> Joga wrote: > > I looked at that url and I see that it is FireFox > fetching a simple > > png file ( 1p.png ) and passing a parameter for the > time as well as > > reporting the User-Agent. So that seems like pretty > obvious user base > > tracking and data collection going on there. > > > > What else are you guys snooping on or reporting > back to head quarters about? > > > > I'm going to drag down FireFox 3 and then see if it > does the same sort > > of thing on Solaris 10 or on OpenSolaris. I never > knew that Sun was > > collecting user data via the browser. That is > sneaky .. you know. > > Despite your interesting conspiracy theories, this is > merely because the > default configuration of FireFox on OpenSolaris > includes a Live Bookmark > to planet.opensolaris.org. I believe that if you > remove the live > bookmark from FireFox and restart the browser, you > won't see this > behaviour anymore. > > It might be better to ask questions first and make > accusations later...
Accusations are indeed over the top. One can hardly be surprised if a distro provider sets up the defaults so that a browser has some bookmarks pointing at their content. However, if that actually causes the provider's web servers to be hit, they _could_ indeed get some data (not your name of course, but your IP and whatever appears in the User-Agent header) that they might be able to do something with, if only analyze for usage trends (or sell). From what I've read on the "Privacy" link, I don't think Sun sells web server log data, but I can't rule out that they'd share it (with some understanding that the 3rd party would share it no further than needed to do their job) with some 3rd party marketing (or whatver) firm under contract with them. If I read them correctly, those terms are better than quite a few sites; but not that many sites have control of the initial configuration of your browser. Perhaps that calls for a higher standard in cases like this? Some people get paranoid about that sort of thing. I for one think that as long as one is visiting legitimate sites, there's little use in worrying about it, unless one wishes to live without an Internet connection at all. Or one can just disconnect from the network until one has tracked down those things and reconfigured them. But it might not hurt to make any initial home page a local file: URL, and to avoid providing initial "live" bookmarks or other configuration that causes the browser (or anything else on the system) to go out and talk to the distro provider's servers, if only to avoid even the remotest appearance of what would set off the paranoid and the conspiracy fans. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
