Mozilla Firefox Add-ons Manager uses Google Analytics

Mozilla Firefox uses an internal page, accessible by the " about: addons " pseudo-address, to manage the add-on. The add-ons manager has become so familiar part of the browser that we (most of us) have already stopped paying attention to how it works and how it works. And in vain!

As it turned out , the Analytics service code is located on the main Firefox Add-ons Manager page. The counter is used regardless of the consent to the Mozilla telemetry transmission without taking into account the “Do Not Track” mode; moreover, the about: addons page is not affected by add-ons for blocking ads / trackers, and the data is transmitted even to bypass the integrated tracking protection system (Tracking Protection) in private mode.

The contents of the list of proposed additions, which is displayed in the section about: addons, is downloaded from the host discovery.addons.mozilla.org, therefore it is proposed to block access to this host as a workaround to disable. The discontent is caused by the fact that the default user information is directly transmitted to a third-party service without warning and bypassing blocking add-ons, which is unacceptable for a privacy-oriented browser.
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In the above ticket, one of the Mozilla employees explained that the data is collected for analyzing the statistics of views of the list of recommended add-ons and, because of the importance of the information received for analytics, they do not intend to remove the counter. At the same time, he proposed to limit the use of the counter only when the Do Not Track mode is off or to add a separate option.



It is argued that despite the fact that the data is processed through Google, the option that prohibits Google from using the information for its own purposes is activated in the Google Analytics interface. In addition, in agreement with Google Analytics, for Mozilla resources, only generalized and impersonal statistics are maintained, which do not allow for the identification of specific users. There is also a screenshot of the settings of the GA account used:



Advertising blockers and tracking countermeasures do not affect the Google Analytics block in the add-ons manager, as add-ons cannot process the contents of the about: * service pages. UPD: Judging by the individual comments, there is an option to choose an extension that can prevent Google Analytics in this situation from collecting statistics /

And now - " sweet ". Google Analytics code is also executed on the about: addons page in the Tor Browser.