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  • Repost: Is Firefox snooping just as much as the other browsers?

    Posted on February 14, 2017 at 09:27 CST by • Comment in the Forums

    This is a repost of a blog item that got gobbled up when the site went down. Here’s the original post, but the original comments are gone.

    Details are murky, but Günter Born has an outline on his blog.

    Last November, Mozilla released a new “super-private” browser for iPhone and iPad called Firefox Focus. The new browser has built-in support for blocking all sorts of trackers.

    If you’re using Firefox Focus on your iPad or iPhone (and, it appears, on your Android device), there’s a big surprise in store. The “super-private” browser is tracking everything you do, by default, and sending the info to a data aggregator, Adjust GmbH.

    Born explains, quoting German journalist Peter Welchering and security expert Hermann Sauer:

    [Firefox Focus] tracks user data about the users behavior using the app and surfing the web. Data, which websites are visited, where the app has been downloaded, the IP address, a tracking id and many more data are being send to German Big Data specialist Adjust…

    Mozilla announced Firefox Focus as a “privacy browser” stopping user tracking. Welchering  and Sauer found out, that the app sends user tracking data not to Mozilla’s servers. The (raw) data will be send to the German big data harvester Adjust – then the data will be anonymized and transferred to Mozilla.

    Et tu, Mozilla?

    UPDATE: Mozilla denies the report from Welchering and Sauer, according to Bleepingcomputer. “Firefox Klar (Focus) DOES NOT track user browsing histories.” Mozilla has a privacy page about their anonymous usage data. The debate continues.

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