836537 - Complete Privacy-Policy Review for Geolocated Snippets

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Privacy Graveyard :: Product Review, task)

Description

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

Initial Questions:

Project/Feature Name: Geolocated Snippets
Tracking  ID:836099
Description:
Firefox OS will land on devices in specific countries at different times. This project will allow us to use the snippets area of about:home to notify users only in those countries about the availability of Firefox OS devices. 
Additional Information:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Websites/Snippets/Geolocated-Snippets
Urgency: 2 days
Key Initiative: Firefox OS
Release Date: 2013-04-02
Project Status: active
Mozilla Data: Yes
New or Change: Existing
Mozilla Project: Marketing Initiative
Mozilla Related: snippets in about:home, the default home page for browser users.
Separate Party: Yes

Privacy Policy: Yes
Privacy Policy Link: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/legal/privacy/firefox.html
User Data: Yes
Data Safety  ID: not filed; please advise on need
Legal  ID: not filed; please advise on need

Comment 1

[Tom Lowenthal]

Looks like engagement to me; passing to Stacy. Does this need to be a secret bug?

Comment 2

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

No need for secrecy on this.

Comment 3

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Thanks Tom and Justin.  Alex and I had an initial meeting on this last week with Winston.  I've copied him so he can add to the bug too.

Comment 4

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

The interface for privacy controls has landed on the dev server. This is just the interface: The backend code is not complete. In other words, you can't actually submit changes and have them be saved in the database or have them apply to viewers. However, I think the backend functionality is explained fairly well by the interface.

1) Here is the interface where users will edit their privacy settings. There are settings on several tabs:

https://mozillians-dev.allizom.org/en-US/user/edit

2) You'll also want to see the profile view interface; we added a dropdown there that lets users see their profile as if they were members of a particular group. To get there, click on your username at the top right and choose "View Profile".

Your feedback is welcome!

Comment 5

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

=== Please disregard comment 4. It does not apply to this bug. ===

The new client-side code for Geolocated Snippets is now online. This means there is a working end-to-end system ready for review. I added instructions for doing so on the wiki:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Websites/Snippets/Geolocated-Snippets#Testing_on_Staging

Comment 6

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Attachment: Changes to Snippets section of Firefox Privacy Policy

Attaching the most recent version of the changes to the Firefox privacy policy for Snippets.  This should match the one Winston used to draft a governance post.

Comment 7

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

The new Mozillians privacy controls are in staging and tagged for a 3/28 release. 

https://mozillians.allizom.org/en-US/user/edit/

Comment 8

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

I'm terribly sorry -- comment 7 does not apply to this bug.

Comment 9

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Governance post has been drafted and posted.  Review period is complete.  Comments have been incorporated.  Updated version has been sent to Winston and Justin, so they can open a WebDev bug to replace the current "snippets" text in the Firefox privacy policy with the new text below. As soon as the new text is live, they can turn on the feature.  I will close this bug when that's complete.

New copy:

"Snippets Firefox's default home page (<about:home>) loads small bits of information that we think will be useful to you. We call these "snippets". You can see them right below the search bar.

Once per day, Firefox gets new snippets from Mozilla. Whenever you see a snippet, that snippet makes a request to Mozilla, so that we can count how often snippets are viewed.  This request to Mozilla sends the name of the snippet and is securely transmitted over HTTPS. Aside from this and standard log data collected as a part of any web request, snippets in Firefox does not send other information to Mozilla.

To help display relevant snippets, your Firefox browser sends Mozilla a monthly request to look up your location at a country level using your IP address. We then send that country level information back to your Firefox browser, where it's stored locally. Your Firefox browser (not our web servers) will then pick snippets to show you based on the locally stored country information.

Aside from providing you with the snippets service, we use the information from these requests to estimate what fraction of Firefox users click on each snippet (broken down into general categories like Firefox version and geographic area). We will not use any of the information in this request to attempt to identify you or your web browsing activity on other websites, and we aggregate the info we receive into these general categories as soon as is practical."

Old text to replace:

"Snippets Firefox's default home page (<about:home>) loads snippets of info that we think will be useful to you. You can see them right below the search bar. Once per day, Firefox gets new snippets from Mozilla. Whenever you see a snippet, that snippet makes a request to Mozilla, so that we can count how often snippets are viewed.

This request to Mozilla only sends the name of the snippet and is securely transmitted over HTTPS. We only use the information from these requests to estimate what fraction of Firefox users click on each snippet, and we break down this info into general categories like Firefox version and geographic area. We will not use any of the information in this request to attempt to identify you or your activity anywhere else online, and we aggregate the info we receive into these general categories as soon as is practical."

Comment 10

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

Geolocated snippets (and the privacy policy change) have launched! Can we close this bug?

Comment 11

[Stacy Martin [:stacy]]

Yes I'll go ahead and close it.  Thank you for following up on it.  Congrats on launch!