> - "Work offline" does not work offline (sends packets on exiting). > - The documentation is wrong > - There is no easy way to get privacy (can be considered a feature request)
You are right on all three points. It would be great to fix all three. This is the strategy I suggest: (1) Start with the documentation issue. I think we have the best change of persuading them on this point, and if they fix it we will know a little more about how Firefox works, which will inform what we do next. (2) If (1) was successful, the documentation now explains how to avoid all sending of packets, including in offline mode. This simplifies our next bug report (I'll create it) because we will know what about:config settings need to be changed and can simply request that "Work offline" change those settings. Although the documentation is incomplete, one thing it does well is giving each config change its own section so that you can understand what each one does, so hopefully we can figure out which setting changes are required. If (1) was unsuccessful we will have to request that Mozilla research a fix, but it should still be pretty easy to argue that this is a legitimate bug. (3) A feature request to make privacy configuration will be more difficult, since Mozilla has a different idea of what constitutes 'privacy', but if (1) and (2) are successful then there is hope for (3). We can request, one at a time, that actions in the documentation that rely on changing values in about:config be replaced with easily accessible settings in "Privacy and Security" like some of these actions already are. > - They refuse to give even the difficult way to get what the documentation > promises (can be considered deliberately hiding) Yes, but if we accuse them of that they will get mad and blow us off. Taking it one improvement at a time will be more subtle. > Through closing of the ticket they deny community feedback, however > accurate, objective and detailed it may be. I'm not ready to give up. I hope my playing 'good cop' will help, but you may be right and they'll continue to ignore the issue. That would suck, but at least we would know that trying to reason with Mozilla is not effective, which will save time in the future. > They are really telling us "No, you should not trust your eyes, you should > trust what we say. Exactly. This is huge problem, and Mozilla isn't even the worst offender. Those with power expand it by convincing people that they are too weak, selfish, and stupid to govern themselves. We can't let them break us. > They also talk about "anonymized telemetry data". I don't know if you have > looked at that data but when I started investigating that for the first time > it I did. It looks like an actual fingerprint of the system. I can see > strings showing disk capacity, CPU parameters, even the model of the video > card. Add an IP address to all that and send it to Amazon and Akamai and you > will know how "private" and "anonymized" all this is. Even without the IP address I bet the other information is enough to uniquely identifying when combined with basic information about browing habits. > Re. tcpdump: I learned everything from the man page. Explained: It's generous of you to spend the time explaining to save me some reading. I'll try to repay the favor by using the time it saves me to support your efforts. > I think the distro shouldn't matter, neither the desktop environment as long > as there are no any other network programs adding parasite packets during > the test. Agreed. I think it's possible that the different version of Firefox is the issue (I'll try again with 57 to check) but most likely that it's > because we are on different > networks, your FF may be connecting to different CDN hosts, so that would > explain if you see different subdomain part. in which case it doesn't really matter which or how many automatic connections there are. The fact that there are any after following the documentation is enough to prove that there is a problem.
