this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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Firefox

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Mozilla has fired Chief Product Officer Steve Teixeira after cancer diagnosis (mastodon.social)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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sigh

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (2 children)

adding unique IDs to every installation.

I wasn't familiar with that so I did a quick search. For anyone else interested here is some info about it:

"Internet users who download the Firefox web browser from the official Mozilla website get a unique identifier attached to the installer that is submitted to Mozilla on install and first run."

[...]

"Firefox users who prefer to download the browser without the unique identifier may do so in the following two ways:"

  1. Download the Firefox installer from Mozilla's HTTPS repository (formerly the FTP repository).

  2. Download Firefox from third-party download sites that host the installer, e.g., from Softonic.

"The downloaded installers do not have the unique identifier, as they are identical whenever they are downloaded."

In the comments section someone says:

"It seems that getting Firefox from GNU/Linux repos (Debian, etc.), doesn’t come with unique IDs."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Yeah repositories and FTP don't include that, but it is kind shady that the first way to get it (website) for the majority of regular users (Windows/macOS) has a unique ID - after all this is the company that goes all in for privacy...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Must be for ad attribution and install tracking. Only something a major portion of their users are specifically trying to avoid when they're choosing Firefox.