In the fight against the spread of the corona virus, Mozilla has now decided to make Firefox’s telemetry data available to certain research institutions. This should enable them to better assess the effectiveness of social distancing.
Firefox has seen an increase in desktop usage. Such information can show that curfews are respected and are used to measure the effectiveness of such measures. Firefox’s anonymized user data is not necessarily representative of the entire population. However, in a larger context of multiple data sources, they can make an important contribution to the validation of the social distancing measures. To ensure comparability, old data records are also released. Firefox introduced a new function that enables users to view the collected telemetry data, which should provide more transparency. Entering the expression in the address line of the browser opens an overview of the telemetry data that are recorded by Firefox and displays them in different categories.
Telemetry Data Also Refers To Help Documents That Provide Further Information
It is said that whether the collection and transmission of the telemetry data is active or not. If necessary, it can be switched on or off from there. Optionally, users can prohibit Mozilla from carrying out studies and also reject recommendations for browser extensions. Mozilla divides the telemetry data into various categories such as environmental data, session information and events. Among other things, the browser version used the CPU provider and details about the processor, the size of the working memory, the operating system and technical details about the graphics card are recorded. Mozilla also records any browser settings and the installed extensions.
Further information concerns the running processes and other technical details of the browser session. However, there are also diagrams that show how long it takes an SSL to establish an encrypted connection. The introduction to telemetry data also refers to help documents that provide further information about the use of telemetry data.
