As part of streamlining Firefox preferences and making our data pipeline work more smoothly, we’re are planning some changes to the way Firefox data opt-in and preferences work. We’re making this change to reduce user confusion and align preferences with the Firefox privacy notice, remove developer confusion when doing data analysis, and make data steward decision-making easier and faster.
Currently, there are separate options in Firefox preferences for enabling data collection (“Enable Nightly Health Report”) and enabling extended telemetry (“Share Additional Data (i.e., Telemetry)”). The first box is on by default for all users, while the second box is on for prerelease users but off for release users. We are planning to remove the second checkbox. Here is a UI mockup of the new option: https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/5RA0R4HAE#/screens/233886993_Privacy_-_Security-ReorgV2 As part of this change, Firefox data stewards have worked with the Mozilla legal team to document different “categories” of data collection. Please see the page at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Data_Collection#Data_Collection_Categories for a description of the data categories and the practices we use for each category. In histograms.json and scalars.yaml it will still be possible to define whether a particular measurement should be collected from all users or only from prerelease users. Users will no longer have a specific option to turn this “extended” data on or off, but development teams may decide with data stewards to collect data only from prerelease channels because that’s all they need, for testing purposes, to reduce cost, or to mitigate risk. But there is no difference in kind between data we’re collecting from the release channel and the prerelease channels. By removing the opt-in checkbox, the new preferences and categories will allow us to streamline our process and get more of the data we need from the release channel. I believe we will ship this as part of Photon work either as part of Firefox 56 or 57. Please followup to fx-data-...@mozilla.org if you have any questions. fx-data-dev is the public list where Firefox product engineering, data engineering, and data science teams do announcements and discussion. If you are collecting or using Firefox data, I encourage you to join the list at https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/fx-data-dev --BDS _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list dev-platform@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
