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1. Embed this notice
   Ryan Baumann (ryanfb@digipres.club)'s status on Friday, 13-Sep-2024 11:14:41 JST Ryan Baumann

   Mozilla, reading the room extremely well, seemingly just recently flipped the switch to enable-by-default sponsored weather results from AccuWeather in every new Firefox tab you open. Clicking "Learn more" takes you here, with zero information on if your location is sent to AccuWeather every time you open a new tab: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-items-on-firefox-new-tab-page

   Probably only noticed because I normally have a blank new tab page but this showed up after updating Firefox!

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Ryan Baumann (ryanfb@digipres.club)'s status on Friday, 13-Sep-2024 11:14:57 JST Ryan Baumann

     in reply to

     Furthermore, would "hiding weather on new tab" actually stop this feature from still regularly sending my location to AccuWeather? Great question! I have no idea

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     vv221 (vv221@fediverse.dotslashplay.it)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:35:18 JST vv221

     in reply to
     The worst enemy of Firefox is not Google Chrome. It is Mozilla.
     
     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Ryan Baumann (ryanfb@digipres.club)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:36:08 JST Ryan Baumann

     in reply to

     • Danny Colin

     @dannycolin good to know that this is actually MY problem that I personally need to fix for everyone because I’m the one who raised it, and not Mozilla’s for shipping a feature to wide release in this sorry-ass poorly-documented state. And fixing the docs doesn’t fix the underlying pref behavior or defaulting to being newly enabled without consent on every install

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Danny Colin (dannycolin@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:36:08 JST Danny Colin

     in reply to

     @ryanfb And throwing rocks at people on the web doesn't fix the underlying problem either. At the very least, you could have asked someone and/or file a bug as I said earlier. Someone would actually have been more than happy to help fix the issue because SURPRISE it got filed pretty quickly when folks at Mozilla discovered it https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1918539

     Again, I guess it's easier to blame the world and enjoy your feeling of entitlement. That's definitely how we'll reclaim the internet.

   • Embed this notice
     Danny Colin (dannycolin@floss.social)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:36:09 JST Danny Colin

     in reply to

     • Zack Batist
     • Osmose

     @ryanfb @zackbatist @Osmose You know what's nice about support.mozilla.org is that you can contribute to it now that you know the answer.

     You know what's even more mind blowing? You could have asked someone before going on a rant but hey I guess it's easier to shit on Mozilla than helping.

   • Embed this notice
     Ryan Baumann (ryanfb@digipres.club)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:36:10 JST Ryan Baumann

     in reply to

     • Zack Batist
     • Osmose

     @zackbatist @Osmose they absolutely need to link to that from the weather section of the support page “learn more” currently links to from the weather widget

   • Embed this notice
     Zack Batist (zackbatist@archaeo.social)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:36:16 JST Zack Batist

     in reply to

     • Osmose

     @Osmose @ryanfb It's documented for another weather-related feature here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/get-your-local-weather-forecast-firefox-address-bar

   • Embed this notice
     Osmose (osmose@digipres.club)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:36:21 JST Osmose

     in reply to

     @ryanfb I dunno if it's documented anywhere and I'm not a fan of the widget, but according to someone on the Mozilla alumni Slack server it sends location data through a proxy such that your location is never tied to your IP address or any other info before AccuWeather sees it.

     I really wish they put that on the settings for it, instead of just... not mentioning it. Ugh.

   • Embed this notice
     Ryan Baumann (ryanfb@digipres.club)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:36:22 JST Ryan Baumann

     in reply to

     After checking about:config, "Hide weather on New Tab" sets the config value "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.showWeather" to "false", but leaves "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.weatherfeed" as the default of "true". So, my suspicion was correct, #Firefox is still sending your location off every 30 minutes to get the weather in the background by default even if you disable this new widget: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/newtab/lib/WeatherFeed.sys.mjs #infosec #privacy

   • Embed this notice
     Ryan Baumann (ryanfb@digipres.club)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:36:22 JST Ryan Baumann

     in reply to

     I think "constantly broadcast my location to a 3rd party by default and don't tell me about it or what's happening with that data and then keep doing it when I think I've disabled it" is pretty obviously a terrible privacy default

     Patrick C Miller :donor: repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Saturday, 14-Sep-2024 19:43:40 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to

     • Danny Colin
     • Zack Batist
     • Osmose
     @dannycolin @ryanfb @zackbatist @Osmose A thing that would be actually mind blowing would be Mozilla becoming community-based, rather than one where the community is effectively a peanut gallery to a few execs.
     
     The fact that they could ship this is an organisational failure, not some accident like a bug.
   • Embed this notice
     Al Sweigart (alsweigart@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 15-Sep-2024 02:43:17 JST Al Sweigart

     in reply to

     @ryanfb https://www.zdnet.com/article/accuweather-caught-sending-geo-location-data-even-when-denied-access/

     "Popular weather app AccuWeather has been caught sending geolocation data to a third-party data monetization firm, even when the user has switched off location sharing."