14 DAY TRIAL // The new Firefox 75, which was released only a few days ago, comes with a new scheduled task in Windows that enables data collection, with the information submitted to Mozilla once a day.
Mozilla announced the change in March this year, explaining that the purpose of this new scheduled task, which is only enabled if users activate telemetry in the first place, is to help improve Firefox by “understanding default browser trends.”
Of course, Mozilla says that personal data is collected, as the company is only interested in “information related to the system’s current and previous default browser setting, as well as the operating system locale and version.”
Mozilla guarantees that the collected data cannot be associated with a regular profile, and once users opt out of telemetry, the service is automatically disabled.
It goes without saying that users can manually block the service themselves by simply deleting the scheduled task from Windows 10.
“Collecting telemetry is one way we’re able to ensure we can understand default browser trends in a way that helps us improve Firefox. It’s our hope that by better understanding more about our users and their choices around browser preferences, we can continue to build a better Firefox,” Mozilla says.
Mozilla keeps your data for 13 months
If you want to review the information that Mozilla collects using Firefox, you can fire up the browser and type the following code in the address bar:
about:telemetry
Mozilla says it only keeps telemetry data for 13 months, after each all the information is automatically removed. On the other hand, if you disable telemetry in Firefox, your data is removed in 30 days from Mozilla’s servers.