On Sat, 27 Aug 2016 12:10:26 +0200
Richard Z <rz(a)linux-m68k.org> wrote:
Firefox is doing this. You have to disable the spyware called
"safe
browsing" to get rid of it. And yes, it has been exploited by
intelligence agencies around the world and may submit every single
URL you visit to google if they want it.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=368255
That was an interesting read. Thanks.
I actually run nightly compiled locally, with a .mozconfig that turns
off lots of firefox capability that I don't need, and is just attack
surface for me. I don't have safe-browsing enabled, but I don't have
it disabled explicitly either, so it must be a default setting. I'll
compile it out from now on. Safe-browsing! Talk about double speak.
In the meantime, I can just turn it off in preferences.
And your answer clears up what I was seeing in the umatrix log. There
were lots of entries for
safe-browsing.google.com. And I even saw the
cookie get recreated there, after self-destructing cookies had removed
it, as a persistent-cookie.
In that bugzilla the google guy noted the hostility to google. But it
has to be admitted that this is definitely a conflict of interest for
them. They make more money, the more they know about the person they
are serving the ad to. So, a promise to not use data goes against
their business incentives. Sort of like adblock plus selling exceptions
to their ad blocking to ad providers.
Of course, google have woven themselves so successfully into the web,
they probably don't need this data to perfectly identify a browser
everywhere it goes. :-)