- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
- technology@beehaw.org
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 An archived version from January 30 says: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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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,
Fuck off Mozilla. Maybe don’t pay CEOs millions and don’t force things like Pocket and LLMs on users if you want to be commercially viable, I’d gladly pay for Firefox that doesn’t make me dodge new features and services. But it would be a donation towards development of a browser that is commons, since you have no product to sell, only GPL’d code that’s mine as much as yours.
You have NO fucking leverage, Firefox is better than Chrome, but there’s projects that will gladly repackage your code with no telemetry whatsoever for any platform while you’re brainstorming just the right amount of monetization to prevent the frog from jumping.
It’s kind of sad I don’t use Chrome and therefore never think of it, while I like and use Firefox and am therefore constantly at odds with Mozilla.
A lot of these browsers seems to be obsessed with AI that nobody wants.
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?
Make sense since they receive funding from Google, Google might be demanding too much or removing funding
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Oh for fuck’s sake! List of Firefox alternatives:
Windows/Linux/MacOS:
Android:
- DuckDuckGo? f-droid
- FOSS Browser? https://codeberg.org/Gaukler_Faun/FOSS_Browser
iOS: ??
I’m giving Waterfox a test drive and like it so far. No issues.
I’m considering adding it to the alternatives list I posted. Can anybody else validate their privacy policy? Seemd ok but I’m a bit iffy regarding their use of telemetry. Maybe I’m overthinking it
No telemetry, allegedly.
I read somewhere that Librewolf is not recommended because they are a small team and slow to patch vulnerabilities / integrate security fixes from Firefox.
Is it true? (Sincere question)
Valid concern as I use their browser often. From their FAQ (link):
Brave is fine with for iOS with build in adblocker
Ironfox for Android?
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Added
There’s also Servo by the Linux Foundation and Ladybird.
These are actual different browsers and engines all together compared to FF spin-offs.
I’m still super waiting for Lady Bird. I cannot wait to give it a try, but it’s gonna be like 2026 before they start rolling out builds for general use.
I’m excited for these to mature but they are still developing and would not recommend them for regular use
Also Zen Browser
Added
Isn’t Librewolf tied to Firefox’ TOS?
No.
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I’m checking right now, but it’s kind of unclear. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like Librewolf picks and chooses what to use from Firefox, yeah?
I’m also looking into the TOR browser.
All the forks pick and choose but features can be enabled or disabled, or removed entirely. Telemetry is always removed, whereas DRM or cookie settings can be turned off by default.
If you want some kind of Tor browser without all the Tor thing, Mullvad has its fork too from Tor (like the fixed display as a rectangle to prevent fingerprinting).
It’s free and open-source but it’s probably a bit annoying to use daily and it’s barebones: https://mullvad.net/en/browser
Mullvad needs to make an android version.
The thing about open-source software is that if you fork the software, then your fork can have its own rules.
You can even make the fork of the software fully closed source except for the open source software that you used to originally develop it.
You can sell open source software as if it were proprietary.
You can basically do anything you want with it as long as you respect the original source from the code that you have taken.
Once the software is no longer in Mozilla’s hands, then Mozilla’s portion of the license no longer applies.
That’s what I thought, but there are many people in this very thread saying the opposite. From what I read on Librewolf’s site, it seems to back up what you are saying.
What @bizarroland@fedia.io is saying is not correct, because it depends on the license. For example, GPL software requires that ALL the source code that uses some GPL code to be released as GPL too. That’s why some people avoid GPL at all costs.
Other licenses, such as LGPL allow you to link your proprietary code with open source parts and only release the code of the open source part (along with any modifications you did to it).
So what license does librewolf have?
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Oh look, that’s four.
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Five.
No User Tracking
We don’t collect personal information from users. We don’t track users. We don’t sell user data. We have no affiliation with any advertising companies.
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Why wouldn’t they be optional? Every other change like this has been before.
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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)
So in other words we sell your data and get paid for it, and some countries won’t let us lie about it.
