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by ptx 3970 days ago
> There are new phones coming out like Ubuntu's and Mozilla's that, while not perfect, absolutely are better alternatives.

The last time I checked, Mozilla's Firefox OS phones appeared to be sending all home screen search queries to some unknown company in Israel, with no clear way to disable it.
1 comments
mikegioia 3970 days ago
Where did you hear that? I'm unaware and couldn't find anything about it.
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ptx 3970 days ago
It's an official feature:

https://youtu.be/H9zwf0VMVDI

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/11/28/mozilla-invests-in-...

http://everything.me/about/

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mikegioia 3970 days ago
I mean, you linked a press release from 2012 for a partnership with Everything.me, and an Indian Mozilla video from 2014 about adaptive search which doesn't mention anything about that. I'm not saying FF is innocent in data-sharing, but at this point you're spreading FUD around. To make a claim like that, you need something way more definitive!
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ptx 3969 days ago
The misfeature demonstrated (adaptive app search) is implemented by sending the query to the company mentioned. It's not a secret. See this article for example: http://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-revamping-firefox-oss-app-l...

Edit: You're right that it's not mentioned in the video. That's part of the problem; it's obviously something people care about and would like to be informed of.

Here is one bug report discussing it - and a "fix" involving stopping the queries in some very specific cases: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1082787

Or how about this direct quote[1] from Mozilla's CTO (where in "e.me" refers to Everything.Me in context):

"So we send an XHR request for each letter to Google on Desktop (search box), and XHR requests to e.me on Firefox OS."

[1] https://lists.mozilla.org/pipermail/dev-platform/2014-Octobe...

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