Response by Dave G
Developer response
posted 8 years agoThis is patently nonsense. If Mozilla's permissions system scares you, please do some research about it before ranting. The "new" permission was added for a "new" feature finally added to newer versions of Firefox to replace an old one that Flagfox previously used for TEN YEARS. Yes, it's astonishingly stupid that Mozilla's addon upgrade GUI handles permissions so poorly, but I have no control over this.
A detailed explanation of each WebExtension permission Flagfox uses is here:
https://flagfox.wordpress.com/faq/#permissions
Some quick notes for the TL;DR people who won't read that, though:
1) Being paranoid about allowing copy/paste is a new one for me, especially given Flagfox having features that explicitly are labeled with "copy" and "paste" that use it.
2) "Your IP address and hostname" is wrong; the permissions it wants are for the IP/host of the sites you visit for Flagfox to look up. Yes, it seems that Mozilla worded its permissions very badly. (for this specific permission, it really means DNS, and Flagfox only uses it in its offline mode, currently)
3) IPs/hosts are not only for "surveillance/tracking"; that's ridiculous. IPs are encoded location information and Flagfox is an addon to look up locations. This shouldn't be complicated to understand as long as you don't short-circuit your understanding of words once you hit one that is sometimes uses in a scary situation.
4) "all the data on all the Web pages you browse": Flagfox needs access to various things for different features, but yes, technically not "all". There is no way provided by Mozilla to restrict it more, and certainly not without making a mess of new confusing permissions that nobody would be able to reasonably sort through. (especially given how Firefox seems to break upgrades with new permissions)
5) MOZILLA STILL HAS AN ADDON REVIEW PROCESS THAT REQUIRES ALL ADDONS TO FOLLOW MOZILLA POLICY. All updates go through both an automated and human check before being allowed public. If Flagfox was really doing whatever nefarious thing you can't articulate, it'd be kicked off of this site and potentially banned from Firefox.
A detailed explanation of each WebExtension permission Flagfox uses is here:
https://flagfox.wordpress.com/faq/#permissions
Some quick notes for the TL;DR people who won't read that, though:
1) Being paranoid about allowing copy/paste is a new one for me, especially given Flagfox having features that explicitly are labeled with "copy" and "paste" that use it.
2) "Your IP address and hostname" is wrong; the permissions it wants are for the IP/host of the sites you visit for Flagfox to look up. Yes, it seems that Mozilla worded its permissions very badly. (for this specific permission, it really means DNS, and Flagfox only uses it in its offline mode, currently)
3) IPs/hosts are not only for "surveillance/tracking"; that's ridiculous. IPs are encoded location information and Flagfox is an addon to look up locations. This shouldn't be complicated to understand as long as you don't short-circuit your understanding of words once you hit one that is sometimes uses in a scary situation.
4) "all the data on all the Web pages you browse": Flagfox needs access to various things for different features, but yes, technically not "all". There is no way provided by Mozilla to restrict it more, and certainly not without making a mess of new confusing permissions that nobody would be able to reasonably sort through. (especially given how Firefox seems to break upgrades with new permissions)
5) MOZILLA STILL HAS AN ADDON REVIEW PROCESS THAT REQUIRES ALL ADDONS TO FOLLOW MOZILLA POLICY. All updates go through both an automated and human check before being allowed public. If Flagfox was really doing whatever nefarious thing you can't articulate, it'd be kicked off of this site and potentially banned from Firefox.
1,072 reviews
- Rated 5 out of 5by SmokeySalmon, 12 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Ayana Chan, 20 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Jorge Pendergrass, 22 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Drimond, 23 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Feelogil, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Lucina Infinity, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Noah, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by sandrine, 2 months agoUne super extension Merci ! Elle m'a permis par exemple de découvrir que mon fournisseur d'energie verte hébergeait son site internet sur les serveurs d'Amazon ... Attention : depuis aujourd'hui le site iplookup(point)flagfox(point)net n'est pas accessible
- Rated 5 out of 5by DemonKingOdio, 2 months agoOne of my favorite extensions, it's such a small touch, but it makes everything better
- Rated 5 out of 5by kuroki, 3 months ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by superoci, 3 months agoNice extension, although the flag icon is very low quality, but thats the only improvement I can see.
- Rated 1 out of 5by 🅱eter, 3 months agoPlease disable the "Your current proxy settings do not allow local DNS requests" desktop notification. It's useless and on Windows you can't even close it
- Rated 5 out of 5by 4hard2ware, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by elsenfox, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Maximilien Perron, 5 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19689004, 5 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Nundedie, 5 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Sunny, 5 months ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by Yukinocon, 5 months ago無法顯示台灣國旗,即便它有辨識出來這是台灣的網域,這有點奇怪,因為我在選項裡看到的國旗列表是有台灣的,而且其他國家的網站顯示是正常的
- Rated 5 out of 5by Dzluck, 6 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by master_b, 7 months ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by Максим Егоров, 8 months agoплагин хорош, но к сожалению видимо работает только напрямую с сайтами если стоит плагин прокси или впн то флагфокс периодически ошибки с DNS выдает и не может толком прочитать и определить страну.
- Rated 5 out of 5by gioggc, 8 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Aissa Jessus, 8 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by H4LL4Y, 8 months agoDone it right & simple : true innovation is minimalism when using in action. This one do the job efficiently