Firefox 80.0.1 will be released today. Here is what is new
Mozilla plans to release a new stable version of the Firefox web browser on September 1, 2020. Firefox 80.0.1 is a minor upgrade to the stable channel that fixes several issues that existed in previous versions of the web browser.
The new version will be pushed to user systems via the browser's automatic updating system starting later today, provided that no last minute changes delay the release significantly. Firefox users may select Menu > Help > About Firefox to run manual checks for updates, but the new one won't be picked up until it has been given the green light by Mozilla.
Mozilla released Firefox 80 Stable last week. The new version of Firefox included a new add-ons blocklist and security fixes among other changes.
Firefox 80.0.1
Firefox 80.0.1 is a bug fix release that addresses several no-security issues in the web browser. Fixed issues include crashes, a performance regression, and download issues.
Here is the entire list and links to Mozilla's Bugzilla bug tracking site to look up additional information:
- Fixed crashes that Mozilla believes are related to device resets or OOM events, when surface creation fails. See this bug for additional details.
- Fixed the rendering on some sites that use WebGL, e.g. on Yandex Maps which showed broken text. See this bug for additional details.
- Fixed download issues related to extensions and cookies. The issue is found in the downloads.downloads API, more precisely in its behavior regarding cookie requests (excludes non-first party cookies when the extension lacks host permissions). The effect for the user is that cookies may be missing from download requests, and that may lead to broken downloads. See this bug for details.
- Fixed a performance regression when encountering new intermediate CA certificates. See this bug for additional details.
- Fixed the zoom-in keyboard shortcut on Japanese language build. See this bug for additional details.
Firefox users who experience these issues may want to update to the new version as soon as possible. The fixes will be included in Firefox 81 as well, and users who are not affected by the issues may skip the new version if they prefer to do that.
If Pants is reading, regarding https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js/issues/1009. For a name, Don’t Stalk Me
@Anonymous
Seems like someone is butthurt still, eh? Renaming your project in response to the gHacks moderator not banning another commenter on the sole basis of you demanding it, is a temper tantrum if I ever saw one.
> Renaming your project in response to the gHacks moderator not banning another commenter on the sole basis of you demanding it, is a temper tantrum if I ever saw one.
I was curious of the reason, thanks for the explanation. Surprisingly considering his efforts to help users counter Mozilla’s bad defaults, Pants has a very pro-Mozilla stance. He has a strong belief that if one doesn’t trust Mozilla, one shouldn’t use Firefox (why does the ghacks user.js even exist then ??), and he even removed once as “disruptive content” the following github comment questioning the current anti-user philosophy of Mozilla, calling it “batshit crazyshake statements”:
https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/issues/350#issuecomment-628305798
Quote of removed comment:
————————————————————————————————————————-
“Also: just so people are aware – use Waterfox, because it doesn’t prioritize politics and monetization like Mozilla does these days with Firefox. Philosophy matters with software, not just the code itself. Free software is about freedom, that includes customization of the code, and of which fork or mainline to use. Stop trying to imply that we must trust the Mozilla as some kind of authority – they have a pretty bad track record over the last 10 years.
Even Archlinux includes a Google tracking id in their Firefox builds for one…and the lack of pocket and other complete and other bullsh*t inclusions that Mozilla has pushed on users makes Waterfox much more attractive…and that doesn’t even get into their persecution and termination of people based on their personal beliefs…yeah, no to Firefox.
I also remember Mozilla installing an addon silently to market some TV show…showing that not only can they do that without user interaction, but will do so proves that they are no longer trustworthy without heavy auditing…and then there’s the ad laden new tab page…shall I go on?”
—————————————————————————————————————————
Granted, there was a small part of politics involved in the comment that probably triggered Pants, but his reaction would probably have been hostile even without it.
Cheers @Iron Heart.
I access this site sporadically. I don’t know if Martin would alert me or not via email if you needed my rather limited knowledge on this subject.
@ Iron Heart: Aaarh Me Hearty :) Yes I too have a lot of respect for the lynx browser. It has been my only browser as of Firefox-71.0, while I sort out some engineering at my end before I can run FF(A *lot* of work to configure as we should know) or Brave again.
