It compromises Mozilla's claims that they still put users' interests first. Furthermore, they insist that these promoted tiles is something that people want, whereby it absolutely bloody obvious that nobody, except for Mozilla, wants this junk. These tiles basically show that Mozilla can act against users' interests and in a blatantly disingenuous manner. This in turn makes you question the rest of their efforts that are branded as pro-user.
Ads on the web want to track that you saw it, clicked on it, on which website you saw it, when, with which browser, which OS, which was the previous page you visited, what site you are used to browsing, what you purchased, where you live, what is your sexual preference, ... and nowadays they can and they do :/
There are many sites that I like and would happily unblock their ads to support them, but I often don't because they use ad systems that want to spy on me.
The main problem with ads on the web is not that they are annoying (like on TV for example), it is that they are spying on you.
As far as I know, that's not really severe. They only collect stats how much those "directory tiles" are clicked, pinned or removed. Maybe I'm unaware, though.
There are other concerns, though. Did you know that when you type in sync passphrase (if you dare to use sync, of course) - the one that Mozilla is supposed to never have any access to - you're actually fetching a piece of HTML+JS from Mozilla's servers and letting that code process it? That's a privacy/security concern that really bothers me.
> They only collect stats how much those "directory tiles" are clicked, pinned or removed. Maybe I'm unaware, though.
No personally identifiable data leaves your machine, AFAIK. It's actually an innovative way to provide advertising, necessary to fund many things today, while maintaining privacy. Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation about it and knee-jerk responses to any advertising.
So, as I get it (I haven't read code for this part of Firefox) it sends some counters about how tiles perform. The data is weakly personally identifiable - in a sense that sender's IP address is logged.
Whatever, I disabled those tiles because I just didn't fancy the selection - but it doesn't bother me (personally, other opinions may vary) if browser would eventually ping Mozilla back telling that I had clicked few tiles.
To deliver content, Firefox downloads all possible Tiles for your location and/or language and determines for itself what to display. Data is only collected to report on the performance of Tiles in Firefox. No data is collected to deliver the New Tab experience.
To report on the performance of these Tiles, Firefox reports back to Mozilla:
* Geo/Locale
* How many times a Tile is:
-- Displayed
-- Pinned
-- Clicked on
-- Blocked
The data is stored on a restricted access server for a maximum of 7 days, and then the IP address (the only data that would associate the Tile with an individual) is removed.
--------------
WHERE DOES MY DATA GO/GET SHARED?
Data is transmitted directly to Mozilla and only aggregate data is stored on Mozilla servers. Mozilla is sharing aggregate numbers with partners on the number of impressions, clicks, pins, and hides their own content received. The little data that suggested sites reports goes to a restricted access server located in the USA. This data is stripped of IP addresses within 7 days, meaning that no one can be identified. We retain this data for a maximum of 13 months.
Any data that is to be shared with a partner is this aggregated data on the number of impressions, clicks, pins, and hides their own content received.
