Firefox tracers and trackers - why?

[Mantis]

While I was doing some 'cleanup' stuff -- I came across a file in the Firefox section that does not look good.

There is a section titled 'Talkback' within that is something titled 'manifest.init' which has "tracers" and "trackers". Why are they there?

I started using Firefox because I thought that it was 'better' than IE -- but, I am not at all in favor of having tracers and trackers working that I have not been informed of!

Does Opera do this too?

Why should I want Firefox to trace and track me when I use Spyware Blaster and others to make sure this does not take place --- I am really confused about this.

Would someone with more knowledge in this area please inform me here?

[snowbound1]

I don't use Firefox regularly but i did find some info with a search,

http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/faq.html#talkback

Hope it helps.


snowbound

[Beef]

TalkBack.......caused me to completely remove FireFox from my system.
They claim its not spyware. One thing is for certain..no one informed me prior to installing FireFox that TalkBack was part of the install package. An to my understanding TalkBack acts as a Server to send crash information to Netscape............a Server is a Server.....that in itself is bad for any purpose.
Choice....no one gave me a choice about installing TalkBack......so why believe anyone will give me a choice about sending information?
No thanks...they can keep FireFox.......anything that comes bundled with a Server an the public is not informed is bad news.

[Beef]

By the way.....TalkBack is not open source....it belongs to netscape



so much for FireFox being open source...it can never fairly make that claim.

[twig]

If I remember correctly when you install firefox you have the option to install talkback or not to do so.

[Notok]

Yes, choose custom install while installing and you can leave it out. Even if you select "Typical" install, it will still show you the comopnents it's installing, including Talkback. Talkback also does NOT work silently. It pops up a wizard when Firefox crashes walking you through the process of submitting a report, and offering the chance for you to include additional information such as what you were doing when the crash occured. Unfortunately it hasn't been working for me for some time, I consider the bug report the least I can do to help the Mozilla team :)

-{ Quote: "a Server is a Server.....that in itself is bad for any purpose." }-The internet wouldn't work without servers.. what do you think serves up wilderssecurity.com? And no, Talkback is not a server.. it's a client that connects to a server, just like the Firefox browser itself. Servers are programs that allow incomming connections and serve up data to the clients that are connecting and requesting that data. The Talkback servers wouldn't know when your browser crashes unless Talkback connects and tells it so, it could never work as a server from your system. Especially considering any firewall would block this incomming connection.

Lets take off our tinfoil hats here, folks, this is the Mozilla team we're talking about.. they don't ask anything in return for their very hard work.

[beetlejuice69]

...and if you do install it you can disable whenever you want. No fuss n` no muss.

[Notok]

If you run talkback.exe, this is what you see.. and this is exactly how it looks when it catches a crash in Firefox. On the next screen it asks you if you want to turn the agent on.. as beetlejuice69 pointed out, you can also disable it. I don't know how they could possibly make it any more fair or obvious.

[Notok]

Lastly, once it's enabled and Firefox crashes, this is what you see. Now that I've enabled it, I remembered why it wasn't coming up for me.. I had disabled it because it could never actually connect to the server :P

[ronjor]

No flame wars. No personal attacks please.

[dread]

Firefox is not spyware. If you choose to do a custom install you can install firefox without talkback. Its only for reporting bugs. Even windows xp has this its called error reporting. How many people do you see removing windows xp and calling it spyware just cause of error reporting lol.

[controler]

I do not find this option in Firefox 1.5 Beta 2

I do however see in options - advanced - security devices over at the right to turn on FIPS. What is this? The Help file only say this.

FIPS PUBS 140-1

Federal Information Processing Standards Publications (FIPS PUBS) 140-1 is
a US government standard for implementations of cryptographic modules —
hardware or software that encrypts and decrypts data or performs other
cryptographic operations (such as creating or verifying digital signatures).
Many products sold to the US government must comply with one or more of the
FIPS standards.

If you look in help under the path i posted you don't see anything about it. I did a search for FIPS in the help search bar.

Ok I found it :-)

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/pki/nss/fips/

[ronjor]

Thread closed and off topic comments removed.