I feel that I’ve configured it fairly tightly, oh so straight forward in the usual Unix way, as it should be, because it is properly documented, organically within the native installation (at least on Unix platforms). I only use Unix like free software operating systems – Debian currently, so I can’t speak for MS installations.
As I said in the previous sentence, the installation (Unixes) comes with the usual man (manual) page, lynx(1), onboard detailed help documentation function, and a reference configuration file; all in all very comprehensive.
It is basic though. For example, if you were to visit the following page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
… the Traditional Chinese characters in the text are not rendered. There may be a way to configure it to do so, but at the time of writing this I remain frankly ignorant.
But yes, give it a whirl just for the sake of it :)
@Derek Clements
No worries, I’ve done my research and know what to expect from Lynx. Although I must say that my browsing experience is pretty golden already the way I’ve set up Brave, today’s web can still be annoying at times. Sometimes you just want to focus on text / some basic info. Lynx will be some sort of escapism for me, if you will. I’ll check it out and report back if necessary, in case I find some unexpected oddity or have questions.
Hi ..
Thanks for posting your list, I went through it and checked my entries, they pretty much match your list, its always useful to have as many references as possible.
Thanks again,
Peter Newton [London UK]
The close red button does not log-out : eg , Google is still signed in .
I have to press Quit
Firefox in private mode should do this ?
For those using Linux:
Firefox Telemetry Slice & Dice, in Linux (partial) 1/5/20 #2
https://pastebin.com/anZCprac
It still works on Linux. I wish it were featured here, but I’m sure the more popular it gets, the more Mozilla would want to, IMO, change things.
And we’re talking about deactivating all modules, as if you didn’t have any?
Updates are good, but when they are correct!
Firefox is the portal for a wonderful time surfing the internet. I’m already taken in with this update, definitely gonna get it.
@lexington:
Sounds dreamy :)
P.S: Please forgive my typos above^, namely:
1. “be valued” should read, “be a valued”.
2. “visits and post here” should read, “visits and posts here”.
@ Iron Heart: Would you be considering consolidating all of your hardening tips for Brave in one location perchance? I realise that it’s “a bit rich” of me to ask, however it would be valued resource I speculate.
General Disclaimer: Currently my visits and post here are via the Lynx browser, which is as some of you may know, a very basic tool. This means I cannot reply to any comment within the bounds of said comment, instead any reply of mine will appear in the primary comment list. Unfortunately this is a limitation of Lynx’s interaction with this site.
@Derek Clements
My own Brave setup can be found here:
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/07/05/behave-for-chrome-and-firefox-warns-you-of-port-scans-and-local-attacks/#comment-4467393
Here is an update to that, covering more recent Brave versions:
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/08/25/here-is-what-is-new-and-changed-in-firefox-80-0/#comment-4471709
I am actually planning to renew the above post and include the updates in it, I might also go into greater detail regarding my extension settings. That being said, I can’t do it here in an off-topic manner. I plan to do it in the next Brave-related article or somewhere else when appropriate. I do not plan to post this under Firefox / Chrome / Edge / Opera articles because that’s just off-topic and distracting. But yeah, I certainly plan to, stay tuned.
PS: I have respect for Lynx, I actually plan to play around with it in an experimental fashion, to see what it’s like. :D
Some people are beyond help, what do they say about horses and water ?
Hello … yet again :)
NOT in LINUX :) try downloading a copy of Linux Mint, then you can be free of ALL of these irritating issues. lol
Peter Newton [London UK]
@Peter Newton: Mint is not developed to keep FF private. On any Linux machine you need browser protection.
remind me maybe in 10 years when linux will actually be useful on a workstation. you know, for things besides terminal fiddling.
Hello … again :)
A user browser agent is common to ALL browsers in one form or another, check shields up at grc.com [Gibson Research Corporation] if you’re concerned at that level, you might as well stay off line, or try using Linux, after all the site needs to have SOME clue as to what browser you are using.
I love the way people automatically assume I’m using Windows ! lol
Peter Newton [London UK] :)
“Firefox Default Browser Agent†is an entirely different, non optional, program bunded with firefox fyi.
