Firefox maker Mozilla deleted a promise to never sell its users’ personal data and is trying to assure worried users that its approach to privacy hasn’t fundamentally changed. Until recently, a Firefox FAQ promised that the browser maker never has and never will sell its users’ personal data. An archived version from January 30 says:
Does Firefox sell your personal data?
Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.
That promise is removed from the current version. There’s also a notable change in a data privacy FAQ that used to say, “Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.”
The data privacy FAQ now explains that Mozilla is no longer making blanket promises about not selling data because some legal jurisdictions define “sale” in a very broad way:
Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data”), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
Mozilla didn’t say which legal jurisdictions have these broad definitions.
I have been advised it’s not a fork but a reconfig of default firefox, therefore it would technically be subject to the same ToS.
Edit: here’s where I got that (with a link to the cfg) https://lemmy.world/comment/15368938
Depending on how the requirement to accept the ToS is implemented, a config file might be able to disable it and any features that depend on it.
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I doubt implementation of terms will be optional.
You are all up and down these comments repeating this statement.
Why?
How exactly has Mozilla handled changes like this before that leads you to this conclusion? Do you have anything to back this up other than your own dogged insistence?
Surely there must be something I’m missing for you to be so adamant on this point. Please enlighten me, because to my knowledge about how all this works and has worked in the past this just seems like baseless fearmongering to me.
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So… entirely vibes based take. Maybe take some time to step away and come back later.
Spamming a doomerism opinion, when not backed up by anything but feelings, helps nobody. It’s an overactive immune response. The fever worse than the illness your body is trying to burn out using it.
I get that it feels like the world is going to shit, and especially when things you thought were trustworthy start doing this, it’s a blow. But this shit (repeated as fucking much as you have repeared it) makes the community, and people who need a non-corporate controlled browser, weaker and more vulnerable.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression it didn’t call out to mozilla servers if you didn’t enable sync.
I guess Mullvad would be the next popular browser yeah?
afaict Mullvad browser doesn’t support plugins which - it does some adblock by default (more ifyou have the VPN) and so on but i gots to have my DarkViewer so it’s a sometimes browser for me atm.
It does work with Firefox plugins, there just isn’t a button to open the extension “store” in the extensions settings page like stock Firefox has. You can add them by manually going to the url though, it’s just recommended that you don’t since that increases your risk of adding a malicious plugin or being fingerprinted, etc. I still added a few plugins that I really dislike not having though, like a password manager and darkreader, just because I valued the convenience slightly more than the added security.
Nice, thanks!
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What? Some proof here please. Firefox is 100% open source. You can audit the entire code for this.
It’s not like chromium with the pre-compiled binary blob in the middle provided by google.
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And again. 100% open source. There is no way for any functionality (including functionalitt that does that) to exist somewhere that people making forks can’t modify/remove it.
How good is mullvad browser?
so long firefox👋
Where are you going?
Tor/Mullvad are the only acceptable options if you genuinely want the best for your privacy. Mullvad browser is a bit less of a hassle than Tor but not by much. If adamant about staying away from Gecko (Firefox) and Chromium browsers then WebKit forked browsers are sort of the last options.
At this point I’m beginning to look at going online as something that is inherently dangerous (for lack of a better word) and that needs to be done with care. There is no meaningful way to stay private anymore, and by connecting and interacting you are always painting a target on your back with long-lasting consequences that we can’t imagine yet. It’s not looking great right now, my dudes.
How does Mullvad work on legacy websites? Never heard a Dev say they tested for anything other than chrome, safari, edge & firefox
Don’tbe evilThis is why I am an advocate for publicly-funded Internet, like how people fund NPR and BBC.
I don’t blame Firefox because at the end of the day, they are still a business and need to cover the operating cost. I blame the system that we’re in and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative.
and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative
That’s like blaming wolves for eating you when it’s winter, they are hungry and you are in the forest
We are still in a capitalistic. Money still prevails.
What operating costs? You could argue there are development costs, but development is driven by the community. The only operating costs are forced stalking behavior.
I can’t remember the details, but if I remember correctly, Firefox used to get a lot of cut from hosting Google’s ad. But Google cut that deal and Firefox lost 90% of its revenue as a result. That’s why I can’t blame Firefox for doing what they are doing at the moment.
Us users want services for free but we can’t have our cake and eat them in the current paradigm of the internet. That’s why we have to think outside the box and I advocate for a publicly funded internet. It is the same model as NPR and BBC and that is why they have little to no ads unlike private broadcasters. The same principle should be applied to the Internet if we want to keep using it for free.
I don’t understand what you mean by Firefox’s development is driven by the community? It’s not a community contributed open source software; my friend worka on Firefox and is a Mozilla employee.
