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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.

  • NullHippo@lemmy.today
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    2 days ago

    They’re cash strapped and cash strapped companies are the worst when it comes to being trustworthy. That’s all the calculus that needs to be done.

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      They’re not that cash strapped though. Their blog post says that they need the revenue to ‘grow’, and they go on to talk about the new people they’ve added to the board. So it isn’t really about getting enough money to survive. It’s about getting money to support a top-heavy company structure.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      How about asking for money? I’d gladly pay if they stripped out a bunch of the nonsense they do and focus on making a better browser. Or keep that crap and let me donate directly to Firefox development.

      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I’d gladly pay if they stripped out a bunch of the nonsense

        I donate to FOSS often, but I dont have a ton of money. Most will donate nothing, and that is fine part of this is altruistic, but I think its easy to forget that donations only go so far. A web browser is also a very big project and will need a lot more funds too.

        It does not help that Mozilla is in a odd situation on what they can do to raise funds and not move away from their core mission.