@Yuliya,
That’s not true, per my post above it’s just a scheduled task that can be disabled or deleted and its corresponding “default-browser-agent.exe” file deleted as well from the Firefox installation folder all without affecting functionality of the browser itself.
In the same way I can block all of Chrome’s home calls via hosts. At the end of the day every program will only be able to do what the OS it is running on allows it to. This does not make firefox any less of a malware.
Hi all …
From reading through the comments made here, on the lack of privacy virtues that Firefox has out of the box, I get the feeling that one major point has been over looked, the fact that you have the OPTION to harden Firefox for privacy.
Yes .. it may be a lot of work for lazy people, whom expect everything done for them upon installation, but in the end it IS worthwhile.
The one chrome based browser which I have installed is Vivaldi, and as far as I can determine, it is more or less devoid of options for privacy hardening. How does this compare to other chrome browsers ? I have no idea, why do I have it installed ? for the odd occasions where there are incompatibilities with web pages, and access to the range of chrome plugins, some of which may not be available or compatible with Firefox.
My point is this, in Firefox you have the OPTION to harden for privacy, how does this compare with Chrome or Chromium ? I’d hazard a guess that the options are limited, all things considered, Google has to get their pint of blood somehow don’t they ? and at your expense ?
Privacy is only achieved with EFFORT, if you are not prepared to make it, then suffer the consequences, in the meantime you drag the rest of us down to your level, with your casual acceptance of privacy infringement, which currently may not seem to be significant, but one day will be all too apparent.
Peter Newton [London UK]
@Peter Newton: it is not even about being able to harden the browser in terms of privacy. The real problem is that with every update Mozilla may have turned on snooping, telemetry, whatever, so one has to re-examine everything, and again after the next update.
That is anything but privacy-friendly behaviour.
@Klaas Vaak
Exactly. Nobody would complain if their philosophy would still be the one of the 2000s, but it isn’t. They introduce more of that stuff on a regular basis. Life on Ungoogled Chromium or Brave is much more peaceful.
Truth.
You’ve got no control over “Firefox Default Browser Agent”, mate. It makes you mozilla’s puppet, with zero control over this black box which exfiltrates data off your PC without any user knowledge or warning. Now in ESR too. gg
@Yuliya
If you’re referring to the scheduled task (see link below), you do have control over it as it can be disabled or even deleted.
https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/09/mozilla-installs-scheduled-telemetry-task-on-windows-with-firefox-75/
@Peter Newton
> Yes .. it may be a lot of work for lazy people, whom expect everything done for them upon installation, but in the end it IS worthwhile.
Peter, this is not about lazy people, this is about Mozilla failing to improve user privacy in areas where they easily could. See, they have to strike a balance between web compatibility and privacy, because turning on options enhancing the latter might negatively impact the former, more often than not. However, there are settings they could easily change to be user-friendly by default, but don’t. Examples? Prefetching, resource timing, various APIs related to fingerprinting, not sending every key press in the address bar to Google before the user even hits enter etc. pp. (there is more)
> The one chrome based browser which I have installed is Vivaldi, and as far as I can determine, it is more or less devoid of options for privacy hardening. How does this compare to other chrome browsers ?
Vivaldi isn’t privacy-centric, Vivaldi is customization-centric. Browsers that are centered around privacy include Brave and Bromite (Bromite is Android-only), to a lesser degree Ungoogled Chromium (I say “to a lesser” degree here because Ungoogled Chromium does little to enhance website-facing protections, it only strips away unsolicited connections to Google).
> My point is this, in Firefox you have the OPTION to harden for privacy, how does this compare with Chrome or Chromium ?
This might surprise you, but: Not too favorable for Firefox. I can only talk about Brave because I have only little experience with Vivaldi; Brave tries to improve user privacy as much as possible without impacting web compatibility too much. The privacy protections that are enabled by default (excluding Brave Shields here) are documented here:
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-Chromium-(features-we-disable-or-remove)
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Fingerprinting-Protections
You can tell that they are constantly working to improve user privacy here, too:
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/projects/2
I also recommend the “What has Brave done for my privacy lately?” series on the Brave blog, where they talk in greater depth about their recent progress in various areas.
