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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.
lmao another Mozilla shitshow
grabs popcorn 🍿
Yup I’ll be sticking with Firefox forks… Unfortunately i have to keep a chrome install around because i can’t get alternative browsers to do redirects for PayPal
Have you tried “un-googled chromium”? Should work pretty much the same as regular chromium in that regard…
Or even just a good old fashioned user agent switcher?
+1 for agent switcher
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.
Which jurisdictions? What kind of broad way? Give one example please. I dare you.
This 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.
please pay me if you want to sell my data. At the end of the day I am a business and need to cover operating cost.
Is there an open source tool to generate fake user activity data for Firefox to consume?
current acting CEO of Mozilla is Laura Chambers. An Australian native and has quite…interesting work history.
It’s weird isn’t it? how these same names keep coming up again and again…
Ebay, Paypal, Airbnb.
she would have likely worked with Thiel and Musk during her time there. I wonder if there’s any lingering commitment there?
As an Australian.Do not trust us when it comes to privacy, security especially in tech or the digital space.
We are not a nation descendant of ‘convicts’ but of prison guards and other colonial boot lickers.
We are US lite or US 10years ago or maybe their tearing ground. Can’t figure it out.
Yeah don’t trust us, we’ve gutted all forms of STEM that aren’t directly related to digging shit out of the ground for Gina Rinehart and co
Serious intellectual brain drain in this country now, we really are the US 10 years ago, hopefully the US explodes enough to stop all our idiots blindly following their jingoism to our doom
McKinsey is honestly scarier. They may not be a household name like the others, but look them up. They are frightening.
Glad you shared this. I hate to be That Tin Foil Hat Person but it seems really convenient that a Musk and Thiel tied CEO happens to take over the one browser base that isn’t Chromium just before people start moving to it for privacy in escalating numbers.
Man, this is very disappointed news. Thanks though, good to know.
McKinsey, you forgot that, whatever the fuck it is
I’ve been “laid off” by a McKinsey sweep twice in my Silicon Valley career and both times the stated reason was basically for making working software instead of lying and scamming.
sorry i did try to pretend McKinsey doesn’t exist. First I heard of them was pete butigieg.
Look, being gay and married is the most pro family values position conceivable
shit no i shouldn’t pretended. i do NOT want to learn more. but yes, thanks for the link.
Stanford too
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…
Lol Brave… Ok
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?
Son of a bitch I just got back into Firefox.
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.
Is there any android port?
Not at the moment, but the Librewolf folks recommend Ironfox.
None of Librefox Waterfox or Ironfox are on Fdroid. So Fennec (aka: Firefox) is still the only FOSS option on Fdroid
Interesting. How’s water fox?
Switched yesterday, feeling right at home so far.
I remember a time when Google wrote “Don’t be evil” all over their stuff…
dude i worked in a buncha different college libraries around the time of google’s initial ascension. Google slayed. it was awesome, in 2000.
now? google is a drippy search engine.
There’s a phrase that is still very close to that in some company statement still, I sort of view it as pointless to talk about. We know they’re evil by their actions, and they were evil before they removed it in sure. If the statement is what matters, it’s still basically there, just not the motto. It’s just not worth worrying or talking about. They do so much worse shit. A friend of mine was recently let go after protesting about their response to the genocide in Gaza.
Gahhhh this is horrible
I spent some time switching to Librewolf this morning but at the end of the day, it having Firefox as the upstream means it’s all fragile and tenuous anyway
Switched to librewolf the other day, and it’s great
I installed Librewolf despite being a furry that loves foxes and it legit fixed every Firefox issue I had. But they were all local issues.
Nice, what issues?
TBH I was tempted to try IceCat first because of the name (I’m not a furry but I do think cats are cool). But no official binaries and I’m already running enough custom-compiled software, thing I need least is for my browser to be like that too haha
just uninstall firefox
Yep, I have Chrome and its a better browser anyways /s
chrome is a better browser because it’s compliant
please note; fuck chrome and fuck google
edit: the point is better and freer internet. if your name is musk then you have shown your trash.
Its compliant because they write fekin standards (or at least have significant sway about what becomes standard). It’s almost like monopolies are bad ^^
Trust me bro
What’s the next Android browser I’m installing fam?
I just have friends send me memes to my clamshell flip phone through SMS
Get your ham license and send them by SSTV over the air. Truly decentralized. https://youtu.be/Yak__tnFHKs
beg borrow or steal android devices until you get one worth your time.
They said browser.
browser is ??? you want that g chrome reaching down your throat?
They can’t just promise they “never will” and then get rid of it. People who used the service under the original agreement should still be able to claim that benefit since it was promising to never sell it.
I feel a little vindicated. I started using Firefox basically when it was first released. I migrated away from it after several years because I simply didn’t like the direction that Mozilla was taking it. Decades later I see them struggling down the same inevitable path I figured they’d always head down from the beginning.
Firefox bros used to get ultra pissed at me for shitting on their browser because I just knew Mozilla would eventually fuck it all up. And here we are.
What has your choice of browser(s) been throughout the past decade?
What are you using now?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. I told ya so? I was smarter than everyone else and figured it out first?
FF has been one of the better full-featured browsers with generous amount of add-ons/plugins. There was no reason not to use it vs some less functional browser or some corporate data miner like Chrome. It still is, however some alternatives are catching up. Time will tell how it all shakes out as far as the battle between functionality, privacy, ad- and tracking-blockers, and people willing to build and maintain free browsers and plugins.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
The first thing I said;
I feel a little vindicated.
I apologize. I literally don’t know how to make it any more clear than that.
Oh ok, so a completely pointless comment. Got it.
At least everyone here knows you switched before them though! Or something!
