Advertisement in the official FF 1.0 de-DE! Officially? Why?

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Firefox
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jediknight2
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Post by jediknight2 »

as everyone else i have read all these posts, and the only thing that irritates the hell out of me is the spyware cookie issue. the money issue to me is neither here or there, i just want to know that when the foundation tells me that this browser is adware/spyware free, then i expect it to be so.
and i am well aware that anything i install on it will be my responsibility, as i am altering the origional design.with that in mind i agree with other posters on this thread that whatever is available on the foundations website to download for the browser should also be free from adware/spyware. i am very glad that we have not found a problem in the english version, and hope it is just limited to the german version, as it looks like we may have some positive results coming from there shortly. thank you for posting this for our information.
Gott
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Post by Gott »

A.Topal wrote:Just to clear out one thing, before the official statement is out: Mozilla Firefox even in the german version has had never practised data mining and it never will -At least as long as I'm responsible for the german version.


Well, that's right. You said that about a hundret times now in the German forums even way before any official statement. It's absolutely right that Mozilla Europe / Foundation never actively did any datamining, never collected any data and I'm also very sure that this will never happen.
But you allowed eBay to use a "partner" with a really bad reputation for exactly this task. Of course Mozilla will never see the collected data, but that doesn't make it that much better, does it?
But you're right, there is a difference ...


The only collected data was, how often the searchbar got used.


I'm sure you're right. That's the only data that was collected. We all know how important personalized tracking cookies are for counting simple information like this ... you simply cannot do this without them and we're all just paranoid, right?
It's just so weird that spreadfirefox.com / getfirefox.com run their little download-counter without any cookies at all ... but I guess they're doing it all wrong then, don't they?


And even that isn't done anymore. We allowed ebay to use one of his partners for this task and that was wrong. We already appologized for that in the german forums and an official statement will follow.


Good.
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Robert S.
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Post by Robert S. »

Out of curiousity does anyone have any personal experiences they can share where a tracking cookie has caused them harm?

*edited to add* besides the harm this has caused the foundation of course.
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tombik
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Post by tombik »

After a few horrible days today some good news:
The A9 Toolbar has been removed from UMO. :)
Thanks!!
The dream is over

But there is some hope!
TheOneKEA
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Post by TheOneKEA »

Bah.

As long as the Foundation lets me know that they employ third party search links to track data for moneymaking purposes (so that I can avoid it if I choose), I have no problem with it.

This may have derailed de-DE Fx, but as long as MozEurope admits that they dropped a whopping huge clanger and fix it as soon as possible, then I doubt Fx will suffer too much outside de-DE.
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utah
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Post by utah »

A.Topal wrote:We know about the senisibility of this topic, but to some of the german posters here: would you please be kind enough to recognize the statements in the german forums before posting your already answered questions here? That would help us a lot. Thanks.

Well, I read all this 22 page thread and: no I won't refrain from posting here! I never used that German forum before, my English is quite sufficient for getting my point across, and there's lots more people here providing answers asap (generally speaking). And look at that bloated thread in the German forum, it's like 80% crazy people swearing at each other.

Why would you want to limit it to a national forum? It's the German FF we're talking about, I know. But the question is absolutely vital to the entire project, imho, so this belongs on an international platform. As we know now, the idea of marketing searchplugins didn't come from the German team (if I'm getting it right). So it's definitely a general question, ebay.de was only the trial balloon.
And haven't you understood that the e-comunity is not limitied to national boundaries but transnational? Actually, that's what I like most about all this tech nerd stuff. ;-)
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Shadow3333
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Post by Shadow3333 »

madness I say complete and utter madness.
To be clear-headed rather than confused; lucid rather than obscure; rational rather than otherwise; and to be neither more, nor less, sure of things than is justifiable by argument or evidence. That is worth trying for.
A.Topal
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Post by A.Topal »

utah wrote:
A.Topal wrote:We know about the senisibility of this topic, but to some of the german posters here: would you please be kind enough to recognize the statements in the german forums before posting your already answered questions here? That would help us a lot. Thanks.

Well, I read all this 22 page thread and: no I won't refrain from posting here!

I never asked you for that, I just asked you to recognize the statements in the german forums as it would help a lot to clear the situation.

utah wrote:Why would you want to limit it to a national forum?

I don't want to do that and I never said such a thing, but honestly: it would be nice cause I'm only human and have a live. I can't follow more than two really huge threads at the same time and adress the concerns of users. I can't follow this thread, but there will be an official statement in german and english which will hopefully adress all concerns.

Regards
Abdulkadir Topal
utah
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Post by utah »

A.Topal wrote:I can't follow more than two really huge threads at the same time and adress the concerns of users. I can't follow this thread, but there will be an official statement in german and english which will hopefully adress all concerns.
OK, I promise to keep quiet until then :-$
pariah
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Post by pariah »

A.Topal wrote: The only collected data was, how often the searchbar got used

I don't have the same faith in adfarm.mediaplex (or even webtip.ch) that you do. Tracking cookies are not necessary for counting searchbar hits.

