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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
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Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7

By | September 27, 2011, 9:29am PDT

Summary: Will you help make future versions of Firefox smarter by enabling this new feature?

Mozilla has added a new feature to Firefox 7 that will help make future versions smarter - telemetry.

Telemetry, or usage statistics to you and me, is a new Firefox 7 feature that allows the browser to report back to Mozilla HQ on how Firefox works for you on your system.

Four data points are collected:

  • Memory usage
  • CPU core count
  • Cycle collection times
  • Startup speed

But what about privacy? Mozilla’s got that covered.

The only Potentially Personal Information sent to Mozilla when this functionality has been enabled is IP addresses. Usage statistics are transmitted using SSL (a method of protecting data in transit) and help us improve future versions of Firefox. Once sent to Mozilla, usage statistics are stored in an aggregate form and made available to a broad range of developers, including both Mozilla employees and public contributors.

So don’t worry … that site you visited to order that special ‘birthday gift’ won’t be made public!

You get the option to switch on this feature when you first install Firefox 7.

You can also control the feature from the Advanced tab in Options:

You can aslo find information on browser performance using about:telemetry.

Will you help make future versions of Firefox smarter by enabling this new feature?

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Topics

Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Corp., Web Browsers, Internet, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

Disclosure

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

All opinions expressed on Hardware 2.0 are those of Adrian Kingsley-Hughes. Every effort is made to ensure that the information posted is accurate. If you have any comments, queries or corrections, please contact Adrian via the email link here. Any possible conflicts of interest will be posted below. [Updated: February 23, 2010] - Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other actual/potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted so far on this blog.

Biography

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology -- whether that be by learning to program, building a PC from a pile of parts, or helping them get the most from their new MP3 player or digital camera.

Adrian has authored/co-authored technical books on a variety of topics, ranging from programming to building and maintaining PCs. His most recent books include "Build the Ultimate Custom PC", "Beginning Programming" and "The PC Doctor's Fix It Yourself Guide". He has also written training manuals that have been used by a number of Fortune 500 companies.

Adrian also runs a popular blog under the name The PC Doctor, where he covers a range of computer-related topics -- from security to repairing and upgrading.

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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
ScorpioBlue 30th Sep
@lehnerus2000

Thanks. Personally I think that was a boneheaded move on Mozilla's part. sad
View in thread
0 Votes
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I will
Michael Alan Goff 27th Sep
Why not help it improve?
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
regsrini 27th Sep
Downloaded it a few hours ago and have been using it exclusively. I can't notice that much of a difference in speed here as compared to FF6, maybe a bit.
I like that they removed the need for http on the Awesome Bar. Overall, no problems so far, no hangs.
Wasn't Memshrink going to be a part of FF7? I don't notice any particular reduction in RAM usage.
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
lehnerus2000 Updated - 27th Sep
@regsrini
" I like that they removed the need for http on the Awesome Bar. "

That should be an option that can be turned on/off.
I want to see http or https when I look at an address.

I "love" the way that software companies think that I don't need to know things.
Remember how Mozilla was going to remove the URL info that appeared when you hovered over a link?
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
ScorpioBlue 28th Sep
That should be an option that can be turned on/off.
I want to see http or https when I look at an address.

@lehnerus2000

+ 1
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If it's https...
Zorched 28th Sep
@lehnerus2000 :
It shows so in the awesome bar. It just removes the http and not https.
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
lehnerus2000 28th Sep
@Zorched
Thanks. happy

I just checked on my PC (I'm using FF8).
FF8 works the same way as FF7 does.
It doesn't show http and it does show https.
0 Votes
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
ScorpioBlue 30th Sep
@lehnerus2000
Mine doesn't either. Is there a way to enable it in about:config?
0 Votes
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Restore http in FF Address bar
lehnerus2000 Updated - 30th Sep
@ScorpioBlue
I found this article.
Show http:// protocol in URL bar for Firefox 7+
http://jj.isgeek.net/2011/08/show-http-protocol-in-url-bar-for-firefox-7/

about:config
browser.urlbar.trimURLs
Change value to false

It worked for me. happy
0 Votes
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
ScorpioBlue 30th Sep
@lehnerus2000

Thanks. Personally I think that was a boneheaded move on Mozilla's part. sad
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
PB_z 27th Sep
Anyone else getting "The URL is not valid and cannot be loaded." when trying to go to about:telemetry?
0 Votes
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
regsrini 27th Sep
@PB_z
Same here, can't seem to load the telemetry page
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
ScorpioBlue 27th Sep
At least you have the option of disabling it.
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
TsarNikky 27th Sep
@ScorpioBlue
It is always an important feature having the ability to "disable" it. There is so much bloatware out there, under the guise of being an "improvement," that being able to disable it is sorely welcome. Maybe Microsoft will remember this very important lesson with its Metro interface in Windows-8.
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RE: Mozilla adds 'telemetry' feature to Firefox 7
rwk006@... 28th Sep
Before Mozilla punishes us with another version of Firefox, I would like very much for them to fix the current version. One of the most glaring problems for me, is that Moonlight does not work with 6. I need it to view/listen to, among other things, sporting events. I have already been forced to miss a number of games and webcasts that require the Moomlight software. Also, there are a number of websites that it is needed to view their video. Maybe Mozilla can stop acting like Microsoft and fix the problems instead of banging over head with crapware that is non-functional.
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having static IPs
opcom 28th Sep
I not enable those. I would like to help but prefer not to divulge browsing information. If I had dynamics or routed through proxies, it would be different. These kind of functions are fine as long as one can turn them on or off as desired. My question is, will it really help? What else is there to know about the browser's performance, generically, other than it is eating too much memory like anything else. The memory eating and CPU-binding is not the browser's fault, I think. It is the fault of webmasters who shove 20x the volume into a visitor's computer than necessary by way of excessive scripts, tracking, flash, etc. The trend towards this has happened so slowly that it has gone un-noticed for the most part aided by increasing bandwidth.

If the rest of my post is trash, consider only this; selecting the important items, the text, on this very web page, yielded a simple 8K text file. the HTML was 110K but that included a lot of code not used for formatting and displaying text. Images (41 of them) were 179K, and the scripts that were downloaded are 316K (not including the 5 ads and their scripts I blocked from download). So there is 608K of data sent to display 8K of text. Sure it is a bulletin board but I believe we can do much better by half with little loss of eye-bling. The point is that problem is not really the browser, it is the bloated web content.

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