Privacy/Reviews/Telemetry/Encountered Plugin Types

This page documents one type of data collected by telemetry: what is collected, the problem we seek to solve by collecting the data, and how we minimize any risks to users' privacy in deploying the measurement.

Status:

Engineering Contact:	TBD
Privacy Contact:	Sid Stamm
Document State:	[NEW]

Problem Statement

What problem will this solve?

1. If / When, and to whom do we advertise or make Windows 64-bit builds available?
2. Which plug-ins should we feature in our plug-in finder service?
3. If we blacklist a plug-in, how much of the web will "break"?

Measurement to Collect

We will collect a histogram showing the frequency each plugin type is encountered as the user browses the web. The histogram will contain frequency by plugin version instantiated.

Sample data:

{ 
  'Shockwave Flash 10.3': 1323,
  'Shockwave Flash 10.2': 301,
  'QuickTime Plug-in 7.6.6': 84,
  'Silverlight Plug-in '3.0.50106.0': 154,
  'SecretCo Corporate Plug-in 0.2': 3
}

Asa, blizzard, verify this:

1. Understanding which plug-ins and which versions of those plug-ins are in use and how frequently they run (including trends) will help us determine when it's reasonable to ship a 64-bit build of Firefox (which requires special and only somewhat available 64-bit plug-ins). Essentially, when almost all object types encountered can be run by available 64-bit plug-ins, we can ship something that no longer supports 32-bit plug-ins.
   1. A 64-bit Firefox will have to run 32-bit plugins as well as the currently-rare 64-bit plugins. Plugins don't ship in 64-bits because browsers can't run them, so what we've done on Mac & Linux and will have to do on Windows is run a 32-bit plugin in a separate 32-bit process from the 64-bit browser. It's really just a difficult engineering problem (bug 595053). And the data collected here would be from 32-bit Firefox users who can only use 32-bit plugins on Windows, so it would only say that zero 64-bit plugins are used in 32-bit browsers, which we already know.
2. Understanding the commonly encountered object-types, we can identify the "most likely needed" plug-ins to feature in our plug-in finder.
3. Understanding the extent of a problematic plug-in's reach can help us estimate what effect blacklisting it may have.

Privacy Considerations

This section will contain potential privacy risks and measures taken to minimize them.

Consent and Privacy Policy Considerations

This section contains notation of any changes to privacy policies or user opt-in/opt-out consent UX that is updated to include this measurement.

Alignment with Operating Principles

This section briefly describes how the measurement and technique lines up with our operating principles'

Transparency / No Surprises

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Real Choice

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Sensible Defaults

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Limited Data

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