Mozilla is already revising its new Firefox terms to clarify how it handles user data
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Some jurisdictions classify "sale" as broadly as "transfer of data to any other company, for a 'benefit' of any kind" Benefit could even be non-monetary in terms of money being transferred for the data, it could be something as broadly as "the browser generally improving using that data and thus being more likely to generate revenue."
To avoid frivolous lawsuits, Mozilla had to update their terms to clarify this in order to keep up with newer laws.
I agree, I don't want my browser provider to collect any data on me at all, but if they absolutely must gather the absolute minimum system analytics stats or such they should NEVER pass it to a third party for ANY reason.
You make a desktop browser application, that's your job, to provide a portal to the world wide web, nothing more. Stay within your bounds and we'll never have any problem.
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if it’s properly handled and anonymized it benefits everyone using firefox
glub glub much?
There is no justification for opt-out telemetry data collection, and there is no proper handling of data obtained despite user pushback. Also, properly anonymizing large data sets is not as trivial as you think. Even "fully anonymized" data set, assuming everything's possible's been done, can lead to correlation when added with other data. Even "cohorts" can lead to the creation of an aggregate group with so few individuals that it basically boils down to individual tracking.
Why do you think people are so vocal about not letting any of this happens in the first time? It's not for blind idealism. It's basically because even a minimum waiver on "supposedly anonymous" data is a huge blow to your privacy. And some people care about that.
Besides, Mozilla's been pushing for a shitton of features that are constantly blamed for Firefox becoming as bad as its competition, and constantly turned off/removed. If they cared even a tiny bit about user feedback, the last… 3, 5 years of decisions from Mozilla would have been very different. Feature usage telemetry is a joke to make people accept their bullshit; the only thing that influence feature development is management or very heavy pushback, and that happens in dev issues, not with telemetry feedback.
While they have to be careful, there can be reasonable ones to help what they do/stop doing.
Example, "x% of telemetry enabled users enable the bookmark bar", not particularly useful for harmful purposes, but if it were 0.00%, then they know efforts accommodating the bookmark bar would be pointless. Not many users would go out of their way to say "I don't use some feature I'm ignoring", and telemetry is able to convey that data, so the developer is not guessing based on his preference.
That being said, the telemetry is so opaque that it's hard to make an informed decision as to whether the telemetry in question is risky or not. Might be good to have some sort of accumulated telemetry data that you can click to review and submit, and have that data be actually human readable and to the point for salient points.
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some people consider indirect, cryptic answers to be complete
Oh, it's perfectly clear. We got the message. Mozilla are not to be trusted with our data.
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What's the alternative for Android? Fuck Chrome I want to move off this shit onto something that actually gives half a shit about me.
Tor. Anything short is freely giving your data away. If you're looking for something that isn't based on Gecko or Chromium there is the DuckDuckGo browser, which is WebKit. I can't attest to their privacy practices though
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Ruh roh. Too late though.
Friendship ended with Firefox,
Librewolf is my new best friend.
I need a gif where Scooby Doo removes the Librewolf logo and there's a Firefox logo underneath.
You must recognize that there is no Librewolf without Firefox, right? In fact, Librewolf even says in their privacy policy that you should also refer to the Firefox Privacy Policy because they can't be certain that their browser won't ever try to send data to Mozilla.
I'm not saying this to deter you from using Librewolf. If it works for you then that's awesome. It just made me chuckle when you said that you ended your friendship with Firefox and ran into the warm embrace of... Firefox with different default settings.
In any case, all I'm trying to communicate is that Firefox and all of its many forks are fundamentally reliant on Mozilla and its ability to continue updating Firefox. That means Mozilla needs a sustainable business model, and that we can't all simply abandon our relationship with Mozilla for a tool that is dependent on the work that Mozilla does.
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There are so many Firefox forks, just try them out and pick you poison.
Since others have already commented some suggestions, I'd like to add Floorp.
I use it on desktop
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Is it? It seems to be maintained by a user named relan based out of Russia. It's just a few scripts to build it for F-Droid and basically just removes some proprietary stuff. It's not a fork, just a build script.
Straight from the Fdroid page (on the Fdroid Android app)
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What's the alternative for Android? Fuck Chrome I want to move off this shit onto something that actually gives half a shit about me.
Boy have i got a treat for you,
Ironfox! the continuation of Mull -
AI Summary:
Overview:
- Mozilla is updating its new Terms of Use for Firefox due to criticism over unclear language about user data.
- Original terms seemed to give Mozilla broad ownership of user data, causing concern.
- Updated terms emphasize limited scope of data interaction, stating Mozilla only needs rights necessary to operate Firefox.
- Mozilla acknowledges confusion and aims to clarify their intent to make Firefox work without owning user content.
- Company explains they don't make blanket claims of "never selling data" due to evolving legal definitions and obligations.
- Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable, but ensures data is anonymized or shared in aggregate.
this is them rolling it back cause of the outcry, they don't want to admit it worked
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Too late, I switched to Floorp.
Because of privacy stuff? No. Because of repeated drama? Yes.
I don't have time for this stuff. I don't have time to track every minute twist of the knife that Google's funding drives Mozilla to embark on.
