Hey Mozilla, Im still here

I’m usually pretty careful about telemetry.

Whenever I install some piece of software, one of the first things I look at is what it wants to send somewhere.

With Firefox, I actually leave some of it enabled.

One of those things is the Daily Usage Ping.

Once a day, Firefox sends Mozilla an anonymous signal that Firefox was used that day. It doesn’t send my browsing history, passwords or the websites I’ve visited. It’s basically just a way for Mozilla to know that there was a Firefox user on the other end that day.

I could turn it off. But I don’t.

Part of the reason is that I want Firefox to exist.

I don’t mean that I want Mozilla to know what websites I visit or what I do in the browser. I really don’t. But I also understand that Mozilla needs some idea of how many people are actually using Firefox.

I like that Firefox is still doing its own thing. There aren’t many browsers left that aren’t based on Chromium. I don’t think most people need to care about browser engines. I just happen to care about them. Anyway…

Meanwhile there is still Firefox, with Gecko, and Mozilla is still trying to keep another browser engine alive.

I like that. I appreciate that.

So if I can send one small anonymous signal once a day saying, basically, “Hey Mozilla, I’m still here”, I’m fine with that.

It feels different to me from telemetry that I don’t understand, data collected just because it might be useful later, or software that quietly sends half of my life somewhere in the background.

I know what this particular setting is for, and I chose to leave it on.

I’m actually quite paranoid about privacy.

I just don’t think privacy means that software should never be allowed to collect anything personal.

For me it means that I should know what is being collected, why it is being collected, and have some control over it.

So Daily Usage Ping stays on.

A tiny bit of telemetry, deliberately enabled.

Because I still use Firefox, and I suppose I don’t mind letting Mozilla know that.

If you want to see it for yourself, it’s in about:preferences#permissionsData > Send daily usage ping to Mozilla. You can turn it on or off there.

If you’re curious, Mozilla also publishes Firefox usage data on data.firefox.com.