[ONGOING] Turning off spyware settings in FireFox

[Valery]

I've read thread about Browsers and picked up some tips abut configuring Mozilla's products. For me setting up FF is the most tedious and time consuming task while configuring new system. I know couple links discussing this topic and each taking different approach so eventually, after spending time on this, I'm still not sure if what I did is right. Is there a acceptable standard out there? Maybe it would be a good idea to write down important things to do in one place.

I also learned that changing manually about:config can be replaced with putting a file into special place somewhere in the system (/usr or /opt folders, maybe in /home as well). Can I ask for opinions and advices for newbies in this thread. Maybe even standard files to use in profiling FireFox and Thunderbird.

"To do" lists for other browsers (ungoogled-chromium, PaleMoon, Brave, +) are of course welcome.

Edit: Oryginal title mentioned Thunderbird as well. As I'm not sure if spyware applies to it, I've removed Tb from post's title but any info about anti-spyware configuring this mailer (if any) are welcome here.

[Stevo]

Spyware? Are you kidding us or what? This is a "are you still beating your spouse?" question, isn't it?

When you are first running Firefox, it asks you if it's OK to send anonymized data to Mozilla, and you can opt out if you wish. Did you miss that part?

[Valery]

I'm not kidding you. Maybe I used 'spyware' incorrectly. What I meant was how to stop FF sending any data unnecessary to do task I asked for.

Are you implying that if I opt out from sending anonymized data I'm ok then? Please say it clearly. What about not-anonymized part?

[JayM]

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/ is might be your friend.

[andyprough]

I'm not kidding you. Maybe I used 'spyware' incorrectly. What I meant was how to stop FF sending any data unnecessary to do task I asked for.

Are you implying that if I opt out from sending anonymized data I'm ok then? Please say it clearly. What about not-anonymized part?

You may want to read through this thread where we discussed the "phoning home" behavior of several browsers a couple months ago, based on a study by researchers at the University of Dublin: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=57301

Short answer, it's not easy to stop all phone home behavior, as there's several avenues by which you data is phoned home from firefox, to both mozilla and to google, and turning them off completely isn't easy. @head-on-a-stick came up with a solution of sending some data to the localhost address, by editing /etc/hosts and sending certain connections to 127.0.0.1.

However, it's also clear that the data firefox collects is not nefarious for the most part, so it shouldn't be termed spyware. Firefox is better than Chrome in that regard, and much better than Safari or especially than the Yandex browser or Microsoft Edge, both of which appear to be blatantly and intentionally spying on their users. The browser that didn't appear to phone home any data was Brave, so if you just want a quick one-shot solution and you don't want any of your data phoned home at all, you can install Brave from the Popular Apps tab of the MX Package Installer.

[andyprough]

Also, I don't know where the "and Thunderbird" part of your post title comes into play, as I've never heard of any phone home behavior with Thunderbird. If you have a source for that, please share it. Otherwise I think that changing your original post title to say something like "Turning off phone-home settings in Firefox" would be more appropriate, like the way I've changed my response titles.

[hoflaan]

Firefox is still collecting and sending telemetry data home, even when you have disabled it in the preferences! Firefox has two hidden preferences in about:config ("toolkit.telemetry.coverage.opt-out" and "toolkit.coverage.opt-out") that are by default switched to false, which means it still is sending telemetry data home. (source: https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks- ... er/user.js). That is what I would call spyware.

[JayM]

Someone's javascript on GitHub doesn't prove that Mozilla is still running telemetry and collecting information after you've opted out. Do you have a more authoritative reference you could cite such as an authority on computer/network security?

[hoflaan]

I do not have a more authorotive reference, but here is a discussion on the subject on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... s_to_send/

[Mauser]

I've read thread about Browsers and picked up some tips abut configuring Mozilla's products. For me setting up FF is the most tedious and time consuming task while configuring new system. I know couple links discussing this topic and each taking different approach so eventually, after spending time on this, I'm still not sure if what I did is right. Is there a acceptable standard out there? Maybe it would be a good idea to write down important things to do in one place.

I also learned that changing manually about:config can be replaced with putting a file into special place somewhere in the system (/usr or /opt folders, maybe in /home as well). Can I ask for opinions and advices for newbies in this thread. Maybe even standard files to use in profiling FireFox and Thunderbird.

"To do" lists for other browsers (ungoogled-chromium, PaleMoon, Brave, +) are of course welcome.

I recommend doing these modifications to Firefox in these links to lock it down. https://restoreprivacy.com/firefox-privacy/ and https://gist.github.com/0XDE57/fbd302cef7693e62c769 You will be amazed on the amount of Spyware entries from Gagle there are in Firefox.