Yeah, I think it would be very fucking easy to say “we don’t sell your data” by any definition… Literally all you need to do is not fucking sell people’s data
Probably caving into googles demands
Mozilla needs to understand that I don’t want it to have my data to sell or not in the first place.
That’s the thing that bothers me about all these companies now. My data is my data, not theirs. They shouldn’t even be allowed to collect it, let alone sell it or give it to anyone who wants it.
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Nahhh, trust them, bro. People working on other things with the same product name as their company name were great people. That should be endorsement enough.
Wait. They have this ‘open source’ flag. If they wave it about - oooh, pretty - does that help?
Anyone recommend an iOS alternative?
On iOS, all browsers are Safari with a coat of paint.
Nowadays that’s incorrect if you’re in the European Union.
You can always install a fork
I have been advised it’s not a fork but a reconfig of default firefox, therefore it would technically be subject to the same ToS.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression it didn’t call out to mozilla servers if you didn’t enable sync.
I guess Mullvad would be the next popular browser yeah?
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What? Some proof here please. Firefox is 100% open source. You can audit the entire code for this.
It’s not like chromium with the pre-compiled binary blob in the middle provided by google.
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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.
afaict Mullvad browser doesn’t support plugins which - it does some adblock by default (more ifyou have the VPN) and so on but i gots to have my DarkViewer so it’s a sometimes browser for me atm.
It does work with Firefox plugins, there just isn’t a button to open the extension “store” in the extensions settings page like stock Firefox has. You can add them by manually going to the url though, it’s just recommended that you don’t since that increases your risk of adding a malicious plugin or being fingerprinted, etc. I still added a few plugins that I really dislike not having though, like a password manager and darkreader, just because I valued the convenience slightly more than the added security.
Nice, thanks!
Depending on how the requirement to accept the ToS is implemented, a config file might be able to disable it and any features that depend on it.
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I doubt implementation of terms will be optional.
You are all up and down these comments repeating this statement.
Why?
How exactly has Mozilla handled changes like this before that leads you to this conclusion? Do you have anything to back this up other than your own dogged insistence?
Surely there must be something I’m missing for you to be so adamant on this point. Please enlighten me, because to my knowledge about how all this works and has worked in the past this just seems like baseless fearmongering to me.
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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.
Six.
Everything turns to shit in the end.
Women CEOs are as shit as Male CEOs. Who would have thunk the war of the sexes was a cause dangled in front of the bougies so the elite could parasitise free from fear of popular revolt huh?
These are two separate things. Men and women are all human beings and are OF COURSE capable of being shitty or good on the same level. But it’s important to give the same opportunity to both, there’s no reason one of the sexes should be discriminated against. Women are still not equal in many ways (the exact ways depending on the particular society).
They are often used as scapegoats in the CEO position, when the company gets really bad reputation. Musk being an obvious example of X, chose a woman as a human shield
Fucking what?
What the fuck are you even talking about? What kind of brain rot pushes a person to bring this shit up out of the blue?
I read somewhere that women CEO are often chosen when the company is declining or about to fail, as a way to take the blame off from themselves. So your comment seems kind of misogynistic and saying women are just as bad, but you are not accounting for the misogyny in the corporate world. In many cases a male dominated BOD often use women as a scapegoat for their failings, musks twitter for example, he hides behind a woman to take criticism off himself. Women also earn significantly less than men in the same position. Another is YouTube’s Late ceo. Theranos had Holmes, but if you look further she was chosen to be the face by a male BOD
Sex, gender, sexual orientation, skin colour are red herrings used to distract the people from the fact they have a boot on their neck. The replies to my comment are yet another evidence people are OK licking the boot as long as the party is “insert preference here”. The problem is not particular to any of the aforementioned classes, the problem is the incentive structure is broken and the fiduciary duty is enshrined in law rather than good governance and long term sustainability. Firefox is just another evidence that cheerleading for a CEO because of intrinsic characteristics is a folly.
promises don’t count if you delete them. everyone knows that
“If I put my wedding ring in my pocket, it’s not cheating…”
This kind of thinking shouldn’t be acceptable from a legal standpoint. Yet the courts do nothing…
In the US at least, the courts are seemingly bought out.
