1630410 - Default Browser Agent has spyware behaviour

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Default Browser Agent, defect)

Description

[jp]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:76.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/76.0

Steps to reproduce:

Install Firefox.

Actual results:

Default Browser Agent and a scheduled task were added to my computer.

It's a separate software, installed without the user knowing about it, that schedules a task to run even when you're not using Firefox, that reports to Mozilla about other software I use on my computer. It's spyware behaviour.

Expected results:

Mozilla should not collect information about other software usage on my computer without me activating a clear preference. And especially when FIrefox is not even running.
At minimum, it should be opt-in. At best it should not exist.

Comment 1

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Resetting severity to default of --.

Comment 2

[Augusto Pace]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is a bug or it is intended but it might be related to this enhancement bug 1602463. Anyway I'm setting component to Toolkit - General for someone to take a look at this.

Thanks.

Comment 3

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

Please see https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2020/03/16/understanding-default-browser-trends/ that details our approach.
This data helps us better understand how people use Firefox so we can best prioritize product improvements - this data cannot be associated with regular profile based telemetry data and this respects user configured telemetry opt out.
Since we don't intend to remove this I'll resolve the bug for now but feel free to reopen if needed.

Comment 4

[jp]

This data helps us better understand how people use Firefox so we can best prioritize product improvements

It collects usage of other software on my computer ! To me this goes beyond telemetry.

Comment 5

[jp]

Will you collect info about other passwords software next ? "to better understand how people use Lockwise" ?