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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.
Everyone talks about Firefox but I think Ungoogled Chromium deserves a big mention around these parts. I’m sure the privacy community can find a way around on Ungoogled Chromium if FF ceases to exist one day.
Agreed, but Mozilla now sells your data. And they’re investing in useless rubbish (FOR THE LAST TIME I DON’T WANT AI IN MY BROWSER) and paying their CEO millions whilst their developers aren’t getting much of the pie.
I had to do a little digging but it seems that Mull has a spiritual successor in the form of ironfox for android. So far its legitimately good, just add the repository to your fdroid
Link to repo:
If you read in between the lines, Mozilla is also funded by google as technical competition to chrome so that governments dont break them up with anti-monopoly busting case.
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There are more privacy-respecting forks of Firefox. Might be time to move to one of those. Librewolf springs to mind.
But they are dependent on the continued existence of Firefox, so it’s still concerning when Mozilla alienates their users.
Everyone talks about Firefox but I think Ungoogled Chromium deserves a big mention around these parts. I’m sure the privacy community can find a way around on Ungoogled Chromium if FF ceases to exist one day.
The concern about using Chromium-based browsers is just that, if they become utterly dominant, Google gains de facto control of all web standards.
Agreed, but Mozilla now sells your data. And they’re investing in useless rubbish (FOR THE LAST TIME I DON’T WANT AI IN MY BROWSER) and paying their CEO millions whilst their developers aren’t getting much of the pie.
is there something like this on android? is mullvad also good?
I had to do a little digging but it seems that Mull has a spiritual successor in the form of ironfox for android. So far its legitimately good, just add the repository to your fdroid Link to repo:
fdroidrepos://fdroid.ironfoxoss.org/fdroid/repo?fingerprint=C5E291B5A571F9C8CD9A9799C2C94E02EC9703948893F2CA756D67B94204F904
Fennec
i found it on fdroid but not on the play store. it looks like firefox exactly, what are the main differences?
Read the description in fdroid lol
It is concerning - because Firefox barely has enough users to sustain it.
If no one takes on the development of Gecko, we’re in the soup. It’s the only alternative to blink and WebKit. Tor relies on it .
Er… if you think Mozilla is sustained by its users then I have some bad news for you. Or am I misunderstanding you?
Mozilla is funded by google to promote the search . But how much longer are they gonna pay if no one uses it ?
If you read in between the lines, Mozilla is also funded by google as technical competition to chrome so that governments dont break them up with anti-monopoly busting case.
capitalism truly drives competition and innovation…