at the new options Firefox had. Every program with new updates adds junk like this and that includes firewall and anti-virus makers. I don't think it's fair to shame one and not the others, just look at the free pass people give Apple.

mcarson09 wrote:

It wasn't hacked. You allowed them to install it by allowing Firefox to install and run Studies.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1194583

And from the Shield Studies wiki that the support response linked, it's supposed to prompt users to try out new products, not install them silently.

"Shield Studies is a function of the Shield project that prompts a random population of users to help us try out new products, features, and ideas."

jihadjoe wrote:

mcarson09 wrote:

It wasn't hacked. You allowed them to install it by allowing Firefox to install and run Studies.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1194583

And from the Shield Studies wiki that the support response linked, it's supposed to prompt users to try out new products, not install them silently.

"Shield Studies is a function of the Shield project that prompts a random population of users to help us try out new products, features, and ideas."

And are personal data should not be sold without our consent, but yet it is.

mcarson09 wrote:

I don't think it's fair to shame one and not the others, just look at the free pass people give Apple.

A strange position to take when you seemed to be implying that if Mozilla did the required ass-covering beforehand, then nobody should take issue with this extension being preloaded.

There's also a difference between personally identifiable information, and system information that's been scrubbed and is useful only to developers. Security patches, and updates containing new features clearly do not fall into either category, and to say that "everything" is transmitting personal information is inaccurate. However, it is definitely more common than it should be.