Sad it’s even acceptable.
Am I the only one here who’s pretty much okay with this? I do wish they’d clarify exactly what they mean by “Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about ‘selling data’),” but having my anonymized data sold so that Mozilla can continue to operate (combined with Firefox being the best browser I’ve used in terms of both performance and flexibility - ability to install add-ons from sources outside of the Mozilla store, for example) - seems like a worthy tradeoff to me.
They also have an option to opt-out of data collection, which I do wish was opt-in instead, but with the way every other mainstream browser operates I’m just happy the option is there at all. Let me know if there’s something I’m missing here though.
To generalise, just as Reddit is the neolib centrist hivemind and Facebook is the conservative boomer hivemind, Lemmy is some overlap of privacy/techy/ultrapolitical groups - so whenever you get this kind of news that is ultimately pretty mild and uncontroversial to most you get lots of Lemmings buttons pushed and what seems like an oversized reaction in the comments.
Is Firefox perfect? No. Is it still the best available mainstream browser option? Yes. And if the small groups that presently use it walk away and its tiny market share (~5%) declines to a point where Firefox becomes insolvent - well then browsers will be just a two-horse race between Google (Chromium) and Apple (WebKit). Every web spec and page will be beholden to the desires of those companies - I’m sure the same Lemmings will be complaining about that too, and by then it will be too late to realize what they’ve lost.
It was a neolib site, but it’s starting to lean right wing, and soon will.be with the ranks of Facebook soon enough. The reason, they have been aggressively banning accounts as of late, and alot of its based around trump posts. They allow heavy astroturfing from the right, either from troll farms or conservative comments, you report them you will get banned. Many people criticized the site for pushing so many trump sanewashing posts in the front page, the conservative sub have been consistently in the front page for a while, before you almost never hear a peep from them, unless it’s being talked about in other subs
The problem I have with this is that “anonymized” data in the past has often been trivial to de-anonymize. And if they can remove some promises now, they’re going to keep going in that direction. Just like Microsoft telemetry used to be less but is getting worse and worse.
Do you have any sources about anonymized data being easy to de-anonymize? I’ve been hearing a lot of conflicting stuff regarding the policy change so I wanna make sure the information I’m getting is accurate. But yeah if Firefox implements more anti consumer policies like this I will probably be jumping ship.
There is a Wikipedia article about what I mean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_re-identification
Thanks I’ll read up on it :)
They could make it more specific. Instead they just removed it.
I’m not trying to unilaterally defend the decision, it’s just not going to make me personally switch browsers. From what I’m hearing a lot of the viable alternatives are forks of Firefox anyway.
I’m about to get my tattoo removed wtf
If it’s really you…
Wtf?
Would you like to see my tattoo of Tom from MySpace I got on my left testicle? Hey man, in 2005 it seemed like MySpace Tom would be in our lives forever. Why WOULDN’T you get his profile picture inked into your body with needles on the most painful part of your body? It made sense in 2005!
But noooooooooo! Facebook had to be a dick. And now whenever I pull my pants down in front of some hot 20 year old with daddy issues, she’s like “Is that your uncle or something?”
Meanwhile Tom sold my MySpace for hundreds of millions of dollars, and now does photography of bikini models on his yacht! While I have to explain who Tom is to Gen Z…
sigh
For a second I thought Tom did photography and bikini models on his yacht. We’ll he probably does, but I just read your comment wrong.
I mean, he’s worth hundreds of millions, on a yacht that he owns with hotties in bikinis hoping to get discovered as their own ticket to fame from the photos being taken of their oiled up sexy bodies.
The sex was implied.
Honestly at this point, I wouldn’t be embarrassed having a tattoo of Tom from MySpace.
It is lmfao it was my first one 🥲
You’re a good friend
Edit: also the style shows through, not everyone can get a watercolor vibe without the water
Just get “RIP” tattooed under it.
