this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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Privacy

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From the new terms:

When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 15 hours ago

I've always supported Firefox and ignored all the telemetry changes issues, after all you can just disable them in about:config, but after this I think I'll switch to a fork. I installed zen browser, the only thing I want is syncing and extensions

[–] [email protected] 8 points 15 hours ago

"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)."

I happily switched to Zen on my desktop a while ago. Time to find a new mobile browser.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Mozilla and Firefox have been going downhill for quite some time now. I'm pretty surprised people are shocked by this.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 14 hours ago

Yeah, I'm in no way surprised by this, but still somehow deeply disappointed.

[–] [email protected] 104 points 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (8 children)

Firefox "never has and never will" sell your personal data was removed.

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e

It was moved here, but there is no never will: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq

It seems like every company on the web is buying and selling my data. You’re probably no different.

Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 15 hours ago

Never trust them, they're still lying on their FAQ

Data collection still bugs me. Can I turn it off?

Yes. User control is one of our data privacy principles. We put that into practice in Firefox on our privacy settings page, which serves as a one-stop shop for anyone looking to take control of their privacy in Firefox. You can turn off data collection there.

You can't just turn off data collection by opt-out through this option :-/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago

Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“)

It's killing me x)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 20 hours ago

Search for firefox-tou.
The presence of that now magically removes mentions of privacy and not selling user-data in multiple places.

-    <p>
-        Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.
-    </p>

+    {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}
+      <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>
+    {% else %}
+      <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>
+    {% endif %}

Difference here is Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data.

-    <h2 class="c-section-title">The best privacy</h2>
+    {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}
+      <h2 class="c-section-title">Always protected</h2>
+    {% else %}
+      <h2 class="c-section-title">The best privacy</h2>
+    {% endif %}

Pivoting from privacy to security in the tos.

-      <li>
-        <h2>{{ ftl('does-firefox-sell') }}</h2>
-        <p>{{ ftl('nope-never-have', url=url('privacy')) }}</p>
-      </li>
+      {% if not switch('firefox-tou') %}
+        <li>
+          <h2>{{ ftl('does-firefox-sell') }}</h2>
+          <p>{{ ftl('nope-never-have', url=url('privacy')) }}</p>
+        </li>
+      {% endif %}

As you mentioned they will apparently sell your data under tos.

Where does the tos apply and where the mpl now?
They would have removed all those mentions of privacy entirely if the mpl had no use anymore, wouldn't they?

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Does having a ToS mean that Firefox is no longer FOSS? Freedom 0 of FOSS is: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose". Isn't that violated if you can only use the software under the condition of accepting terms of service?

[–] mindbleach 12 points 16 hours ago

Arguably no. It's not "you may not use this if you don't agree." It's "the software does this and here is your warning."

Still incredibly fucked.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 19 hours ago

Firefox is FOSS, Mozilla's backend services are not.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

I think they mean Mozilla services such as ai, sync, etc. The browser itself probably doesn't fall under it.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Mozilla updated their post at the top:

UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.

[–] mindbleach 12 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Clarifying literally nothing.

"We couldn't use information typed into Firefox." Good. You don't get that information. My software, on my computer, does. Will some insane new law suggest Notepad spies on users by capturing their keystrokes? No? Then this aggressively vague bullshit is justifying a data-collection scheme. Metadata is still data.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 20 hours ago

We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible.

You have that! It's implied by provision when you distribute your software under eg.: GPL!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 20 hours ago

We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible

Gee whizz, like what? What "basic" functionality is missing that can only be solved with a ToS saying they're going to track how I use their browser?

Without it, we couldn't use information typed into Firefox

That's what I needed to see. So it's not missing basic functionality, they just want to make it legal to track your browser usage.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

That's a nice disclaimer. They should clarify that in their privacy policy directly instead of just saying "oh that's not what we meant guys, pinky promise 😉"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

They mean there stupid services such as sync and ai, but the idiots who wrote this should have clarified that this doesn't encompass the browser. They do require your data to provide those afterall.

The way it is worded is just bad they shoudl have specified services that need data like ai in the wording:

When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, something like:

When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to provide the following services:

Then list the specific services.

If I don't use any of the services, they have no right to use any of my data.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

Seriously Firefox include many services, specifying the TOS for the entire browser is stupid.

What is worse is that people are asking for clarification and there is no response from Mozilla:

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e

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[–] [email protected] 356 points 1 day ago (15 children)

I am so tired of feeling like I have an adversarial relationship with everything in my life

[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 hours ago

It's because This Is The Bad Place

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