---
title: >-
  IceWeasel and Privacy
date: 2012-01-03 00:51
modified: 2012-01-03 00:51
lang: en
authors: rysiek
tags:
 - ancient
 - mozilla
 - sane-defaults
status: published
pinned: false
---

Some time ago, Mozilla decided to implement a [Do Not Track feature](http://dnt.mozilla.org/) -- a nice idea in this age of pervasive outright spying by more and more Internet entities on us mere mortals. That was soon also implemented by [Microsoft IE](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Browser/DoNotTrack/Default.html) team, which is great news (by the way, you gotta love how both links give directions on how to enable Do-Not-Track in the *rival's* offering).

Problem, though, is that it's not enabled by default in Firefox. And it's [not that visible and easy to enable](http://michaelzimmer.org/2011/03/23/firefox-4-adds-do-not-track-but-buries-it/) for the regular Joe.

So why doesn't Mozilla make it enabled by default, one might ask? Basically, [they say](http://blog.mozilla.com/privacy/2011/11/09/dnt-cannot-be-default/), if everybody does it, it won't work, because it's supposed to be "personal choice". Well, to that, I would say, that it should be the other way around -- I should be asked and given a chance to decide if I want to be tracked, instead of having to find an obscure checkbox somewhere in the Preferences **not** to be tracked.

But then it dawned at me: in [Debian](http://debian.org) (and a few [other](http://grml.org/) [distros](http://www.aptosid.com/)), instead of Firefox, we get [IceWeasel](http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=iceweasel&searchon=names&suite=stable&section=all) (due to a [complicated copyright issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation_software_rebranded_by_the_Debian_project) I won't go into here) -- a Debian-run re-branding of Mozilla Firefox.

So, you probably already see where this is heading. If Debian is already re-branding Firefox as IceWeasel, **why not make the sane, privacy-enhancing decision** and **enable Do Not Track by default**? It's just a single checkbox to flip. Whaddya say, Debian et al?

~~*Yes, I [submitted a bug report via mail](http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting), waiting for it to show up.*~~  
*Update: The [bug is now on-line](http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=654336).*