Google, Amazon, Bing extensions have been added to Firedragon browser. These do not show up under “Addons and Themes”. I only found them in “about:debugging”
This is a default install, with default settings. It is completely unaltered from what is shipped w/ Garuda. It does seem to be related to search provider settings.
Though Garuda is not a privacy based distro, FireDragon is based on LibreWolf. It seems the Garuda team decided to add these extensions in after the fact. Default Librewolf does not contain these extensions. (or at least the flatpak version I installed to verify didn’t)
This may, or may not, directly affect your privacy. I would guess that info is only sent to these providers if they are specifically requested. But it is JUST a guess.
I’m sure this has been done to monetize the distro, provide support, yada yada.
I personally do not care what the reasoning, or whether or not any information is sent to providers. I will be moving away from Garuda ASAFP. If they do this, what else has been done?
As always, stick w/ recommended on privacyguides.
This whole privacy issue is about trust. And clearly your privacy recommendations are biased. For example, you seem to put all your trust in Fedora, a corporation owned by Red Hat…OWNED. A distro starting to 'trample on user’s privacy with telemetry integration.’
Now you might say that telemetry isn’t like the others, it is “anonymised.” Except that is what corporations always say before they remove the username from the data collected and keep the unique user id. Again, it is about who you trust, and usually corporations are working and focused on the dollar, not the user.
I encourage anyone to look at other privacy recommendation sites, and form your own conclusions.
I believe this is currently opt out and there’s a huge uproar from the community. Appreciate that this is even an open discussion.
You seem leagues more advanced than me, so you know what you’re doing when you use arch or some permutation of it. Meanwhile I have a very limited understanding. I just need something with good defaults, stability, consistent updates, and the ability to turn off telemetry. Fedora has been fine for that. I think one needs to realize that these are recommendations for the average user like me, not directly aimed at advanced users like you.
You could always open a discussion on the privacy guides forum and I’m sure people would be happy to discuss this in more detail with you. They aren’t some small group that have the end all authority on privacy, they also rely on information from people with different needs or skills.