this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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Firefox's beta feature "Smart Window" shared browsing and search history to AI models without prompting (www.omgubuntu.co.uk)
submitted 1 month ago by Beep@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] XLE@piefed.social 148 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Relevant section:

Smart Window uses ‘memories’, things Mozilla says “…it learns from your activity” to inform its responses.

You can delete memories individually, and you can set any given chat session to not use/store them.

Fine so far.

The problem? My memory list isn’t populated with things Smart Window learned since I enabled it. Oh no.

It has activity going back months. We’re talking searches and website interactions from long before I enabled this. features.

Firefox just handed that history to the AI models to plough from, without telling me upfront.

I found this the creepiest aspect of Smart Window.

Mozilla says this was a flub; it will refine the onboarding around Smart Window to limit memory formation to post-opt-in activity only. That’s obviously the right fix.

Because sharing a user’s prior browsing history with third-party AI models, silently, on feature activation, without any headset? Yeah, a bit icky – but that’s the price of testing features that are finished, I guess.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 65 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm willing to give them a pass since this was a development build and while someone probably should've thought of it, it's the kind of bug that can happen. If this was the public release it would be a lot more outrageous.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 24 points 1 month ago

Finding out about this gives me some extra questions, though.

  • Was this data summarized on enabling this window, or before?
  • Did it use an existing model, or re-use one that someone may have already downloaded for a different feature?
  • Is this activity going anywhere else, like Mozilla's recent "privacy-preserving" advertising?
  • When this does release, what will the default be?
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