Re: TW Firefox 151.0.4 - pushing World Cup Widget Ads to users??

On 6/17/26 2:10 AM, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:
>>
> 
> I somewhat get what you are talking about.
> And everyone is invited to to help with such things.
> Firefox and Thunderbird are released every 4 weeks. Every cycle there 
> are new surprises in the codebase just to get this stuff built because 
> of different toolchain issues (rust, cbindgen, clang, gcc, glibc, ...).
> 
> At the same time people are critcising if new releases are delayed by 
> two days until they show up in TW because they always contain important 
> security fixes.
> 
> Sorry guys, the absolute truth is: As a volunteer doing serious - 
> totally unrelated - work as my daily business I have no cycles to look 
> into such content and features in time to also consider them. Not even 
> speaking about different expectations and so on.
> Actually there is not much sanitization in that direction right now.
> 
> That being said contributions are welcome but in cases also require 
> discussion about certain things.

No worries Wolfgang,

   I know this crapola is flying under the radar from a packaging 
standpoint. I think what we need to do it look at the core about:config 
entries that enable this stuff to be distributed to distro users.

   And yes, I feel the pain see new "surprise" settings in about:config 
with every point-release. That's why we need to get with Mozilla and 
determine which of the:

   browser.newtabpage.activity-stream....
   datareporting.policy....
   toolkit.telemetry....

entries is the master-control switch to turn this off for the distro. I 
even had the following set and I STILL got hit:

   toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled                     false
   toolkit.telemetry.bhrPing.enabled                     false
   toolkit.telemetry.enabled                             false
   toolkit.telemetry.firstShutdownPing.enabled           false
   toolkit.telemetry.hybridContent.enabled               false
   toolkit.telemetry.newProfilePing.enabled              false
   toolkit.telemetry.prompted                            Number Value 2
   toolkit.telemetry.rejected                            true
   toolkit.telemetry.reportingpolicy.firstRun            false
   toolkit.telemetry.server                              Delete URL
     (was https://incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org)
   toolkit.telemetry.shutdownPingSender.enabled          false
   toolkit.telemetry.unified                             false
   toolkit.telemetry.unifiedIsOptIn                      false
   toolkit.telemetry.updatePing.enabled                  false

   There were several other new telemetry URLs I deleted/changed as well 
like:

   toolkit.telemetry.user_characteristics_ping.opt-out   true

  
browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.discoverystream.merino-provider.ohttp.enabled
                                                         false
   browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.adsfeed      false
   browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.inferredpersonalizationfeed 
false
   browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.sportsfeed   false
   browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry          false

   Somewhere there is a master-control to turn this stuff off, which is 
what we need to find and do for distro-packages. It unfortunately also 
calls into question the browser itself. I've been a mozilla user for 
more than two decades, but something is amiss when this stuff starts 
popping up.

   The master-control isn't something that I've been able to find yet 
(obviously). It is likely intentionally obscure. That's what prompted my 
thought that this may need to be something discussed between SUSE and 
Mozilla for packaging. I'm sure SLE customers don't expect ads popping 
up. Similar to how the "automatic updates" was handled to prevent distro 
user nag since the distro provides the package.

   Any more detailed info would be welcomed. We are pretty much at the 
end of my Mozilla foo here.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.