Do you care that FireFox calls home?
Once a day, every day without your knowlege Fire Fox sends information about you via SSL back to the Mozzila servers even if you have disabled the automatic updates feature. Although I highly doubt Mozzila have any malisous intensions with this information, I think users should be told upfront that information is being sent home about them.
But what information is sent anyway?
Don’t worry none of the information they are sending is scary, yes you could be potentially be identified by your ip address but its nothing more to worry about than someone looking through a phone book and finding you phone number.
The information Firefox is sending home is:
- IP address
- What time you were using the product
- What exact version number you were using
- If you are using any of the plugins or addons sent in the disabled list
- Total number of active users of their software
So should I care?
No not really, most of this information is already available to every website owner when you visit a website. I think the thing everyone is annoyed at is the fact that Mozzila never told us about it while installing the software. None of this information can really hurt you and its just so Mozzila can collect information about the number of users it has giving a better scope of its market share.
There are a lot more programs that are out there that send much more information about us back to home than Firefox ever will. Ffor example if you play online games you’ll be likey to have Punkbuster installed on your computer, which is an anticheat program, this sends back information about your system such as your hard drive serial number. Microsoft products phone home all the time and there is no way for us to know what it sends back, and it is unlikey that we ever will find out.