I'm bored of using software and watching it go through "death by a thousand minor dramas"
So now I use a web browser that has a name so stupid I don't even recommend it to other people. Brilliant.
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Tor. Anything short is freely giving your data away. If you're looking for something that isn't based on Gecko or Chromium there is the DuckDuckGo browser, which is WebKit. I can't attest to their privacy practices though
Tor Browser doesn't include uBo (on Android at least) and their ad blocking is abysmal. Its great that no one can trace your IP but completely useless since it doesn't do anything to block trackers.
Anything short is freely giving your data away.
Misinformation.
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Straight from the Fdroid page (on the Fdroid Android app)
Yes, this is built from Mozilla's sources, but AFAIK Mozilla doesn't maintain this build script, and the build script strips out certain parts of Firefox and adds in others (e.g. logo). It's not a fork of Firefox, it's just a builder that replaces parts of Firefox.
So Mozilla doesn't maintain Fennec, since Fennec is a separate build of Firefox, but they do maintain what Fennec is built from.
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this is them rolling it back cause of the outcry, they don't want to admit it worked
The terms were never actually bad. This is them responding to the backlash, yes, but that's just because everyone freaked out over nothing. They're not "rolling back" anything, and this comment is just more disinformation.
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A FOSS browser has and never will require collecting user data.
This should not happen at all.
What do you think a browser does?
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I think this is a reasonable explanation.
But I also believe a large part of the firefox user base does not want any data about them collected by their browser, no matter if it is for commercial purposes or simply analytics / telemetry. Which is why the original statement "we will never sell any of your data" was just good enough for them, and anything mozilla is now saying is basically not good enough, no matter how much they clarify it to mean "not selling in the colloquial sense"
Which is a ridiculous thing to want for most users and exposes how little so much of the self-identified "techie" crowd actually understands about how this stuff works.
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Mozilla is soo stupid!
Most Firefox users use it only because of the values it upholds, and now they decided to destroy it. MF wouldn't even have any any revenue once they betray their little existing users!
If they're throwing away their values, then there is no reason to use Firefox anymore, BECAUSE OBJECTIVELY FIREFOX IS INFERIOR TO CHROMIUM.
And hopefully this accelerates development and support to fully alternate browsers.
You're not totally wrong here, but the fact is that these updates are a complete non-issue that has only resulted in so much backlash because of the self-selected Firefox audience of people who know enough about tech and privacy to care, but not enough to understand what's actually threatening. The updates were a minor change in language that didn't change the status quo, but idiots like the guy who thinks that incognito mode somehow stops a site from gathering information on you flock to these articles and start crying doomsday.
Mozilla is the only big web company that's even close to on the side of consumers and it's sad to see them eat shit for no reason.
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Ask the lawmakers who wrote the laws with vague language, because according to them, that kind of activity could be considered a sale.
As a more specific example that is more one-sided, but still not technically a "sale," Mozilla has sponsored links on the New Tab page. (they can be disabled of course)
These links are provided by a third-party, relatively privacy protecting ad marketplace. Your browser downloads a list of links from them if you have sponsored links turned on, and no data is actually sent to their service about you. If you click a sponsored link, a request is sent using a protocol that anonymizes your identity, that tells them the link was clicked. That's it, no other data about your identity, browser, etc.
This generates revenue for Mozilla that isn't reliant on Google's subsidies, that doesn't actually sell user data. Under these laws, that would be classified as a sale of user data, since Mozilla technically transferred data from your device (that you clicked the sponsored link) for a benefit. (financial compensation)
However, I doubt anyone would call that feature "selling user data." But, because the law could do so, they have to clarify that in their terms, otherwise someone could sue them saying "you sold my data" when all they did was send a small packet to a server saying that some user, somewhere clicked the sponsored link.
I would definitely call that selling my data. The recipient can now add that to my profile as an interest.
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The terms were never actually bad. This is them responding to the backlash, yes, but that's just because everyone freaked out over nothing. They're not "rolling back" anything, and this comment is just more disinformation.
The proof that even techies can confuse « rollback » and « fix ».
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AI Summary:
Overview:
- Mozilla is updating its new Terms of Use for Firefox due to criticism over unclear language about user data.
- Original terms seemed to give Mozilla broad ownership of user data, causing concern.
- Updated terms emphasize limited scope of data interaction, stating Mozilla only needs rights necessary to operate Firefox.
- Mozilla acknowledges confusion and aims to clarify their intent to make Firefox work without owning user content.
- Company explains they don't make blanket claims of "never selling data" due to evolving legal definitions and obligations.
- Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable, but ensures data is anonymized or shared in aggregate.
they were effectively owning everything you fo in firefox, how is that nothing
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AI Summary:
Overview:
- Mozilla is updating its new Terms of Use for Firefox due to criticism over unclear language about user data.
- Original terms seemed to give Mozilla broad ownership of user data, causing concern.
- Updated terms emphasize limited scope of data interaction, stating Mozilla only needs rights necessary to operate Firefox.
- Mozilla acknowledges confusion and aims to clarify their intent to make Firefox work without owning user content.
- Company explains they don't make blanket claims of "never selling data" due to evolving legal definitions and obligations.
- Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable, but ensures data is anonymized or shared in aggregate.
Already uninstalled everywhere. Better luck next time, Mozilla.