I might not trust eBay, but at least they have a Privacy Policy that I can assess. It's not unreasonable to suppose that <B>ANY</B> redirect is there so that you can help eBay to bypass that Privacy Policy. EBay is a commercial organisation, and yet they are paying Mozilla for the redirect. Why?

You may say (although thankfully you didn't) that my adware/spyware-blocker would have blocked any nastiness anyway, but that's not the point. The point is: Firefox should be part of the solution, not part of the problem. That's the reason we're on this forum; we believe that Firefox IS the solution. We feel very strongly that it should stay that way, and we believe that it should get better - not worse.

A.Topal wrote: We already appologized for that in the german forums

I haven't seen the word "sorry" yet, even in German (maybe you can post the link). I've seen you say the decision was wrong, but I continue to see some very disingenuous wriggling, e.g.:

A.Topal wrote: to some of the german posters here: would you please be kind enough to recognize the statements in the german forums before posting your already answered questions here?

Okay. (I'm English, but) let's start with your recent statement that eBay.de has no other way to count Firefox searchbar clicks except by going through webtip.ch or adfarm.mediaplex. Surely that's their problem? It shouldn't be our problem. I can think of some very simple and non-intrusive ways to implement the function, and I'm a certified code-moron. Give me that MozCash and I'll pass my moron-code on to eBay (or auction it to the highest bidder).

Latest upside: yes, Axel has just removed the A9 Toolbar (a third-party extension with a <B><I>very</I></B> suspect reputation) from the Mozilla-provided Extensions download page. That's very good news. I'm sorry that we're kicking you in the teeth, A.T., but it does seem that now is exactly the right time to kick you, before all your good work gets ruined by payola. Firefox tried a little local experiment. It was bad. If our reaction serves to stop similar nastiness before it starts, then you will still be in charge of an IE-Killer*, which is good for everybody.


*tip: let's have 'save all open tabs as a bookmark set,' and, on startup, let's have 'resume last session'
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Umko
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Post by Umko »

pariah wrote:Latest upside: yes, Axel has just removed the A9 Toolbar (a third-party extension with a <B><I>very</I></B> suspect reputation) from the Mozilla-provided Extensions download page. That's very good news. I'm sorry that we're kicking you in the teeth, A.T., but it does seem that now is exactly the right time to kick you, before all your good work gets ruined by payola. Firefox tried a little local experiment. It was bad. If our reaction serves to stop similar nastiness before it starts, then you will still be in charge of an IE-Killer*, which is good for everybody.


i am not sure this was a *local* experiment. eBay.de just had a bit different idea of registering the searches from the firefox search bar. it could have been eBay.com that have done that.

the underlying thing is the "pay-per-search" policy of the entire mozilla foundation.

and we want to know more about it. really looking forward to the statement!
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esavior
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Post by esavior »

A.Topal wrote:
utah wrote:Why would you want to limit it to a national forum?

I don't want to do that and I never said such a thing, but honestly: it would be nice cause I'm only human and have a live. I can't follow more than two really huge threads at the same time and adress the concerns of users. I can't follow this thread, but there will be an official statement in german and english which will hopefully adress all concerns.

You may not want to but axel seemed to express intresest in such,
pike2 wrote:Can someone please close this thread?

I can think of a very valid reason to start a discussion over here, there are plenty of non german speaking firefox users who are interested in whats going on. Why should we be deprived of the information just because you guys cant follow two threads?

I hope the official statment is detailed and not just a blanket we messed up paragraph, and I hope it comes soon(today maybe :D)
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xexagon
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Post by xexagon »

Here's how I see it:

It's fine if Firefox provides me with a facility to search eBay. Whether I trust eBay (or Google, for that matter) is a different matter. That's my choice. In other words, if Firefox simply saves me the hassle of typing in 'www.google.co.uk' or 'www.ebay.co.uk' into my browser, that's very nice of it.

eBay may well pass all their searches through mediaplex (that's why you might not trust them). eBay may use cookies for this purpose (another reason why you may not trust them).

However, if Firefox passes all my eBay searches on to mediaplex, and starts setting cookies, it is WRONG WRONG WRONG! My relationship to the internet has been altered: the browser has got involved when it should be completely transparent. This is why we use Firefox! We trust it to simply surf the web, take us to the places we tell it to go. If those places aren't so trustworthy, that's for us to find out. The browser itself shouldn't be doing the 'dirty work.'

Maybe we've been a bit naieve about this whole thing? I guess people need paying . . .
rso
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Post by rso »

tombik wrote:After a few horrible days today some good news:
The A9 Toolbar has been removed from UMO. :)
Thanks!!

I'm wondering why the german release of Firefox is still dated 09-Nov-2004 08:26. Shouldn't there be updated files with a changed ebay.src?
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Umko
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Post by Umko »

rso wrote:
tombik wrote:After a few horrible days today some good news:
The A9 Toolbar has been removed from UMO. :)
Thanks!!

I'm wondering why the german release of Firefox is still dated 09-Nov-2004 08:26. Shouldn't there be updated files with a changed ebay.src?


the thing is, ASFAIK, that they removed the redirect to mediaplex.com, but do not plan to remove the webtip.ch redirect. i hope the ultinately do remove it, because otherwise the bad taste in the mouth will still remain.
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