Changes in telemetry for Firefox 58+

[ArchangeGabriel]

See https://medium.com/georg-fritzsche/data-preference-changes-in-firefox-58-2d5df9c428b5.

[earthlng]

It won't be deprecated, they'll lock it!

[ArchangeGabriel]

They already have on Nightly, I expect the new 58 beta/dev to be affected already.

Apparently though, on release the pref should be locked to off.

[earthlng]

toolkit.telemetry.enabled: This preference is now locked to reflect prerelease or release builds (true and false respectively).

[ArchangeGabriel]

It surfaces at the top of about:config, in italics. Status is locked.

[ArchangeGabriel]

Yes, that’s what I’m saying. As well as @earthlng quote above.

[Gambit78]

Just great. What should I do now? I do not accept any telemetry (spying). Mozilla what are you doing?

I wonder how react to this news torproject.

[ArchangeGabriel]

Normally telemetry should not be sent anywhere, just collected locally (but that’s an issue, I agree — at the very least because it impacts performance). You should verify that datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled is set to false.

[KOLANICH]

I just leave this link here: https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/modules/libpref/Preferences.cpp#3213

[KOLANICH]

Just an old change. But I had to find that link myself instead of seeng it in this issue. So I add it here in the hope it is helpful to someone. It is about locked telemetry pref hardcoded into FF C++ code.

[earthlng]

FYI nightly and beta users can still use autoconfig to lock the telemetry pref to false

[KOLANICH]

@earthlng Thank you for the info, I have never heard about this feature before.

[KOLANICH]

That works. Thank you.