Re: The Spirit of Free Software, or The Reality
Dear Nikolaus,
I have to disagree.
> I'm not sure if that's really as serious as you make it sound. Let me
> ask you this:
>
> 1. Were you surprised by this?
Yes.
> I was certainly not, this is about what I
> would have guessed.
Why?
> If a program does what I expect it to do, I'm not
> sure if me starting it is "violating my privacy“.
If I didn’t tell it to access a webpage I wouldn’t expect it to.
> Accessing various webpages is necessary for the functions that
> Firefox provides. So complaining about this is a little like
> complaining that my car needs fuel - unfortunate, but difficult to
> avoid if I want to have a car. If you don't want the functions that
> Firefox provides, don't use it.
Indeed, staying in the car analogon (that usually fails): question is who’s in the driver’s seat. Who decides which directions to take - i.e. pages to access. It should be the user's decision. Not the visited website’s (which sadly too often is) but definitively not the browser’s own decision.
Even less so in secrecy. And even less so prior ANY USER ACTION requesting so.
> 2. Would it be ok if Firefox did all this at the time you visited the
> first webpage, rather than at the time of startup?
No.
> If not, then what about all the tracking pages that Firefox is going
> to load because they're referenced in the page you asked for?
> Shouldn't you be much more worried about those?
Thank you mentioning this - yes, acually I am not only worried but annoyed to a degree to take action: https://requestpolicycontinued.github.io/ comes to a rescue.
Cheers,
M
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