How do I stop Firefox mobile from making it's own connections to Google, AmazonAWS and netDNA despite choosing every available opt-out?
If I visit a simple web page which doesn't contain any 3rd party content I can still see Firefox Mobile making secure connections to:
108.161.188.224 - Registered to netDNA in the US 74.125.230.* - Various Google servers 23.21.86.68 23.23.293.51 and many more - Amazon AWS servers
These always follow any page load, browsing from a desktop system makes no such connections and are established on a website such as lwn.net which have no 3rd party content on their pages.
I have unticked all options in telemetry and have no sync set up, I even tried disabling things like Safebrowing and add-on update checks in about:config but the very concerning connections remain.
Please help me find the option to make this stop. As the communications are secure I can't look at what they might contain and it baffles me as to what purpose they serve but question one is how on earth do I disable the worrying connections to companies I choose to avoid.
All Replies (4)
Hi tryingtoescape, On Firefox for Android there is a new experimental about page that tells you all of the network connections being made in Firefox.
Try it, go to [about:networking]
To disconnect, go to Settings > Privacy > Clear Private Data then restart Firefox on the Android device. This will minimize the active sockets.
However even in private guest session there is safebrowsing.google.com, the default search engine and attached accounts. But you have already found a way to disconnect thest.
Does clearing the Private Data make an improvement?
For specific connections mentioned: 108.161.188.224 - Registered to netDNA in the US 74.125.230.* - Various Google servers 23.21.86.68 23.23.293.51 and many more - Amazon AWS servers
You may be able to try an add on, one found was: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/andr.../?src=search
Opening a new tab, closing the existing tabs and clearing data can close the connections but it doesn't stop them reoccurring when the next page is loaded.
Have you tested this yourself? You don't need to be a wireshark expert, just using an app like OS Monitor on the phone itself shows the parallel connections being made to unrelated servers. Most worryingly, servers owned by companies who's business is based on selling personal data and try my best to not feed them that data since it should be my choice to do so.
Same questions remain for me and I find it disappointing to discover that a Mozilla browser appears more of a privacy risk than the one which comes with Android. I can't see anything in the way of a blacklist for that add-on to prevent all of these connections, it also doesn't help that I don't even know what browser function I'm trying to disable.
Unless you are logged in as a subscriber LWN has several advertisements which could easily be making those calls.
With
- browser.safebrowsing.enabled = false
- browser.safebrowsing.malware.enabled = false
and
- Firefox settings > Mozilla
- Telemetry, Crash Reporter and Nightly health report unchecked
Loading en.wikipedia.org does not contact any non-wikimedia IPs from what I can see.
I need to test this more but I think you're right, a better test was debian.org and my initial results were likely skewed by an add-on for the desktop which blocks tracking.