Winston, Hey there. Nice changes to the policy. Just a few questions. Not sure you can answer all of them.
Should the privacy policy have a nice link to show a user how to opt-out of getting these location specific notifications? How does the privacy policy change for Android? Last I heard they had the idea of using the Android Notification area. If so, it is much more in your face and probably requires a lot more buy off and thinking about user impact. Doug On 3/27/13 5:38 PM, Winston Bowden wrote: > Hello, > > I’d like to make you aware of a new feature the engagement team is working on > and request feedback on proposed updates to the privacy policy. > > The feature will allow us to provide users with a snippet (a message on their > Firefox home page) based on the country they’re in. We’ve worked with several > Mozilla departments to develop this feature. Privacy, legal, product, web > dev, security and IT have provided valuable feedback to ensure this was > implemented in a way that maximizes the user value. > > What is the snippet? > If you haven’t changed your start page on Firefox desktop, you’ll see an icon > and a few lines of copy underneath the search box. We call these messages > snippets. Snippets are a feature of the Firefox start page that provide > users with timely and relevant information on how to get more out of their > Firefox experience. > > How is the snippet changing? > Currently there isn’t a reliable way to communicate with ours users based on > their country. For instance, if we need to rally around an important cause > in Brazil, we don’t have the ability to reach out to those users. The > current system can send a message based on build (channel + language), but > builds reach users around the world rather than a specific country. > > Here are some specific use cases where this service will be used: > > Community: > We’ll now be able to broaden our community base in countries by announcing > regional Mozilla events or opportunities to get involved with the project. > If we’re holding a special event in Brazil, we’ll be able to alert that user > base quickly and easily. > > Policy: > If and when Mozilla needs to rally against legislation like SOPA in countries > outside of the U.S., we’ll have the ability to reach the users that will be > impacted and exclude those who aren’t. > > Firefox OS: > With the launch of Firefox OS and Marketplace, there are many opportunities > to provide users with content that is relevant to their region. For example, > as phones become available in certain countries, we’ll have the ability to > inform those users. > > What’s the technical change? > Currently, snippets are delivered based on the build (channel + language) the > user has downloaded. This can be problematic if we’re trying to talk to > users in a specific region or country. For example, if you’re on the en-us > build in Japan, you’re going to see the EN snippets. We’re limited in terms > of delivering relevant content and information to our user base. > > How it will work: > > - Mozilla will use a geo location service that is internally hosted. We > purchased a license to a database and serve it from Mozilla servers using a > custom service we’re developing. The database is specifically designed to > return the country of origin for a given IP address. > > - Once a month, when the user opens the about:home page, Firefox desktop will > send the browser’s IP address to this internal service, and the service will > return the name of the country the user is located in. The browser will > store the country name in localStorage. Note that it is the actual country > name that is being stored – NOT the IP address. The IP address is not stored > after country is established on either the client or server. > > This is a privacy friendly implementation: > > - Mozilla does not store the country location of a user to provide this > feature > - IP addresses are collected as a part of standard web connections. The > country information is maintained in HTML5 localStorage on the user’s > Firefox. The result of a lookup – a particular IP and country – are not > stored in the same place, ever. > - We will be updating our privacy policy. Proposed changes are included > below for your comments. > - If users change their default homepage, the snippet service, including this > function, will be disabled. > > We’ll be updating the section dealing with snippets to: > > Our proposal for updating the privacy policy: > > -------------------- > > Firefox's default home page (<about:home>) loads snippets of info that we > think will be useful to you. Snippets are designed to provide you with timely > and relevant information on how to get more out of your Firefox experience. > You can see them right below the search bar. > > Once per day, Firefox gets new snippets from Mozilla. Whenever you see a > snippet, that snippet makes a request to Mozilla, so that we can count how > often snippets are viewed. This request to Mozilla sends the name of the > snippet and is securely transmitted over HTTPS. Aside from this and standard > log data collected as a part of any web request, snippets in Firefox does not > send other information to Mozilla. > > To help display relevant snippets, your Firefox browser sends Mozilla a > monthly request to resolve your location at a country level using your IP > address. We then send that country level information back to your Firefox > browser, where it's stored in HTML local storage. Your Firefox browser (not > our web servers) will then pick snippets to show you based on the locally > stored country information. > > Aside from providing you with the snippets service, we use the information > from these requests to estimate what fraction of Firefox users click on each > snippet, and we break down this info into general categories like Firefox > version and geographic area. We will not use any of the information in this > request to attempt to identify you or your activity anywhere else online, and > we aggregate the info we receive into these general categories as soon as is > practical. > > You can turn off Snippets by following the instructions here: > https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/How%20to%20set%20the%20home%20page. > > -------------------- > > Thanks for your feedback- > Winston Bowden > _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
