Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic
arstechnica.com
Mozilla says it deleted promise because “sale of data” is defined broadly.

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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.

  • betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    At least Ecosia plants trees, and the way those trees produce oxygen and absorb CO2 is a benefit to me.

  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      You’re a good friend

      Edit: also the style shows through, not everyone can get a watercolor vibe without the water

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        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

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Honestly at this point, I wouldn’t be embarrassed having a tattoo of Tom from MySpace.

        • outdated2139@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          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.

          • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            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.

  • Die Martin Die@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I’m using Fennec (based on Firefox, sans telemetry). Is there a good, reliable, and trustable way to export my bookmarks so I don’t have to depend on Firefox Sync?

    Edit: forgot to say: on Android.

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    This is why I am an advocate for publicly-funded Internet, like how people fund NPR and BBC.

    I don’t blame Firefox because at the end of the day, they are still a business and need to cover the operating cost. I blame the system that we’re in and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      What operating costs? You could argue there are development costs, but development is driven by the community. The only operating costs are forced stalking behavior.

      • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I can’t remember the details, but if I remember correctly, Firefox used to get a lot of cut from hosting Google’s ad. But Google cut that deal and Firefox lost 90% of its revenue as a result. That’s why I can’t blame Firefox for doing what they are doing at the moment.

        Us users want services for free but we can’t have our cake and eat them in the current paradigm of the internet. That’s why we have to think outside the box and I advocate for a publicly funded internet. It is the same model as NPR and BBC and that is why they have little to no ads unlike private broadcasters. The same principle should be applied to the Internet if we want to keep using it for free.

      • graff@lemm.eeEnglish
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        2 months ago

        I’m sorry, but first of all Mozilla actually employs developers. And the development process isn’t just the developers’ salaries. There’s R&D, QA, management, administration, accounting. All of these cost money, and this isn’t even touching on the expenses associated with offices (electricity, general upkeep, maintenance).

        Then there’s the costs associated with packaging the binaries, hosting the binaries, bandwidth…

        Even if you’re giving everyone a miser’s pay, and getting cheaper unreliable hosting, it adds up

      • Akuchimoya@startrek.websiteEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I don’t understand what you mean by Firefox’s development is driven by the community? It’s not a community contributed open source software; my friend worka on Firefox and is a Mozilla employee.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative

      That’s like blaming wolves for eating you when it’s winter, they are hungry and you are in the forest

  • nthavoc@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I remember a time when Google wrote “Don’t be evil” all over their stuff…

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
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      2 months ago

      There’s a phrase that is still very close to that in some company statement still, I sort of view it as pointless to talk about. We know they’re evil by their actions, and they were evil before they removed it in sure. If the statement is what matters, it’s still basically there, just not the motto. It’s just not worth worrying or talking about. They do so much worse shit. A friend of mine was recently let go after protesting about their response to the genocide in Gaza.

    • unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      dude i worked in a buncha different college libraries around the time of google’s initial ascension. Google slayed. it was awesome, in 2000.

      now? google is a drippy search engine.

  • Xanza@lemm.eeEnglish
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    2 months ago

    I feel a little vindicated. I started using Firefox basically when it was first released. I migrated away from it after several years because I simply didn’t like the direction that Mozilla was taking it. Decades later I see them struggling down the same inevitable path I figured they’d always head down from the beginning.

    Firefox bros used to get ultra pissed at me for shitting on their browser because I just knew Mozilla would eventually fuck it all up. And here we are.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. I told ya so? I was smarter than everyone else and figured it out first?

      FF has been one of the better full-featured browsers with generous amount of add-ons/plugins. There was no reason not to use it vs some less functional browser or some corporate data miner like Chrome. It still is, however some alternatives are catching up. Time will tell how it all shakes out as far as the battle between functionality, privacy, ad- and tracking-blockers, and people willing to build and maintain free browsers and plugins.

      • Xanza@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.

        The first thing I said;

        I feel a little vindicated.

        I apologize. I literally don’t know how to make it any more clear than that.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Oh ok, so a completely pointless comment. Got it.

          At least everyone here knows you switched before them though! Or something!

    • elephantium@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      basically when it was first released

      Ah, back in the Mozilla Phoenix days? Or shortly after the Firebird->Firefox rename?

  • FrostyCaveman@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Gahhhh this is horrible

    I spent some time switching to Librewolf this morning but at the end of the day, it having Firefox as the upstream means it’s all fragile and tenuous anyway

      • FrostyCaveman@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        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 v2 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.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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          2 months ago

          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?

          • FrostyCaveman@lemm.eeEnglish
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            2 months ago

            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.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I installed Librewolf despite being a furry that loves foxes and it legit fixed every Firefox issue I had. But they were all local issues.

      • FrostyCaveman@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Nice, what issues?

        TBH I was tempted to try IceCat first because of the name (I’m not a furry but I do think cats are cool). But no official binaries and I’m already running enough custom-compiled software, thing I need least is for my browser to be like that too haha

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Ahhh that makes sense hahaha.

          The issues I was running into I’m SURE stemmed from having a bloated profile, so I could have fixed them by clearing my profile out, or reinstalling (probably.) video on my partner’s computer (our main entertainment machine) would only play in Private Mode for some reason. Hanime wouldn’t play anything at all, the site was bugged out. Many pages displayed super weird on their machine, too. My computer had some video playing issues but I didn’t run into pages displaying strangely.

        • unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          chrome is a better browser because it’s compliant

          please note; fuck chrome and fuck google

          edit: the point is better and freer internet. if your name is musk then you have shown your trash.

          • laz@pawb.socialEnglish
            0·
            2 months ago

            Its compliant because they write fekin standards (or at least have significant sway about what becomes standard). It’s almost like monopolies are bad ^^

  • wall_panel_96@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I use brave and librewolf, anybody know if those are still safe from this dort of thing? (Probably not I guess, so what browsers are left?)

    • vinay_clubsall@lemmy.worldEnglish
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      2 months ago

      Someone earlier said that brave was based on chrome and when google blocked ublock origin on Chrome, it would stop working on brave too.

    • Ibaudia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Librewolf is privacy-hardened so it’s probably the best option. Brave is Chromium-based. Realistically though, all web browsers come with compromises, and internet anonymity is virtually impossible without unrealistic amounts of effort.