this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025

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266

Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 month ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.

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[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago (25 children)

Mozilla's fans ready to take the pitchforks whenever other Corps. have miniscule missteps are strangely silent today.

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[–] Gamers_mate@beehaw.org 5 points 1 month ago

You cant go back on never have never will without breaking the law. We need to get these ai tech bros out of these companies if we want them to remain good.

[–] TurtleMelon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Made the switch to Fennec and IceRaven on Android, and Zen on my Linux desktop, which also has Windows and Mac versions. Sure, they're forks of Firefox, but they are not subject to the same TOS. I used to use LibreWolf on my desktop but ended up having too many issues with it. Lots of crashing and instablility that regular Firefox just didn't have.

Another great tool for unGoogled Android users is FFUpdater. It will handle updating of many open source (not just Firefox-based) browsers. You could also use something like Obtanium for something less browser-specific.

[–] BevelGear@beehaw.org 4 points 1 month ago

What do you think of duckduckgo's browser? It's about page seems to be on par.

[–] Kissaki@beehaw.org 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

also

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."

Mozilla may also receive location-related keywords from your search (such as when you search for "Boston") and share this with our partners to provide recommended and sponsored content. Where this occurs, Mozilla cannot associate the keyword search with an individual user once the search suggestion has been served and partners are never able to associate search suggestions with an individual user. You can remove this functionality at any time by turning off Sponsored Suggestions—more information on how to do this is available in the relevant Firefox Support page.

So, turn off Sponsored Suggestions and you're (probably) good to go.

[–] Vodulas@beehaw.org 2 points 1 month ago

Good they rolled it back. Feels a bit like go for what you want and see how folks react, then have a plan for rolling it back.

[–] catastrophicblues@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago

The ToU is in Mozilla's Bedrock repo, but I don't quite know what that repo does. I'm curious if Firefox forks would still be subject to it.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What's the best alternative in* apt now?

[–] comically_cluttered@beehaw.org 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What do you mean? Firefox alternatives in Debian/Debian-based repos? Or just an alternative for apt in general (in which case, I think you've replied to the wrong post)?

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Yes, I'm asking for the best Firefox alternative thats available on Debian or debian-based distos. Only considering packages in the official Debian apt repos

[–] comically_cluttered@beehaw.org 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I know you only want software from the official repos, but it's really simple to add the LibreWolf repo and use that.

Other than that, there's not really much in the way of Firefox forks in the official repos. I believe the Debian builds have their own configurations as well, but I'm not certain. You could use other browsers (Falkon, GNOME Web, etc.), but they're severely lacking in features.

Off-topic, LibreWolf uses the extrepo package to add their repo which is a great third party repo management program for Debian. It's curated by maintainers of official Debian packages and has selection of other third party repos for some popular software that either doesn't make it into the official repos for whatever reason or aren't kept super updated in Debian Stable.

That and it's so much easier than adding signing keys, messing with sources lists, etc. I wish more software used it, honestly, but the maintainers know what they're doing.

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[–] Scary_le_Poo@beehaw.org 3 points 1 month ago

Have any of you FUD shoveling geniuses considered that this is because Firefox uses encrypted DNS by default?

[–] jay2@beehaw.org 3 points 1 month ago

That condition is a despotic red-flag deal-breaker that should be countered with epic abandonment. Let them know this is not OK. If I hadn't uninstalled it years ago, I would have already. Lots of better browsers out there.

[–] nocteb@feddit.org 2 points 1 month ago

Maybe the should replace their CEO wit AI:

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/consider-the-following-you-are-SHB99o4pQHCsG_BgZrbTLw#0

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