this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
907 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

63455 readers
4148 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] cultsuperstar@lemmy.world 7 points 53 minutes ago (1 children)

Mozilla posted an update:

Update at 10:20 pm ET: Mozilla has since announced a change to the license language to address user complaints. It now says, "You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content."

[–] vane@lemmy.world 3 points 32 minutes ago

Why they need users ? If they operate Firefox by themselves why they not start paying for power usage for hosting Firefox on my machine.

[–] grandma@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I realized mozilla is cooked a few months ago when i read this issue where it has taken them TWELVE YEARS to implement a date picker

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320

[–] neclimdul@lemmy.world 1 points 4 minutes ago

Between the fact I've been using a date picker for ages in Firefox, the fact dates and times are hard, and the title of the issue that's clearly a zombie issue. I'm surprised they were able to close it at all.

[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 19 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] coolmojo@lemmy.world 3 points 29 minutes ago

This whole thing does not matter if you are living in the US anyway become of the Third-party doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties have "no reasonable expectation of privacy in that information.

[–] wall_panel_96@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

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?)

[–] Ibaudia@lemmy.world 4 points 52 minutes 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.

[–] vinay_clubsall@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] cultsuperstar@lemmy.world 3 points 53 minutes ago

People don't like Brave because they believe it's a crypto scam, and the CEO is a douchebag. But Brave has said they'll continue to support extensions regardless of Google's change.

[–] wall_panel_96@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I have yet to see YouTube ads on brave, but are you saying that will soon cease to be the case? Bugger.

[–] Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 hour ago

Also, Brave has really shitty features like redirecting referral codes.

[–] slaacaa@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago

~~Don’t~~ be evil

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

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

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] limoncia@lemm.ee 3 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

Isn't it more vulnerable since it's based on older version? Correct me if I'm wrong

[–] coolmojo@lemmy.world 1 points 36 minutes ago

It is actively developed . They didn’t just kept the old version. They forked it and improving and fixing it.

[–] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 1 points 41 minutes ago

It could just be styled the old way

[–] zecg@lemmy.world 47 points 7 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.

[–] androidul@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 hours ago

lmao another Mozilla shitshow

grabs popcorn 🍿

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 14 points 7 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.

[–] buzz86us@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

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

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 hours ago

Hm? Paypal redirects work for me, even in my browsing profile with trimmed useragent and strict same-origin/cookie policy. This one was never a problem, even if no other webäpp worked. Seems they have good fallbacks.

[–] sibachian@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 hours 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 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] TuxEnthusiast@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 hours ago

+1 for agent switcher

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 31 points 8 hours ago (4 children)

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 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

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

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Don_alForno@feddit.org 8 points 6 hours ago

Which jurisdictions? What kind of broad way? Give one example please. I dare you.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 97 points 11 hours ago (10 children)

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 28 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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 17 points 8 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

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Litebit@lemmy.world 12 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 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?

load more comments
view more: next ›