> Less than one percent of users in Germany installing Firefox from our main download page will receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz recommendations enabled out of the box.

> Cliqz does not build browsing profiles for individual users and discards the user’s IP address once the data is collected.

> One of Mozilla’s core privacy principles is No Surprises: we will use and share data in ways that are transparent and benefit our users. That is why we are telling you about this today. We

> We hope that users will appreciate the improved experience, but if users want to turn it off, they can always disable data collection or remove the Cliqz add-on entirely.

Excerpt: To gain your trust we have open-sourced all of our front-end code (and hence everything that sends something from your computer). We know very few people will ever look into the code, but: you or everyone else could every time check that we’re honest. And hence we cannot hide anything.

Excerpt: History and bookmarks are always processed only locally and never sent to us

Excerpt No IP addresses collected

https://cliqz.com/en/privacy-browser

I switched years ago because of performance reasons. Whenever I tried to switch back I felt stabbed in the back shortly thereafter by Mozilla.

So - with Chrome I know what I am getting and I treat it as such. With FF I only wanted a Browser. I never aigned up for their (internal and external) advertising, Pocket stuff and other st like this.

So no - because FF brands itself as a privacy option, I hold them to a different and much higher standard - and the fail every time.

> "PSA: Huber Burda Media, the majority owner of Cliqz, which owns many media and digital brands, owns the computer magazine "Chip", its online platform offers "secure installers" which are used to distribute malware (adware)."

and

> "One interesting thing I've found on the Cliqz about page, is that they call themselves a "small startup". This is a lie since they're a sub division of Burda Media which is one of the biggest media companies in Europe. How can you trust a company if they even lie on their about page?"

and the Booking.com snippet https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/abfdym/mozilla_on_...

> "I skimmed the source code of the Cliqz extension back during the scandal and as far as I could tell it sent back enough information for it to be possible to identify and create profiles for quite many of the users. Now it is perfectly possible that Cliqz were honest and handled the sensitive data carefully (e.g. by throwing away IPs), but we have no way of knowing that."

Remember 2006 when AOL search data was deliberately anonymized and made public, and then de-anonymized? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak

Even if Cliqz do "throw away IPs" that's not enough for it to no longer be personally identifying. It says nothing about Cliqz throwing away the data. How long before Cliqz realizes they're sitting on a trove of "valuable" data and changes their policy so they do retrospectively build profiles of users, or sell out to Facebook?

That's not responsible stewardship of data, and disclosing it on a blog page nobody read, just saying "it might happen to you, quietly and opt-out" is not responsible disclosure.

I could go on.

My problem is that every time I wanted to return to ff, Mozilla f...ed Up again.

I feel like I am between a rock and a hard place with ff and Chrome.

Of course they do. That's literally their business model, to use that data to serve more relevant ads. If they gave it to third parties then they would lose their biggest competitive advantage.

And really, they couldn't be any more clear about it: https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/

>We do not sell your personal information to anyone.

If you're going to suggest they are lying about it, then please provide some evidence to support that argument.

That's a technically true and practically meaningless statement. No lying required.

Google's business model relies on giving advertisers a way to target you based on that data and to track you to other activities down the line. Advertisers might never see the data itself, but all that means is Google is selling the product that lets advertisers do the things they were going to do if they actually did have the data, just without being able to see your specific info.

Whether you consider that equivalent to selling your data is a separate question. You'll find a lot of disagreement here about it.

I can't remember previously seeing an argument that this is equivalent. Sharing one quality (in this case the ability to target users on Google's platform based on data Google has collected) does not make two things equivalent. Data passing between hands is obviously different than one entity providing an interface for another entity to utilise data without having it themselves, as in the former case you are now trusting both entities to safely store it which increases the chance of public disclosure (or private exposure that results in negative personal effects such as embarrassment and/or blackmail).

HurpaDurpaEdit: s/latter/former

Esp. from a company that tries to brainwash me with this "we care for your privacy" shit. While still using my data.

If they cared for my privacy, they would provide a browser that does not tell FF/Mozilla anything about me other then that I did download it via their original dl-link.

All else the talk about respecting my privacy, my data and stuff like this is nothing more. Just talk. And I do not like being bullshitted.

And that is the difference to Chrome: I know - because Google tells me - My data is being used. I know what I am in for. This is honesty - even if the end result is that I am the product. At least I am it knowingly.