Thunderbird is still archiving telemetry?

[John C.]

Despite my having opted out of "Thunderbird Data Collection"
(Options/Thunderbird Data Collection and Use/Uncheck both "Allow
Thunderbird to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" and
"Allow Thunderbird to send backlooged crashreports on your behalf")

I notice that the program keeps archiving datareporting in this folder:

"C:\Users\Computer User\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\(my profile
name).default\datareporting\archived\2021-02"

Worse yet, it doesn't seem to ever delete any of the JSONLZ4 files so
that the folder just gets bigger and bigger.

Can anybody tell me why this is happening and how to stop Thunderbird
from doing this?

TIA
--
John C.

[Andrei Z.]

Bug 1242652 - The size of the folder(ProfD\datareporting\archived) is
growing unlimited
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1242652
Closed: "The archives are kept for a maximum of 180 days or 120MB, by
design."

(Nightly/Inbound) the 'datareporting' folder grows too much •
mozillaZine Forums
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2986235
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled", false); seems to control
the archive folder.

How to disable the Firefox Saved Telemetry Pings and archive folder -
gHacks Tech News
https://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/09/how-to-disable-the-firefox-saved-telemetry-pings-and-archive-folder/
"The preference toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled defines whether local
archiving of telemetry pings is enabled or not. The preference depends
on toolkit.telemetry.unified and works only if unified is turned on."

I set toolkit.telemetry.unified to false - no new files.

[John C.]

Thanks very much for this info, Andrei. I just toggled that pref. I
appreciate your help a lot and will archive it for future reference.

--
John C.

[obelar]

"toolkit.telemetry.enabled" is locked. Does this matter if the rest of
the config options according to the ghacks article is set to its
recommended settings?

[obelar]

On 3/1/2021 1:09 AM, Andrei Z. wrote:

[Andrei Z.]

Menu -> Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> about:telemetry

....
"Telemetry is collecting release data and upload is disabled."
....

[WaltS48]

WOW! I never looked at that before. So much interesting information there.

Happy to be helping Mozilla make Firefox a better browser and
Thunderbird a better email application by sharing this information.

Really disappointed that I couldn't find any data that would identify me
as the user.

Would that be the "clientId 6a94f88c-7109-44f7-9f08-d0fab23ece97"?

--
OS: Fedora 33 Workstation - Gnome Desktop
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/

[Frank-Rainer Grahl]

WaltS48 wrote:
> On 3/10/21 1:52 PM, Andrei Z. wrote:
>> obelar wrote:
>>> On 3/1/2021 1:09 AM, Andrei Z. wrote:
>>

....

>
> Really disappointed that I couldn't find any data that would identify me as
> the user.
>
> Would that be the "clientId 6a94f88c-7109-44f7-9f08-d0fab23ece97"?
>

Of course not. They are the good guys rooting for privacy and aim at
protecting your private information. There is no way this really unique id
attached to crash reports and pings among other things can be used to identify
a single user. For sure!

FRG

[WaltS48]

Well, that is one clientid for one Thunderbird version of my four
versions of Thunderbird on Fedora. If they have my name, address and
phone number they are welcome to it.

I think it would identify my Thunderbird version, but have they would
have no idea who is using it.

If enough unique id's have the same crash, use the same features or
don't use the same features the application's can be improved.

I hate it when something I use is removed or changed because I'm in the
0.000001% of users. 😞

[Andrei Z.]

Telemetry collection and deletion - Firefox Help
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/telemetry-clientid

Telemetry — Firefox Source Docs documentation
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/telemetry/

https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/components/telemetry/data/common-ping.html

[Frank-Rainer Grahl]

Yes this is the party line but looking at where in the source telemetry is
collected I find that this has gone out of control. And usually then used to
to justify ripping out features and dumbing down the application with the
usual spiel "Only blablabla% of our users are using this feature according to
telemetry and we can not jutify blablabla....".

So I will remain skeptical and not become a fan. That almost everyone is doing
it now does not justify it either.

FRG