Is the existence of a back door method of updating Firefox preferences something that will be disclosed to users? What about a UI knob to disable it?
It will even be documented for them: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Normandy/PreferenceRollout
> What about a UI knob to disable it?
app.normandy.enabled
Apparently, there is no one associated with browsers can be trusted in the least.
[1]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Normandy/PreferenceRollout
That is not what I meant by a UI knob, and I sure hope you knew that. By UI knob I mean something easily discoverable and self-explanatory. Rooting around a gated (with a mighty strong warning, I should add) config section for something called "normandy" is not intuitive, and it's not self-explanatory.
And I sure hope that by disclosed to users I did not mean some Hitchhiker's Guide-esque disclaimer on a wiki page. Something as (potentially) insidious as a preferences backdoor should absolutely be disclosed to users with the same level of visibility as the stories nonsense.
Perhaps "normandy" is entirely harmless, but you guys lost a metric fuckton of credibility by using your backdoors to spam people[1]. Playing coy does nothing to improve your credibility or reputation.
1: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/18/mozilla_mr_robot_fi...
Options -> Privacy & Security > Allow Firefox to install and run studies
Edit: Source:
See: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/certificate-issue-causing-ad...
> In order to be able to provide this fix on short notice, we are using the Studies system. You can check if you have studies enabled by going to Firefox Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Allow Firefox to install and run studies.
Normandy seems to be the internal name for this system: https://github.com/mozilla/normandy
> It will even be documented for them:
That sounds like you do not think the concern is warranted. I've used Firefox since the first time it was available, and Netscape starting with the first ever betas. At no point was there a dialog that said "Do you want us to be able to change your browser settings remotely?"
>> What about a UI knob to disable it?
> app.normandy.enabled
That is not a "UI knob" by any stretch of the imagination. Looking in about:config revealed:
app.normandy.logging.level
Is there a way to find out what is being logged and why?
So, the question can be rephrased as "is the fact that Firefox has been logging all users' entire browsing history despite the fact that the user has not chosen to set up a Firefox account going to be disclosed?"
Chill out, this preference only determines what is logged locally (never sent to the server). It's a debugging tool.
Sources: - https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/compone... - https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/services/common...
> Normandy Pref Rollout is a feature that allows Mozilla to change the default value of a preference for a targeted set of users, without deploying an update to Firefox.
Rolling out a new certificate goes beyond changing the default value of a preference which rightly raises questions about what else Normandy allows which is not documented.
Where are you getting this from?
I happen to be one of the users with Normandy disabled, so I'm foobar'd anyway. That said, the reason I disabled it is because it is a security hole you could drive a semi-truck through. And now they want us to enable it to provide a "fix" for the secure way in?
I thought I was the only one who saw a problem with that. Your post is evidence that I'm not completely off in my thinking.
I guess "easier" isn't the word really, because Chrome can't really ever be locked down. It's pretty much always, effectively, an open book to Google.
You can lock down everything in Firefox. The drawback being, of course, times like this, when you can't get the fix unless you leave Normandy enabled. (Which I didn't.)
>:-(
Grrrr.
Where are you getting this from? AFAIK all Mozilla code / prefs they can push should be signed -- this very issue seems to stem from the cert used to sign AMO extensions expired.
This is the first I have heard of Firefox changing my config settings invisibly in the background. This is obscene. Who on earth thought this was a good idea? The security ramifications are limitless.
I understand all too well that most companies have decided to start A/B testing things on subsets of users, but that doesn't mean you should force that mode of thinking into everything. What a horrible decision. I don't recall ever seeing any news or notifications or checkboxes about studies or "Normandy" at any point.
Are there some other good open source alternatives to Firefox? I remember hearing about Brave but also that it was tied into some cryptocoin nonsense, so I'm not sure what else to look at.
you must not have been paying attention the last 3 or so years
Mozilla is doing all kinds of, IMO, unethical things with FireFox that goes against the core value of the mission statement of the Mozilla Foundation.
They are too busy trying to replicate Chrome to care about privacy, security, or basic user rights
I've been using brave because of that: all of that is baked in so my only extension is my password manager
Looking Glass, Pocket, Banning Plugins based on Political ideology, Backdoors like Normandy, and the STUDIES system, their creation of what amounts to Mozilla version of the Ministry of Truth, Their partnership with Cloudflare to send everyone's DNS to Cloudfare over HTTP, and whole host of other things
Well it's a half-assed knob then, because it was unchecked and still I had app.normandy.enabled = true somehow.
1. being completely transparent about all the mechanisms that data or code can be pushed to or pulled by the browser, or pushed from or pulled from the browser; and
2. having a toggle for all of them, yes every single one, in Privacy & Security.
But there are trustworthy people working with and integrating that code, there's a good chance they'll notice a hinky commit, and they're very close to having completely reproducible builds—which means that there can be verification that the shipped binary matches the inspected source.
https://gregoryszorc.com/blog/2018/06/20/deterministic-firef...
TL;DR you are not sending us your browsing history.
If telemetry and studies were turned off, your browser wasn't sending us this unique id.
If you had kept them enabled, for normandy telemetry you would have been sending us the data described at https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/n...
You can read more broadly about what data Firefox sends by default at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
And learn more about the review process any data collection has to go through at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Data_Collection