Caught Thunderbird trying to phone home

It tried to connect to aus2.mozilla.org using remote port 443. And it's not the first time. Why would Mozilla have an email program phone home? Didn't it ever occur to them that people use the program because they're concerned about their security?

So what security conscious person wants their email program to phone home any time it feels like it? How do I know it's not trying to sneak out copies of my confidential email? As a paranoid person, I resent this practice, and I don't think it's appropriate for an email program to sneak around trying to phone home without my explicit permission.

The browser phoning home is one thing, but the email program doing it is something else entirely.

 

Hello AlamoCity..........T-Bird will auto check for updates via port 443.

 

Rainwalker is correct on the updates being checked. And you don't need to worry about Thunderbird, it is very secure.

 

If it does bother you that much AlamoCity then auto checking for updates can be disabled in TB. Nothing on my PC auto-updates except my AV. Doing it manually helps to give me a starting point in the event of possible troubles\conflicts due to updates for any program. But I risk going OT so I will stop here.

 

@ AlmoCity..not to belabor the point(s), but i also agree with ThunderZ and bigc's "very secure" comment.
Should you opt to turn off auto updating> Tools/Options/Advanced/Update remove check mark(s).

 

Thanks for the responses. This falls under the category of "human error"... on my part. As I had previously been through all the options and account settings, but I somehow didn't notice the update box was checked. And just like ThunderZ, I never let anything auto-update except my AV. Which is why I thought Thunderbird had no legitimate reason to be phoning home. Oh well, lesson learned.

 

I've left both Firefox & Thunderbird automatically checking for updates. I don't see a major problem with that.

 

It is really up to personal taste. Just for me, if something "hic-ups" and I just manually up-dated XYZ program then I have a starting point for trouble shooting. If I were to have two or more programs set to auto-update then it is just that many more possibilities I have to track down. Again, the choice is purely up to the individual.