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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 minutes ago

    palemoon is just firefox from the pre quantum days before the webextension enshittification and all they need is a decent mobile app and their own sync

  • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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    24 minutes ago

    Don’t collect anything on your own and don’t sell the things you don’t collect. Bam, problem solved.

  • buzz86us@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Yup I’ll be sticking with Firefox forks… Unfortunately i have to keep a chrome install around because i can’t get alternative browsers to do redirects for PayPal

    • sibachian@lemmy.ml
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      44 minutes ago

      the problem with that is - if everyone switches to forks, development of firefox stops, killing it, and the forks are guaranteed to follow.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 hours ago

      Have you tried “un-googled chromium”? Should work pretty much the same as regular chromium in that regard…

      Or even just a good old fashioned user agent switcher?

  • zecg@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    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.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    4 hours ago

    I mean you could argue that them defaulting to Google search is already them selling your data. Google definitely pay them for that.

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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    5 hours 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.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      4 hours 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

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      4 hours 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.world
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        3 hours 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.

  • Lit@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    please pay me if you want to sell my data. At the end of the day I am a business and need to cover operating cost.

    Is there an open source tool to generate fake user activity data for Firefox to consume?

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    current acting CEO of Mozilla is Laura Chambers. An Australian native and has quite…interesting work history.

    1000001226

    It’s weird isn’t it? how these same names keep coming up again and again…

    Ebay, Paypal, Airbnb.

    she would have likely worked with Thiel and Musk during her time there. I wonder if there’s any lingering commitment there?

    • Kurroth@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      As an Australian.Do not trust us when it comes to privacy, security especially in tech or the digital space.

      We are not a nation descendant of ‘convicts’ but of prison guards and other colonial boot lickers.

      We are US lite or US 10years ago or maybe their tearing ground. Can’t figure it out.

      • Fashim@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Yeah don’t trust us, we’ve gutted all forms of STEM that aren’t directly related to digging shit out of the ground for Gina Rinehart and co

        Serious intellectual brain drain in this country now, we really are the US 10 years ago, hopefully the US explodes enough to stop all our idiots blindly following their jingoism to our doom

    • GoldenQuetzal@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Glad you shared this. I hate to be That Tin Foil Hat Person but it seems really convenient that a Musk and Thiel tied CEO happens to take over the one browser base that isn’t Chromium just before people start moving to it for privacy in escalating numbers.

    • A7thStone@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      McKinsey is honestly scarier. They may not be a household name like the others, but look them up. They are frightening.

  • nthavoc@lemmy.today
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    8 hours ago

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

    • unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz
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      7 hours 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.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      5 hours 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.

  • FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee
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    8 hours 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

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 hours 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.ee
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        2 hours 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

        • unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz
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          3 hours 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.social
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            2 hours 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 ^^