Because Brave enables various privacy protections by default, while Firefox doesn’t, it’s no surprise that it was also found to be the most privacy-respecting browser out of the box recently, in an independent study:
https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf
It has more privacy-related UI options than Vivaldi, however, it lacks about:config. Do I consider that a problem? Nope, because as you can infer from the links above, most values which I would have to change in Firefox via about:config are already set to their sane defaults in Brave*, rendering access to them irrelevant for me. That you have to change them in the first place in FF is not a good sign at all, even though the access to about:config offers isn’t to be snuffed at, of course. But then again, I do not need it.
* If you don’t trust that the Brave developers have set them to benevolent values, you can verify this with various test websites – I did, because I am not blindly trusting, either.
> I’d hazard a guess that the options are limited, all things considered, Google has to get their pint of blood somehow don’t they ? and at your expense ?
No, they don’t necessarily get their “pint of blood” (unless you use Google Chrome, obviously). The UI structure of Chromium, notably the lack of an equivalent of about:config, means that any configuration change has to happen at the backend level, in the “innards” of the browser, if you will, i.e. this is best left to the developers maintaining the Chromium-based browser you use. Benevolent browsers like Brave make many changes (dare I say, far more than Mozilla) in favor of the user behind the scenes, it’s just that the stuff is less accessible to the end user. But then again, I don’t care because their default settings are what I would also set, they strike a very good balance between maximum usability and maximum privacy already. While yes, Firefox enables you to run even more extreme privacy configurations, it doesn’t make sense to do so in real life, because web compatibility will then be in a sorry state very quickly. I bet that your typical hardened Firefox is NOT superior to my Brave setup, because as far as I can tell, the Brave developers already enable all options actually worth enabling, without breaking websites to an insane degree.
> Privacy is only achieved with EFFORT,
NO. I actually stopped reading there. You think it’s impossible for a developer of an application to strike a good balance between usability and privacy by default? Think again. There are various projects out there that don’t need an insane amount of configuration to achieve a decent privacy level. Period. In the specific case of Firefox, privacy violations stem from various motivations:
– Telemetry: Mozilla figuring out which features people use without having to go through the nasty process of user feedback, telemetry also enables them to lower the number of QA-realted employees.
– Pocket: Monetary reasons, Pocket (the company) is also owned by Mozilla Corp.
– Firefox Experiments: Mozilla mistaking their user base to be free testers for whatever project they envision.
– Bad website-facing settings: Mostly not wanting to hurt Google too much (Mozilla relies on Google’s good will).
I would agree with your statement that privacy requires effort if we are talking about total anonymity here (e.g. what journalists in oppressive regimes need), your average browser can’t fulfill such needs, we are entering the Tor and Tails OS area here. In this case a certain skill level and dedication is required, no doubt.
But for a good privacy level in commonly used projects? No, just no.
I hope you get where I am coming from, I am also not trying to advertise Brave here. Brave still has weaknesses, but the devs are actively working on making it better every day, and they do enable user-friendly settings by default after discussing their web compatibility implications, I see their dedication all the time. I cant say the same about Firefox, it’s default privacy is atrocious and has been for a while. Can you modify / sanitize it yourself? Yes. Should you have to? No. My argument in a nutshell.
And yeah, I used to be one of those configuring Firefox with dozens of about:config changes, I don’t anymore. I noticed I can achieve the same with Brave. Mozilla’s missteps and the add-on armageddon back then only sealed the deal for me.
Firefox is irrelevant to modern internet. I know it you know it and everybody else. It’s time for firefox to go away and let new browser come in. Of course it’s very difficult and expensive to build new browser with it’s own engine. Even microsoft has given up. Still… i think facebook or amazon could do it. Is it good? Yes and no.
I hope the crash fix filters down to Waterfox in a hurry.
