Firefox for Android starting to share location data with third parties

42 points by simpss 1 year ago | 9 comments

Today i got a notification on my phone, that firefox is changing how it handles my location data and that it might be shared with third parties[1].

This update is yet to be included in the official play store page[2], but has already taken affect for the installed application.

[1] - https://i.imgur.com/8rBB8k4.jpeg

[2] - See play store snapshot, that states "no data is shared with third parties": https://web.archive.org/web/20250310211223/https://play.google.com/store/apps/datasafety?id=org.mozilla.firefox&hl=en-us

karmakaze 1 year ago |

I don't allow location access for Firefox or other apps. Even with delivery apps I'll manually enter pickup address (or use saved nicknames).

I mostly leave location services disabled altogether (as it saves a good amount of battery).

taauji 1 year ago | |

> I mostly leave location services disabled altogether

how do you get around using navigation. that was the only reason that prevented me from turning off location permanently.

karmakaze 1 year ago | | |

I've lived in and around Toronto for 50+ years. I don't use any navigation, unless you count spoken directions.

You know people got around fine without GPS (though paper maps are a hassle). I do use it if I'm in another city but that's rather infrequent.

WayToDoor 1 year ago |

Third party, such as other websites when giving explicit permission? This sounds fine to me.

simpss 1 year ago | |

I wish that was the case.

Opening the "data safety" section another pop-up[1] comes up and the specific use-cases listed are "advertising or marketing" and "personalisation".

[1] - https://i.imgur.com/QwqiQna.jpeg

Andaith 1 year ago | | |

Isn't that just what has to be selected in the play store to allow the app to access/use the localization framework in Android? It doesn't guarantee they're sharing information. They could still do it on a site by site bases with in-app approvals?

I guess the concept has gone from "We don't support this at all" to "We support it but won't be evil, you have to trust us."

How much do we trust Mozilla/Firefox? You could always go read the code yourself: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central or just do what most people do and hope someone else audits it :)