Mozilla is already revising its new Firefox terms to clarify how it handles user data
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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.
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T [email protected] shared this topic
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Too late for me personally, I've gone ahead and moved over to Zen.
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Ruh roh. Too late though.
Friendship ended with Firefox,
Librewolf is my new best friend.
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I’m eagerly awaiting the new version but I already like it. They now admit that they are sharing and sometimes selling private data (anonymized or not, same thing).
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Great, but a web browser still does not need terms of service. There's no ongoing relationship between the user and the creator of the browser, at least, there shouldn't be unless the user signs up for additional optional services.
It's great if Mozilla wants to offer some optional services users can opt in to, and those services probably need terms. I use Firefox Sync, though I've started to reconsider that given the recent fuss. The browser itself? I'll move to a fork first, and stop recommending Firefox to others.
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The simple way to deal with this is through extensions. Collect anonymized data through an extension, let the user decide to opt-out if they want.
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Installed DuckDuckGo browser as soon as I saw the news the other day.
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Is there a way to generate fake data to feed to Firefox with an addon?
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You're probably just better going with a fork of FF that has all that nonsense stripped out.
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Brodie thinks that they still let themselves some wiggle room for ""selling"" user data.
~This~ ~comment~ ~is~ ~licensed~ ~under~ ~CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0~
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I just switched as well, though when trying to import bookmarks it hangs KDE as a whole for hours, for some reason.
~This~ ~comment~ ~is~ ~licensed~ ~under~ ~CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0~
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Mozilla says that “there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners” so that Firefox can be “commercially viable,” but it adds that it spells those out in its privacy notice and works to strip data of potentially identifying information or share it in aggregate.
Sounds like they've already been selling (or trading) data and this whole debacle is a way to retroactively cover their asses.
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Installed DuckDuckGo browser as soon as I saw the news the other day.
Oh cool, yet another Chromium variant. That's going to be an actual change for the better.
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That's good and I'm genuinely glad they're trying to clarify it, but it proves yet again that their top management is out of touch with reality and their users: somebody (most likely more than one person actually) had to sign off on these changes and the message they sent out - this whole thing could have been avoided if they understood their users better (and/or if they actually cared nore about what users think).
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I've already moved most of my stuff to forks or different software altogether.
Firefox -> LibreWolf and Waterfox
Thunderbird -> Evolution
I'm still trying to decide if I want to move off k9mail on mobile to something else. I probably will but I'm not sure what at this point.
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Friendship ended with Firefox,
Librewolf is my new best friend. A big problem with such forks (same with packages made by Linux distributors) is that there is a delay between official FF release and the release of the corresponding update of the fork. 99% of the time this doesn't matter much but when there is a severe security issue, the patch needs to be available ASAP.
Past enshittifications of Firefox could be disabled by users. Users who know what to disable don't need such forks then.
I'm not yet clear what Mozilla even intends. Is it just an adjustment of language of things that are already in FF and can be disabled easily? If so, I just keep the following shit disabled and benefit from earlier update releases.
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What’s the best alternative on Mac?
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It looks like Arc but built on Firefox’s engine? That’s sick. I’ll give it a look.
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