this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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This is probably the single thing that got me to switch to Firefox. Privacy whatever, I don’t care about my data or the morality of my tech company or whatever, but mess with my adblocker and goodbye.
Can I have your bank account username and password?
No
Can I have your psychosexual profile and live gps coordinates?
Fish sadist, 47°9′S 126°43′W
Like, a sadist for fish? Or a sadist that is a fish?
A fish who is a sadist in his sexual relations with other fish obviously.
Yes
Awww, but understandable. Can I see your bank statements for the last 12 months?
No
So you do care about privacy!
Yes, when it comes to sharing sensitive information publicly, I do care about privacy. Especially bank information - a regular bank statement could probably be exploited for identity theft - but it's also nice to keep at least a little plausible deniability about who I am IRL (for employers and such).
When it comes to websites and browsers aggregating browsing history to use for advertising - which is what I was referring to in my original comment - no I don't care.
I was just being a keyboard warrior. I can imagine your stance, however it is important to be at least aware of it. As long it’s a conscious choice! Problem with big ad parties these days is that it’s so complex, it’s hard to make a properly informed decision about it. My comment about bank statements is just taking it to the extreme to make a point - no offence intended of course.
so you DO care about privacy.
That's security, not privacy
It literally is privacy.
Yes, obviously I prefer to keep my secure credentials private to avoid having my bank account compromised.
I'm pretty sure any popular modern browser can be trusted not to leak that data, even Google Chrome. If anything I trust Chrome more because Google has an incentive to not obliterate trust in their security.
Now browsing history for advertisers is a different story - that is something I explicitly don't care about. And that's what I was obviously referring to in my first comment.
Why not?
It could be used to take my money, which directly and drastically harms me and benefits you. Or worse, “steal my identity” and take out a loan in my name. Things like bank statements could also potentially be used for that, and I have no reason to give them to internet strangers.
I’m mostly in the same boat. If you really want to know my kink-search-history, I really DGAF. The morality is nice to think about but it’s all about your personal morals in a lot of cases.
firefox is going through thier own enshittifcation down the line, they changed ther policy about data recently
They changed the phrasing, since in some jurisdictions "sharing anonymized data with partners" can apparently be interpreted as a sale of data, if they get something in return, even if it's not a fiscal payment.
But after the outrage that sparked, they've rephrased the policy again and wrote a lengthy article detailing the reasoning, which is at the very least plausible.
As I understand it that has more to do with covering their ass. They haven’t changed their practices.
The fact that they think they need to cover their ass about selling user data is concerning enough.
Don’t take my word for it, you can read what they said about it here. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Yeah, I read that and I think it's a weak justification.
Explain.
I’ll care when Firefox loses ManifestV2 support.
They changed the wording of their policy for legal reasons. They haven't actually changed what they do. They already updated the text of the policy to clarify.
...The reason being that they can't legally claim they don't sell your data.
Yes, because the definition of "sell data" varies by jurisdiction, and they can't guarantee that their usage of ads (eg the default sites that appear on the new tab page) does not fall under the definition of "sell data" in some jurisdictions. In particular, California's CCPA is pretty strict and some use cases that aren't actually selling data still fall under its definition of "sell data".
And they had this revelation and newfound sense of caution immediately after their main source of income was jeopardized? And they made this change at the exact same time they started forcing users to give them a worldwide commercial license to everything you enter through Firefox? Sure, Jan.
That's not what they actually did, though. They revised the wording to clarify:
For example, if you type something into the address bar, they need to have the permission to take your content (whatever you've typed) and send it to a third party (a search engine) to get autocompletion results.
Here's the blog post that clarifies the changes: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/
I read about this too, and it worries me. Google has donated over a billion dollars to Mozilla over the years. That alone doesn't scare me so much as it's a blatant propaganda tool to deflect the antitrust sentiment that plagues them and will probably some day do its work of breaking them apart.
Fortunately, there are numerous open source forks. I am currently using Librewolf, a fork of firefox focused on privacy and anti-tracking, and it has worked without a hitch. A couple of my extensions have required fiddling with to get right but it's part of life if you care about these things.