this link might help

https://www.pcworld.com/article/158470/firefox.html

Hi tekimj, why would being open source increase the risk that tech companies are mining your online data? "Open source" means that the program's source code is published and third parties can use it to build their own products.

Mozilla has information on Firefox and privacy in a number of places, but for example:

• https://www.mozilla.org/privacy/firefox/
• Settings for privacy, browsing history and do-not-track

Hi Chuck92, that article is from 2009. You may want to search up a more current one.

Thanks Chuck92, I saw that article too but was looking for something a little more current.

Thanks Jscher2000, if the source code is available online doesn't that make it more vulnerable for people to "hack" the software for negative purposes?

Hi tekimj, most software vulnerabilities can't easily be spotted by reading source code, or they would have been caught before release.

Closed source is not a barrier to hacking. Otherwise, you would never hear of security patches for Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple products.

Software vulnerabilities are commonly discovered by "fuzzing" a program while it's running, that is, feeding it a wide range of inputs to discover flaws in how the program handles unexpected data or UI events. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzing) Sometimes it's a combination of different program behaviors that gives rise to an exploit. No source needed.

But bear in mind that the biggest source of account compromises is phishing. You can't trust a program to protect you, you need to be on guard yourself.

hey tekimj, i would argue the opposite - as firefox is open source, it's trustworthy. interested people can reliably check and audit that firefox is doing what it's saying, isn't gathering/misusing data other than stated in the privacy policy and much more. security by obscurity has never been a viable concept in software development :-)

Thanks everyone for your input.