â– Fixed the zoom-in keyboard shortcut on Japanese language build. See this bug for additional details.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1661895
This issue is cases of bug tracking on forums.mozillazine.jp:
https://forums.mozillazine.jp/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18131
Posted: Thursday, August 27, 2020 13:20
It was caused by mistakenly deleting the program code due to the carelessness of Japanese localization. Which was to be fixed in version 81 and later.
We are glad that the issue was resolved quickly.
I wonder if the release engineering guys at Mozilla are as pissed off as I am that management chose to go down the rapid release, continuous integration bullshit bandwagon that rarely seems to allow them to release a version without a quick bug fix followup.
Really, it’s basically continuous releases, not continuous integration. Here’s one little new feature, of interest to few people if any, … oh and here’s the rest of the changes to mozilla-central we played around with this month. Please excuse us if, as is likely on recent form, there’s unforeseen bugs in those changes. Rest assure we’ll have fixes next week.
Prefer the days when software was released when it was ready.
The only browser that doesn’t get continued bug fixes via rolling updates is Safari. Every Chromium based browser gets nearly weekly or bi-weekly bug/security patches that are pushed through. Firefox is hardly alone with this habit. Also, for what its worth 79.0 never got a follow-up bug-fix or release.
While I also wish software stability played a bigger role in release schedules, there is also the balancing act that Firefox, Chrome, Edge, etc. engineers must play between satisfying marketing’s wishes to push out new releases for media attention, while also providing a stable experience.
For whatever it is worth, in my experience Firefox is just as stable as Chrome and WAY more stable than upstart browsers like Brave & Vivaldi which suffer from occasional noticeable bugs.
@Mike W.
Safari is updated whenever iOS / iPadOS / macOS updates, though typically the updates are just bugfixing. A new major version is introduced in the fall usually. Similar release cadence to Firefox ESR, actually.
Can’t confirm your assessment regarding Firefox. It’s atrocious on the Mac, battery drain + mediocre interface performance (my usual thoughts regarding its privacy aside, since this is just about basic software quality). Brave is far more stable here. Vivaldi was stable here, too, but also suffered from battery drain – which is odd. However, Brave and Vivaldi are not really “upstarts”, technically. While yes, the projects / companies are relatively new, the codebase these browsers are based on (Chromium) isn’t exactly a new project.
@Iron Heart
I referred to Brave & Vivaldi as upstarts more due to the relatively small teams/market share each browser currently has. It wasn’t meant as a slight to either company.
In my experience Firefox has fixed many of its MacOS issues with Firefox 70. Since then it has been a much better experience both in terms of performance and battery/RAM usage. When I use a Chromium-based browser on my Mac Mini for an extended period of time, it gets very warm. Firefox will heat it up, but never the point I become concerned.
In reality, using any non-Safari browser on MacOS is filled with drawbacks, though having access to uBlock Origin helps offset some of that.
@Mike W.: I am on a Mac and I can assure you Firefox is a battery drain, I had to ditch it, and went for Ungoogled Chromium.
You state:
I have not had any real drawbacks with UC. I am ready to jump the Chromium ship any time, but have not had to do so, so far.
@Mike W.
I didn’t perceive it as a slight (though technically if it would had been one, it would have been one towards the browser, not towards me haha). I just wanted to clarify that, while the companies behind Brave / Vivaldi are young, the codebase is not. Blink descends from WebKit, which in turn descends from KHTML. All Chromium-based browsers are more or less extensions of that “family tree”.
Firefox is still atrocious on the Mac, I know it because I’ve witnessed it personally, though this may vary between macOS versions and might also vary between different Mac hardware.
Chromium performance on Mac is OK, Safari is automatically disqualified here (for me) because of the extension situation, as well as the mediocre privacy level (though this is still better than in other mainstream browsers by default). I also prefer my browser to be open source. Yet I know Safari is a good browser in terms of performance & extending battery life.
@Iron Heart
I was onboard with Firefox being terrible on MacOS pre-Firefox 70. They seem to have hammered out a lot of the issues that were present with Firefox on Mac with that version. Granted I am using relatively new Mac hardware so that might improve things. I just know that streaming online video with Firefox seems to not meltdown my Mac like it does if I use Chrome or Brave. Vivaldi on Mac is atrocious, but that is to be expected since Vivaldi has never and likely never will be a speed or efficiency demon. Nor does it try to be.
