Mozilla tries to send default-browser ping despite all possible telemetry disabled
Hello I think I found a bug in firefox settings. Recently I upgraded my antivirus to bitdefender total security with firewall module. I set it to ask me about permission to connect with internet for every process on windows. I was very surprised to see that default-browser-agent.exe tried to connect to internet. I checked my privacy and telemetry settings again, but they are all disabled. I checked internet and found this mozilla article: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/telemetry/data/default-browser-ping.html You can read there that "opting out of telemetry does disable it; the pref value is copied to the registry so that the default browser agent can read it without needing to work with profiles". I opted out from all possible telemetry, both visible in settings and hidden in about:config(based on lists of telemtry-related options from web).
Is there any way to actually disable this ping? It tries to connect with internet every 24h. I guess I can simply remove it from windows task scheduler but I want mozilla to respect my privacy settings and disable it solely using browser built-in settings!
Old article on web stated that this can be easily disabled by disabling setting responsible for sending technical data ( https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/firefox-now-tells-mozilla-what-your-default-browser-is-every-day/ ) but I have it disabled and it is clearly ignored!!!
P.S. Sorry for screenshots in Polish but I guess you can understand them even without language context.
All Replies (4)
It is just a request to update settings so that the default-browser-agent works properly, it does not send data to Mozilla when telemetry is disabled.
The default browser agent has two different types of network requests it can make. The first is the telemetry ping, it submits the above data to Mozilla's telemetry servers. The second is a request to update settings which sends no data to Mozilla (of course the server will see the source IP but that is hard to avoid) and is a simple HTTP get request. It looks like it requests the following URL should you care to see what it is retrieving: https://firefox.settings.services.mozilla.com/v1/buckets/main/collections/windows-default-browser-agent/records/state. This second request allows us to remotely disable the agent should we see it causing problems for users.
Bug 1688675 - default-browser-agent.exe sends data even though Telemetry is disabled
(Please don't comment in linked bug reports)
You can disable it by going to about:config in the address bar and changing default-browser-agent.enabled to false. It will still run as scheduled but exits immediately before taking any action.
WARNING from the moderator team: Changing Firefox preferences from the about:config page can sometimes break Firefox or cause strange behavior. You should only do this if you know what you're doing. Please read Firefox Advanced Customization and Configuration Options to learn more.
Modified by Paul
Dear god, so they know about it since 2020 and they deliberately ignore it just because many more features behave like this. Problem is these different featuers like ssl certificate update are useful while this is completely useless for user. Shame, especially when they advertise privacy so hard. I will disable it in about:config then and wait for it to appear (or not) again on my radar.
P.S. They still did not add info about this ping here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections so it is not very public info.
Modified by Piterk
A remote kill switch is not useless if it avoids a major incident. Imagine if a software conflict caused the browser agent to brick computers unless Firefox was uninstalled. Being able to boast about zero remote connections is not much use when everyone has uninstalled your broken software.
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Uhm, but if I want it disabled why is it waiting for remote disable? If I already disabled it, why would I want to disable it even more via remote switch? Remote disable only makes sense if it is enabled and you cannot disable it via other way (for example firefox update). And to be honest I cannot think of any situation where simple telemetry exe file would brick computers. I mean each firefox version is tested thoroughly in alpha and beta so there is no space for error in stable release. But maybe I am exaggerating with these thorough tests, considering last failed nvidia super resolution implementation, where simple programming error (switching places of 0 and 1) was pushed to stable version and it took 2 months to finally push fixed version into next release.
Modified by Piterk