Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic
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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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.
palemoon is just firefox from the pre quantum days before the webextension enshittification and all they need is a decent mobile app and their own sync
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I just wish it wasn't using blink
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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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.
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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
Hm? Paypal redirects work for me, even in my browsing profile with trimmed useragent and strict same-origin/cookie policy. This one was never a problem, even if no other webäpp worked. Seems they have good fallbacks.
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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 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.
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I learned more about their paid services from this one post than in the last 5 years of using their browser. Not that their browser should be constantly inundating you with ads for their other services but dang.
The problem is that none of this revenue or profit is guaranteed to go to Firefox. It goes to Mozilla and they decide how it is spent. It could go to pocket, a new overpaid CEO, or a hundred other ways that don't benefit FOSS.
I would have donated hundreds of dollars to Firefox development already, if that were possible, but that is not an option. The only option is Mozilla, and they may spend that on anything else but Firefox.
Also Mozilla VPN is shit. It is a severely limited implementation of Mullvad, and they even enshittified their browser for it. You can only have per container VPN's (a major gain for user privacy) if you pay for Mozilla VPN... They've already chosen to harm their users privacy for profit. This is the kind of shit that guarantees I will never donate as long as a for profit entity has control over Firefox, and its features.
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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.
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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.
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I may have missed prefs. But typically Firefox will still connect to Mozilla after config such as user.js or autoconfig.
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.
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I use brave and librewolf, anybody know if those are still safe from this dort of thing? (Probably not I guess, so what browsers are left?)
Someone earlier said that brave was based on chrome and when google blocked ublock origin on Chrome, it would stop working on brave too.
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Terms of Service (ToS) are regularly not upheld in court, and their terms are worded so poorly that as written, it would not be a difficult case to defeat.
The Firefox specific terms for the precompiled binary link to a more general terms page meant to be additional parts, but the additional parts they link to specify that the additional terms only apply to use of Mozilla "services" (sync, vpn, etc). The concerning shit on the ToS lies in the terms for their services.
It's a clear contradiction of scope, and unfortunately not Firefox's first fuckup of this kind. So far, with a multi decade history, none of these contradictions have been used to fuck over their users.
They already have separate terms for use of the source code. Those are what making forks, and what compiling the source yourself, fall under. They do not make any reference to the services ToS. Use of the source is not effected by any of this so far, on a technical (can the bad shit be removed) and on a legal (are forkers allowed to remove) level.
Hacker News has some deeper discussion about the finer points of the ToS mess.
And apparently Mozilla has clarified that the wording changes in their summary (not the actual ToS) are because California's definition of "sale" of information includes just communicaring it to a third party as part of normal operations support. Thanks again to Hacker News discussion of Mozilla's latest statement.
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Someone earlier said that brave was based on chrome and when google blocked ublock origin on Chrome, it would stop working on brave too.
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palemoon is just firefox from the pre quantum days before the webextension enshittification and all they need is a decent mobile app and their own sync
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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 realized mozilla is cooked a few months ago when i read this issue where it has taken them TWELVE YEARS to implement a date picker
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I have yet to see YouTube ads on brave, but are you saying that will soon cease to be the case? Bugger.
Also, Brave has really shitty features like redirecting referral codes.
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Someone earlier said that brave was based on chrome and when google blocked ublock origin on Chrome, it would stop working on brave too.
People don't like Brave because they believe it's a crypto scam, and the CEO is a douchebag. But Brave has said they'll continue to support extensions regardless of Google's change.
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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.
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."
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I use brave and librewolf, anybody know if those are still safe from this dort of thing? (Probably not I guess, so what browsers are left?)
Librewolf is privacy-hardened so it's probably the best option. Brave is Chromium-based. Realistically though, all web browsers come with compromises, and internet anonymity is virtually impossible without unrealistic amounts of effort.
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It could just be styled the old way
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It is actively developed . They didn’t just kept the old version. They forked it and improving and fixing it.