What? No hate for Mozilla yet?!
@Jack Why would anyone hate Firefox? It’s currently the best open-source webbrowser and the only real alternative to Chrome’s monopolisation of the internet.
Waterfox is significantly faster than recent releases of Slowzilla Firefox, better maintained, and does not go out if its way to delete or destroy user data, settings, and preferences every time the devs feel like they better release some sort of update to justify their existence as Mozilla’s employee count dives toward zero.
I got sick of FF when I found I was expected to go through a lot of tedious work that the devs could have just automated with a one-click option (to carry old settings, add-ons, bookmarks, preferences, etc. forward to the new release.) Any excuses they have for NOT making that migration easy are parrot droppings.
Besides, Waterfox is very fast and the new UI has what I call actual improvements. It seems to be updated monthly and the transition to new releases has been smooth the last three or four times I have done it.
Although there is a Sync option for Waterfox, I have little inclination to use it. Mozilla practically beats users over the head to get them to use Sync. Why would I trust it? — especially when most peeps are browsing on mobile devices whereas I stick to gaming laptops and use my smartphone for communication 98% of the time I use it at all.
The lack of an option to Sync (copy all elements of a user’s configuration) from one device to another one (using a private network) that is also running the same browser is glaring. Why the hell should Mozilla or any other 3rd party have a chance to snag private data for the sake of users “Syncing” it over what may not be a very secure network?
Somewhere along the line, Mozilla seemed forget that users spend a lot of time customizing the look, feel, and functionality of their Web browser if they use it much. Another thing that was probably accepted as a “best practice” is giving the user a wide variety of choices of how to fix the browser when things go horribly awry. Think: restore from full backup OR reset/restore browser to original factory release specs.
Microsoft has been using that as the alternative that users who cannot or will not pay the outrageous prices for support contracts with MS to fix their computers running Windows and Office to work when the software decides blue is the perfect background for the display as it decides to take a long break from functioning as the user expects.
The thing that impresses me most about Firefox is that it is Open Source, so others can start with some past version of FF that worked well and start a new fork from there, e.g., Waterfox.
If Mozilla’s paying corporate customers find that they now have to keep paying more so that their increasingly peculiar and proprietary browser with their pet features will be working next year, and the year after that, they have only themselves to blame.
In my experience, it is not feasible to cater to the whims of some well-healed patrons as a product is updated and upgraded if the much larger number of users who expect that sort of product (a Web browser) to be free (for most non-commercial purposes, anyway) just as similar products almost always have been.
I have not used Opera much in years, but it seems to remain a popular freeware browser for a small segment of the market. Some people tolerate ads. I do not think that is something that would go over well with typical Firefox users.
If some tech giant would just buy out Mozilla and get it back on some good path to making Firefox one of the most popular browsers five years from now (losing a lot of the recently added bloatware and other dreck), there really is no reason it could not make a successful comeback, as long as the browser itself is considered a loss-leader that happens to be a great interface for one or more very useful products that many individual users would be willing to pay for.
It’s so delusional how people keep repeating the same few sentences: “Chromium is bad”, “Firefox is the only alternative to Chrome”, and “Firefox is the most privacy-friendly browser”. Yeah, nope.
1) Chromium is a lot more secure than Gecko – discussed and proved a million times. Using Chromium doesn’t necessarily mean all your privacy is automatically exposed to Google – discussed and proved a million times.
2) Since when Firefox is the only alternative to Chrome? How can a browser by Mozilla, a company that is 90%+ sponsored by Google to be an alternative to Google’s products? If anything, Mozilla has slowly but steadily been following Google’s directions when it comes to Firefox. Shall we take a Mozilla’s mobile browser? Are we going to ignore the FACT that Mozilla removed so many privacy-friendly features from their mobile browser? Are we? Yes, apparently.
