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Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic | Mozilla says it deleted promise because "sale of data" is defined broadly (arstechnica.com)

submitted 3 days ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/privacyguides@lemmy.one

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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 An archived version from January 30 says: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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[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 30 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There are more privacy-respecting forks of Firefox. Might be time to move to one of those. Librewolf springs to mind.

But they are dependent on the continued existence of Firefox, so it's still concerning when Mozilla alienates their users.

[-] alykanas@slrpnk.net 19 points 3 days ago

It is concerning - because Firefox barely has enough users to sustain it.

If no one takes on the development of Gecko, we’re in the soup. It’s the only alternative to blink and WebKit. Tor relies on it .

[-] splendoruranium@infosec.pub 3 points 3 days ago

It is concerning - because Firefox barely has enough users to sustain it.

Er... if you think Mozilla is sustained by its users then I have some bad news for you. Or am I misunderstanding you?

[-] alykanas@slrpnk.net 11 points 3 days ago

Mozilla is funded by google to promote the search . But how much longer are they gonna pay if no one uses it ?

[-] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago

If you read in between the lines, Mozilla is also funded by google as technical competition to chrome so that governments dont break them up with anti-monopoly busting case.

[-] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

capitalism truly drives competition and innovation...

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

is there something like this on android? is mullvad also good?

[-] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I had to do a little digging but it seems that Mull has a spiritual successor in the form of ironfox for android. So far its legitimately good, just add the repository to your fdroid Link to repo:

fdroidrepos://fdroid.ironfoxoss.org/fdroid/repo?fingerprint=C5E291B5A571F9C8CD9A9799C2C94E02EC9703948893F2CA756D67B94204F904

[-] Im_old@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Fennec

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

i found it on fdroid but not on the play store. it looks like firefox exactly, what are the main differences?

[-] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

Read the description in fdroid lol

this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025

227 points (97.5% liked)

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