Bug#697125: iceweasel: default value for extensions.blocklist.enabled causes Iceweasel to phone home

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2013 at 08:25:21AM +0100, Mike Hommey wrote:
> (Zack, question for you at the end)
[…]
> Arguably, we could remove most of the information sent, but I'm not
> convinced either. But then, I could be seen as biased, since I'm also a
> Mozilla Corporation employee. So I'll defer the decision to touch the
> downloaded url to someone else. Which makes me wonder, do we have
> specific people in Debian dealing with such privacy concerns?

Not that I'm aware of, unfortunately.  (I've been thinking for quite a
while about encouraging the formation of a "debian privacy team", that
could have a cross-cutting view on privacy issues in stock Debian, but I
don't think we have anything close ATM.)  I'd suggest contacting the
security team, as a potential approximation. Also, discussing this with
the popcon maintainers might be useful, given they have surely faced
similar issues in the past and might have developed a useful "culture"
on the matter.

FWIW, I did find your explanation of what is sent quite reassuring. But
I'm still torn between the need of defending users against malware-ish
extensions and the need of not doing anything that might remotely
resemble "phoning home" by default.

Not sure if I've helped much...,
Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  zack at upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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