3) Firefox is the most privacy-friendly browser? Is it really? Do you guys install a fresh copy of Firefox and have good privacy straight away? Why do we ignore the fact that one has to do so many about:config tweaks only to harden Firefox’s terrible out of the box privacy? Why do we ignore the fact that Firefox, a browser that promises security and privacy is terrible in both fields after a fresh install? Why do we ignore the fact that Firefox has the majority of privacy and security about:config settings disabled by default, but at the same time is being advertised as a “private and secure browser”? Oh, and don’t come at me with “If you want your browser to respect your privacy, you must do some work”. Yes, I have to do a lot of work when it comes to Firefox. But why does Mozilla keep telling everyone that their browser is private and secure when it’s neither straight after fresh install? So people must be always conscious when they install a product that promises them privacy and security? Ask yourselves, if Mozilla really gave an F about your privacy, wouldn’t they enable the privacy-enhancing about:config settings by default, why would we need to browse the web in attempts to find settings that improve our privacy? So many easy questions and yet the majority of Firefox users won’t bother asking, it’s easier to hate Chromium because that’s what the majority of privacy-oriented communities recommend.
Hate my comment as much as you like, I won’t ever bother to reply. But if you’re going to ignore the fact that Firefox is a terrible browser when it comes to out of the box privacy and security, at least don’t fool other people the same way you’re fooling yourselves.
Mobile Firefox comes built-in with tracking services that cannot be disabled. I don’t mean the checks inside Settings, but trackers that come built-in from the app that cannot be turned off. The app Exodus for Android is used to scan all your installed apps and report what trackers they have.
One of these trackers is called Google Analytics, there is nothing else to say about Firefox. Those who blindly defend it need a reality check. Firefox was the king of browsers between roughly 2003 and 2010, but after that it’s become a disappointing garbage that only continues to disappoint as Mozilla fires their quality engineers and programmers and replaces them with folks with zero talent only to fill their diversity quota.
@Allwynd:
When you disable those checks in Settings for all three options, does Firefox still send any data to those tracking services?
@ShintoPlasm
To those tracking services specifically? No. To a wide range of other domains, without you having an option to turn this off, because of the lack of about:config? Yes.
PS: Consider Bromite, much more private than this mess by default. Just saying. Death of about:config = no more decent privacy level in Firefox.
@Iron Heart
That is a little harsh. While I don’t think Firefox is in the same realm as Bromite in terms of privacy, I think saying there is no decent privacy level in Firefox is a bit harsh to the Firefox devs. Firefox is still 10x better privacy wise than Chrome, Edge, or Safari, and that is really who Firefox is competing against.
Sure extra-hardened browsers like Brave or Bromite might exist, but neither of those browsers can say they are more than niche browsers designed to appeal to crypto-fans or diehard privacy users comfortable with side loading and F-Droid.
@Mike W.
I think you misread my comment. I was talking about Firefox on Android. Firefox on Android comes with non-removable trackers and lacks about:config. Without about:config, it is closer to Chrome than it is to Brave or Bromite.
You can modify Firefox to be privacy-respecting on the desktop.
@Malte
Chromium is open source, something being open source and it being a monopoly is inherently contradictory. Anyone can take the Chromium code and modify it, that’s what all the Chromium-based browsers out there do.
Firefox can be forced to accept whatever Google wants just like the Chromium-based browsers can be, simply because Google owns the most popular web services (Search, YouTube, GMail etc.). If they start to use some technology Mozilla dislikes there, how high is the chance of Mozilla not adopting this, thereby excluding themselves from said service? Should be about 0%, eh? You can stop pretending that using Firefox (which is also funded by Google, for what it’s worth) achieves anything more than using a Chromium-based browser. Thank you very much.
Common sense dose badly needed, it seems.
I get the feeling that if ‘Trump Technology’ purchased Mozilla the acolytes would still be supporting them, leadership matters and right now IMO the CEO with slightly darker dyed hair is equally odious.
Her wrong headed leadership has been a disaster.
Haha, every new Firefox post is like setting a mouse trap.
@Ray
Every Firefox article is filled with fanboy noise drowning out the common sense.
My exact thoughts!
I gave up h8ing mozilla 9 years ago and moved on to another browser.
Hate is a word used mostly by upset infants….Guess that’s Mozco’s target demographic.
@Jack
Paranoia?