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0 pointsAnimats11y ago0 comments

Read the user reports. The "opt in" is "an offer you can't refuse". If you don't opt in to the spyware, it blocks some major sites, until you remove the whole add-on.

Mozilla used to run job ads: "Work for mankind, not for the man". That's now about as relevant as Google's "Don't be evil."

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RubyPinch11y ago· 2 in thread

the addon works exactly as intended by the developers of said addon

its dickish by the developer, but its not pulling surprises, and you are able to move to competition

There are bad eggs, but the rules work. The bad eggs must ask permission to be bad

Mozilla taking over random add-ons would be worse for the end-user, and would be worse for Mozilla, as they would then have to start maintaining the addons (at least, this is what it seems you are implying, considering the addons were /not/ in a working state before the developer sale, the only way Mozilla (which you specifically blame for this) could make those addons viable is if they started maintaining them against the developer's wishes (reminds me of Apple deleting competition to their new upcoming apps))

They haven't even finished maintenance on Firefox itself. Maintaining every small forgotten plugin, along with dealing with the legal issues that would arise from that, would be a fairly impossible task.

Of course, you probably wouldn't expect them to maintain /every/ small forgotten plugin, but where do you draw the line? How useful does an addon need to be to be directly taken over by Mozilla?

AnimatsOP11y ago

Mozilla has an add-on review process, "AMO". It's weak on privacy rules. I was just looking at the source code for DoNotTrackMePlus. It's in "all the code on one line" style. One wonders how that got through AMO. After some ed-obfusiciation, it's kind of scary. It can tell when you're typing in a credit card number, and tries to sell you their "credit card masking" service. The code encapsulates XMLHttpRequest in a function called "n", so it's hard to find all the places it phones home.

If you have DoNotTrackMePlus installed, I'd recommend un-installing it. Ghostery has a better reputation and fewer unwanted features.

RubyPinch11y ago

AMO is the addon-site itself

the review process isn't against obfuscation, its only against addons which it is prevented from reviewing.

the credit-card thing is mentioned on the description of the addon, same for also the email-muckery stuff

> The code encapsulates XMLHttpRequest in a function called "n", so it's hard to find all the places it phones home.

I honestly don't see how that would make it much harder, personally? just mentally alias `n` to `XMLHttpRequest`

--- ghostery still has a tracking opt-in though, which can be too much for some

Privacy Badger seems to be the "best" bet soon, all automated without any inbuilt knowledge, which is fairly nice.

ghostery probably does similar, and to a better degree currently, but... simply put, I trust EFF more

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