850066 - Consider sending an empty Health Report payload if user has opted out

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Health Report Graveyard :: Client: Desktop, defect, P4)

Description

[Gregory Szorc [:gps]]

One of the goals of FHR is to have a better understanding of how many people actually use Firefox. The accuracy of that figure is significantly undermined if a significant number of users opt out or disable Firefox Health Report.

In this bug, I'm asking us to consider having FHR *always* send a ping, even if FHR is disabled. If FHR is disabled/opted out, the ping would be as minimal as possible. e.g.

{thisPingDate: "2013-03-11", disabled: true}

The end goal is to have *some* signal that a client out there exists (so our metrics are calibrated properly) while respecting data privacy and user choice. That may sound conflicting ("true user choice would allow opt out of everything"), but if the signal is empty and the server is not tracking users, then this empty ping would essentially boil down to a counter.

While I frame this bug around FHR, the request essentially boils down to "have Firefox phone home with no way to opt out [aside from network firewalls, etc]".

If the baseline proposal is accepted (would require Privacy, Legal, etc sign-off, I imagine), then the next step would be to identify what information, if any, could be part of the request. Here are some things I could see people wanting to add:

* Why FHR was disabled. Checkbox unchecked? One of hidden preferences changed?
* Build ID
* Channel ID

I'm only asking us to consider this as a means to gain more complete visibility into our user base. Currently, we have a void of unknown size and knowing the size of that void (especially over time) will provide valuable information to Mozilla.

Comment 1

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

FHR is going away per bug 1209088, wontfix.