The permissions on their extension allows for them to read site data so they definitely could operate as a data broker. However their tos has no mention of any data sharing so you are likely correct that they just take a commission. Great site imo
If you have multiple extensions installed honey always secretly steals the revenue from competitors without asking for consent. Most other extensions will ask if you want to activate cashback. Honey just disables their competitors and steals that affiliate revenue. It should be classified as malware
Topcashback consistently beats honey and others out (almost all competitors beat honey btw). And they pay out and have customer support. Easily thr best way to sell your personal data to a shadowy data broker
I think you’re right and that I’ve horribly misunderstood how this data is collected and used. According to their yearly report, mozilla’s advertising revenue is explicitly not drawn from user data and is only related to tiles and default search engine sponsorships. The fact that they are not selling this information is heartening and it inspires confidence that they have not flipped on the ad money spigot.
I appreciate your informed response but no system other than advertising-abstinence is fool proof.
Im saying this as a supporter. My browser of choice is firefox and I send them money regularly. And I understand their need to generate more revenue. But there has never been a company who has sold customer data discretely. My understanding is that every piece of data that’s sold can be de anonymized when combined with other data sets. And the data is horsetraded until it gets into some very marginal actors’ hands.
Mozilla’s need for money is largely driven by massive mismanagement. It should have been fully funded in perpetuity through establishing a foundation that operates off interest payments but they decided to try and build a headquarters in Mountainview. They also operate offices in some of the most expensive cities in the world. They have made expensive software aquisitions. These are not necessary and have only whetted mozilla’s thirst for other revenue sources. It’s guaranteed that they will look for more customer data to sell because that’s the path of least resistance.
I wish them luck but I also wish they’d not chase advertising money.
Even if Mozilla takes precautions to avoid de-anonymizing our data, any private data sold to data brokers becomes a part of the puzzle for learning our identities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification
Even knowing something a trivial as two movie ratings led to a 68% success rate in learning an identity.
Many smokers don’t know that nicotine salt (or nicsalt) is horrendously addictive compared to freebase nicotine. And nicsalt is the primary form of nicotine in tobacco and some vapes. Cigarette companies sneakily add more to the rolling paper to make cigarettes more addictive.
It is orders of magnitude more difficult quitting nicsalt. It’s why many people who successfully quit recommend starting with stronger freebase nicotine vapes or lower nicsalt and then trying to scale back from there eventually moving to freebase.
Nicsalt is so addictive you can be going into withdrawal while vaping freebase nicotine.
Edit: gums use Nicotine polacrilex which was engineered to increase bioavailability over freebase. Most gums and patches are hard to quit because manufacturers offer no guidance on tapering dosage although you figured this out on your own. You’re smart.