Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic
-
I mean you could argue that them defaulting to Google search is already them selling your data. Google definitely pay them for that.
I don't quite understand what the backlash is here. The article is about FAQs on the Mozilla website. It seems reasonable that some people might interpret "sell" to be accepting money to set the default browser to Google. Clarifying that on their site seems fine. The FAQ was surely never legally binding.
Their 'Terms of Use' document is new as of Feb 26 AFAIK. Is that what people are upset by?
-
There are different kinds of free. Free beer, free speech and free weekend are three different kinds of free that software can have, but not necessarily at the same time.
I was thinking more along the lines of "install and play this free unity game while it siphons personal data off your computer and sends it back to epic servers"
They're specifically getting something of value in return for the good or service and then claiming it's free and that customers are not customers, merely "users."
-
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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.
The screw-ups keep mounting like they want to be Google.
They (and we)'ve got to admit, the solution is not going to come from within their (managerial) ranks.
At this point I'd be happy to offer my services as a BDFL for Mozilla, at but a small fraction of the wages of any of their C-suites.
-
Mmmm, pie. It's better than cake.
Which is better than death (relevant part at 4:44).
-
Which is better than death (relevant part at 4:44).
Eddie Izzard?
What. Could. Be. More. Surprising.
-
It's a browser, not a platform. Having a bunch of groypers use it doesn't ruin the experience for everyone else so long as it retains good privacy features.
While I agree with this sentiment on the surface, using a privacy focused application that was built by folks who yield to cops as part of their identity doesn’t inspire long term viability in that space.
It’s the same reason I moved away from Proton when their CEO told us all where his values lie. It’s not outright backtracking on privacy promises but with so many comparable alternatives in this space, why chance it with the bootlickers?
-
Do you know what impact this would have on extensions though? Would extensions developed for current Firefox versions work securely in Pale Moon?
The Pale Moon extensions are different from the Firefox ones and not compatible with each other. Please look at the available extensions in Pale Moon to see your favourite feature is implemented or not.
-
Been using it all day now and yeah, it’s very smooth sailing. The tweaks I made basically involved removing fingerprinting protection, which I saw people online deride as “defeating the entire purpose of Librewolf”. Well, not true anymore.
I just want manifest v3 and to not have to consent to ToS agreements implicitly allowing some suspicious organisation to harvest and sell literally any keypress I enter into the browser, which has become the de facto cross platform way to do almost everything.
How do the fingerprinting protection things defeat the purpose of librewolf? Seems like an unambiguously good thing for privacy... Or does it conflict with another feature?
-
How do the fingerprinting protection things defeat the purpose of librewolf? Seems like an unambiguously good thing for privacy... Or does it conflict with another feature?
Oh, sorry for the confusion. The posts online I’ve found about the subject of disabling fingerprinting protection in Librewolf are full of people who state that doing so “defeats the purpose of Librewolf”. Which probably WAS true before Mozilla’s recent changes, since the sole reason Librewolf had to exist was to be a hardened version of Firefox.
That’s no longer the case since Librewolf has a new purpose (now that Mozilla thinks they own the right to sell all your data): a Firefox fork without Mozilla.
I disabled a lot of that stuff because it’s kind of annoying for usability, e.g. browser won’t render anything at more than 60fps. I know this is a trade off and I’m cool with that. I have other tools and strategies in place to protect my privacy.
-
zen, ladybird, waterfox are some that i've heard of before. zen is out now. idk about the others. one of my friends uses zen and it's pretty neat.
-
Perhaps Ladybug once it's released?
-
what is your current open source / FOSS alternative?
LibreWolf on desktop and Fennec on phone.
-
Switched yesterday, feeling right at home so far.
Me too. Practically 0 difference, works for me!
-
In the US at least, the courts are seemingly bought out.
Sad it's even acceptable.
-
System shared this topic on
