This just showed up on my home page after an update. I wasn’t asked and never gave any sort of consent.

  • AeroLemming@lemm.eeOP
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    2 months ago

    Are you implying Mozilla paid AccuWeather to have placement on it’s browser? No, AccuWeather paid Mozilla. Mozilla sold the data to AccuWeather. Mozilla made money.

    • CrypticCoffee@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Have you got a source that shows that data of FF users actually went to AccuWeather or is this purely speculation?

    • єχтяαναgαηтєηzумє@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Why would Mozilla pay AccuWeather in user data? This would cut into their revenue and be horrendous press. Doing so makes no sense, legit entirely illogical. AccuWeather paid to get placement on the new tabs page. But, if you’re this worried about it and haven’t spent time in about:config to prevent fingerprinting, tracking, and location data collection, start there for sure. Either way, this seems like a huge stretch and wouldn’t make sense for Mozilla try and pull off.

      • solrize@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I think you are saying Mozilla sold tabs screen placement to Accuweather, which means Accuweather gets user IP addresses (and therefore approximate location among other things) when the user launches the browser. So I guess the answer to OP question is yes.

        And yes, opt-out is possible, but a pro-privacy approach would require opt in.

        • єχтяαναgαηтєηzумє@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Oh, I see, I interpreted the statement as Mozilla handing over previously collected user data as payment for getting AccuWeather’s widget.

          However, any webpage visited in a bowser provides this info. So if you haven’t stopped it happening from the get, you’re handing this data over in mass. But thanks for clearing that up for me!

          • solrize@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Sure. Normally I think of visiting a site in a browser as navigating to that site on purpose. If Mozilla sells placement in the browser so that the browser navigates to that site automatically (unless you disable that), it’s invasive. That said I do remember Mozilla sets the default start page to something annoying and I had to reconfigure it to about:blank when I set up the system.