I’m sorry, but first of all Mozilla actually employs developers. And the development process isn’t just the developers’ salaries. There’s R&D, QA, management, administration, accounting. All of these cost money, and this isn’t even touching on the expenses associated with offices (electricity, general upkeep, maintenance).
Then there’s the costs associated with packaging the binaries, hosting the binaries, bandwidth…
Even if you’re giving everyone a miser’s pay, and getting cheaper unreliable hosting, it adds up
So sad. I have used Firefox since 2006. Today I removed it for good from all of my devices. So long old friend. I cant wait for Ladybird to release.
what is your current open source / FOSS alternative?
LibreWolf on desktop and Fennec on phone.
I’m about to get my tattoo removed wtf
Just get “RIP” tattooed under it.
If it’s really you…
Wtf?
It is lmfao it was my first one 🥲
Would you like to see my tattoo of Tom from MySpace I got on my left testicle? Hey man, in 2005 it seemed like MySpace Tom would be in our lives forever. Why WOULDN’T you get his profile picture inked into your body with needles on the most painful part of your body? It made sense in 2005!
But noooooooooo! Facebook had to be a dick. And now whenever I pull my pants down in front of some hot 20 year old with daddy issues, she’s like “Is that your uncle or something?”
Meanwhile Tom sold my MySpace for hundreds of millions of dollars, and now does photography of bikini models on his yacht! While I have to explain who Tom is to Gen Z…
sigh
Honestly at this point, I wouldn’t be embarrassed having a tattoo of Tom from MySpace.
For a second I thought Tom did photography and bikini models on his yacht. We’ll he probably does, but I just read your comment wrong.
I mean, he’s worth hundreds of millions, on a yacht that he owns with hotties in bikinis hoping to get discovered as their own ticket to fame from the photos being taken of their oiled up sexy bodies.
The sex was implied.
You’re a good friend
Edit: also the style shows through, not everyone can get a watercolor vibe without the water
It’s actually not watercolor, I’m just old and I don’t wear sunscreen 😂 take care of your ink, kids
Son of a bitch I just got back into Firefox.
Is there any android port?
Not at the moment, but the Librewolf folks recommend Ironfox.
Interesting. How’s water fox?
Switched yesterday, feeling right at home so far.
Me too. Practically 0 difference, works for me!
None of Librefox Waterfox or Ironfox are on Fdroid. So Fennec (aka: Firefox) is still the only FOSS option on Fdroid
Get in loser, we’re going to librewolf apparently. Fuck me I’ve reached the age of seeing all the things I like die. I don’t even remember a time I didn’t use Firefox. God damn it
Icecat’s good too. In fact in some ways, eg. cutting Sync out entirely where LibreWolf disables it by default but lets you enable it if desired, it’s even better than LibreWolf.
Mozilla is trying to increase their revenue by doing everything other than improving Firefox
Like they could also make a FOSS alternative to VS-Code but nah
Vs codium is a FOSS vs-code
As in Mozilla own alternative from scratch with their own independent Plugin-repository
Could be a potential money-maker
Enshittification
We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate,
Fuck off Mozilla. Maybe don’t pay CEOs millions and don’t force things like Pocket and LLMs on users if you want to be commercially viable, I’d gladly pay for Firefox that doesn’t make me dodge new features and services. But it would be a donation towards development of a browser that is commons, since you have no product to sell, only GPL’d code that’s mine as much as yours.
You have NO fucking leverage, Firefox is better than Chrome, but there’s projects that will gladly repackage your code with no telemetry whatsoever for any platform while you’re brainstorming just the right amount of monetization to prevent the frog from jumping.
It’s kind of sad I don’t use Chrome and therefore never think of it, while I like and use Firefox and am therefore constantly at odds with Mozilla.
A lot of these browsers seems to be obsessed with AI that nobody wants.
Don’t collect anything on your own and don’t sell the things you don’t collect. Bam, problem solved.
I moved to LibreWolf a couple of months ago. I’ll move further away if I need to.
Aaaand that’s why I switched to Brave. If you have shit performance and are selling my data, what’s the redeeming quality? 8gb of RAM should be enough to browse the internet. IDK why Firefox insists it isn’t…
Brave did have some bad habits (and i think still has) so personally i would not trust them with my data. You could look for a firefox based browser like Zen (the most beautyful of them all) or stick to any other privacy first chromium based like vivaldi or mullvad.
The general rule: the less features, the more privacy And if features are needed there are addons
If this is not a parody, I implore you to at least…read the Wikipedia page?
Mozilla posted an update:
Update at 10:20 pm ET: Mozilla has since announced a change to the license language to address user complaints. It now says, “You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.”
Why they need users ? If they operate Firefox by themselves why they not start paying for power usage for hosting Firefox on my machine.
My thoughts as well, there is always another option
That clarification is not making me calm
