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Trackers in forks of Firefox for Android (lemmy.one)

submitted 1 year ago by PrivateLemur@lemmy.one to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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I've always wondered, why does Android forks of Firefox are not (or cannot?) get rid of ALL the trackers? Even Tor browser!

The browser with the least trackers is Mull, but it still has 1 Mozilla telemetry tracker, which the devs claim is completely disabled. I can't really read and inspect code, so I don't actually know.

So why is it? Does Mozilla make the browser unusable if you try to remove the tracker from the code?

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[–] ShittyKopper@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

(The F-Droid branch at least) will "shim" the trackers, meaning rather than attempting to dive into the code of every single update and remove all the tracking hooks, it instead replaces the tracking code with blank functions that don't do anything but exist just so there is something there when Firefox attempts to call into them so it doesn't crash.

Naive scanners that simply read the list of classes that are in the program will see them and go "ooh there's a tracker here", but they can't distinguish between actual tracking code and these "neutered" versions that don't do anything.

[–] PrivateLemur@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So I think that this is a bad decision by Mozilla. Who's idea was it to make a trackerless fork crash?

I can't think of any good reason for them to make it impossible for a forked browser to function properly, if they try to remove all trackers.

Even if you can be sure that the code is junk and harmless, that's unfortunate and just doesn't look good IMO.

[–] ShittyKopper@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

Mozilla isn't doing anything malicious (or even intentional) here IMO. Firefox as a codebase is gigantic, and most forks are tiny and under-resourced in comparison, so they have to resort to tricks like this if they want to be able to keep up with updates in a timely manner.

[–] glacier@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 year ago

I am not certain, but Mull still has functionality with FireFox sync, which might be a reason why it has a tracker.

[–] Cube6392 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tor is a special case. They leave some stuff in tact because the average Firefox user would never touch that stuff and it would key tracking companies in MORE that the tracking stuff is disabled. Its called finger printing and part of what Tor tries to do is make everyone's fingerprints as innocuous as possible

[–] Resolved3874@lemdro.id 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's one of the reasons you should never use tor fullscreen on a PC. Makes it just a bit easier to try and fingerprint you.

[–] AfricanExpansionist@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The latest versions have a built-in workaround for that

[–] Resolved3874@lemdro.id 2 points 1 year ago

Ah ok. Haven't used a Tor browser in ages.