Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic
arstechnica.com
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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.

  • Xanza@lemm.eeEnglish
    510·
    3 hours ago

    I feel a little vindicated. I started using Firefox basically when it was first released. I migrated away from it after several years because I simply didn’t like the direction that Mozilla was taking it. Decades later I see them struggling down the same inevitable path I figured they’d always head down from the beginning.

    Firefox bros used to get ultra pissed at me for shitting on their browser because I just knew Mozilla would eventually fuck it all up. And here we are.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.worldEnglish
      132·
      3 hours ago

      I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. I told ya so? I was smarter than everyone else and figured it out first?

      FF has been one of the better full-featured browsers with generous amount of add-ons/plugins. There was no reason not to use it vs some less functional browser or some corporate data miner like Chrome. It still is, however some alternatives are catching up. Time will tell how it all shakes out as far as the battle between functionality, privacy, ad- and tracking-blockers, and people willing to build and maintain free browsers and plugins.

      • Xanza@lemm.eeEnglish
        33·
        3 hours ago

        I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.

        The first thing I said;

        I feel a little vindicated.

        I apologize. I literally don’t know how to make it any more clear than that.