AI Summary:
Overview:
- Mozilla is updating its new Terms of Use for Firefox due to criticism over unclear language about user data.
- Original terms seemed to give Mozilla broad ownership of user data, causing concern.
- Updated terms emphasize limited scope of data interaction, stating Mozilla only needs rights necessary to operate Firefox.
- Mozilla acknowledges confusion and aims to clarify their intent to make Firefox work without owning user content.
- Company explains they don’t make blanket claims of “never selling data” due to evolving legal definitions and obligations.
- Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable, but ensures data is anonymized or shared in aggregate.
Is there a way to generate fake data to feed to Firefox with an addon?
Probably easier to go into the settings and untick a box to disable any telemetry.
You’re probably just better going with a fork of FF that has all that nonsense stripped out.
maybe with anti-detection browser, there are with free-bee version, dont know if that will help . which basically lets you use proxies as well, and spoofs your fingerprinting. people who made of accts, or advertise on reddit uses these to evade reddit ban(until reddit made it harder to do so currently)
Mozilla is soo stupid!
Most Firefox users use it only because of the values it upholds, and now they decided to destroy it. MF wouldn’t even have any any revenue once they betray their little existing users!
If they’re throwing away their values, then there is no reason to use Firefox anymore, BECAUSE OBJECTIVELY FIREFOX IS INFERIOR TO CHROMIUM.
And hopefully this accelerates development and support to fully alternate browsers.
Wait, you think using Firefox somehow results in them getting money?…
Yes, that’s why google is paying millions to be the default.
No, using Google makes Google money. That’s why they pay mozilla to be the default.
And they’re not going to pay millions to be the default for a browser that no one uses.
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You’re not totally wrong here, but the fact is that these updates are a complete non-issue that has only resulted in so much backlash because of the self-selected Firefox audience of people who know enough about tech and privacy to care, but not enough to understand what’s actually threatening. The updates were a minor change in language that didn’t change the status quo, but idiots like the guy who thinks that incognito mode somehow stops a site from gathering information on you flock to these articles and start crying doomsday.
Mozilla is the only big web company that’s even close to on the side of consumers and it’s sad to see them eat shit for no reason.
does this affect any fork of firefox? Like floorp?
Installed DuckDuckGo browser as soon as I saw the news the other day.
Installed DuckDuckGo browser as soon as I saw the news the other day.
Oh cool, yet another Chromium variant. That’s going to be an actual change for the better.
Balls.
Mozilla says that “there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners” so that Firefox can be “commercially viable,” but it adds that it spells those out in its privacy notice and works to strip data of potentially identifying information or share it in aggregate.
Sounds like they’ve already been selling (or trading) data and this whole debacle is a way to retroactively cover their asses.
google is probably thier number one customer for the data.
Yeah. And their privacy notice is basically a mix-match of ten or so sections that have no place in a web browser privacy policy, that allows them to do the things people reproach them for doing.
It’s like saying “we’re not doing that, because we’re limited by that document that allows us to do just that”. And now they’re tripling down on it.
Too late for me personally, I’ve gone ahead and moved over to Zen.
What’s the best alternative on Mac?
You could try zen browser
It looks like Arc but built on Firefox’s engine? That’s sick. I’ll give it a look.
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Are you referring to Arc or to Zen?
Zen had its latest release 5 days ago, and arc 4 days ago, so I have no idea what they’re talking about.
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Do you have a source for that? I can’t seem to find anything on their website, though judging by the past few release notes you’re absolutely right.
Edit: found this video. Kinda feel like this should be a big red banner on the front page though.
cool, sounds good. (the Community gif where Troy walks into the room with Pizza, Pierce has been shot, and there’s fire everywhere)
Too late. I’ve already moved to another browser
Which one? There is literally nothing else.
There are so many Firefox forks, just try them out and pick you poison.
Since others have already commented some suggestions, I’d like to add Floorp.
I use it on desktop
Zen, Librewolf, Waterfox, Mullvad Browser to name a few
Is mullvad chromium based?
Nope, Firefox based. It’s basically Tor Browser w/o Tor.
No, Firefox
Sure thing bud you keep using Firefox
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“I am doing things that are not selling your data which some people consider to be selling your data”
Why is he so cryptic? Neil, why don’t you tell me what those things are and let me be the judge?
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Oh, it’s perfectly clear. We got the message. Mozilla are not to be trusted with our data.
Really? I would think most would consider them for what they are: evasive and probably deceptive
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I’m pretty sure this person is making a joke using a fake exaggerated “answer” from a corporation to highlight the absurdity of their double speak. I doubt something this insane would come from an actual spokesperson.
I’m getting that now too. I don’t know the players in Mozilla. The quote without context made me think this was one of those Mozilla execs.
“ChatGPT, I need your help. Please pretend to be a lawyer that recently suffered a severe concussion and write me something I can post online that will male this situation slightly weirder.”
Neil doesn’t need a chatbot with sparkles for that, he’s plenty capable to take absolute piss himself. 😁
Some jurisdictions classify “sale” as broadly as “transfer of data to any other company, for a ‘benefit’ of any kind” Benefit could even be non-monetary in terms of money being transferred for the data, it could be something as broadly as “the browser generally improving using that data and thus being more likely to generate revenue.”
To avoid frivolous lawsuits, Mozilla had to update their terms to clarify this in order to keep up with newer laws.
I agree, I don’t want my browser provider to collect any data on me at all, but if they absolutely must gather the absolute minimum system analytics stats or such they should NEVER pass it to a third party for ANY reason.
You make a desktop browser application, that’s your job, to provide a portal to the world wide web, nothing more. Stay within your bounds and we’ll never have any problem.
I mean…if they pay for the service of external analization of data in exchange of money, how is that a sale of goods/data?
Ask the lawmakers who wrote the laws with vague language, because according to them, that kind of activity could be considered a sale.
As a more specific example that is more one-sided, but still not technically a “sale,” Mozilla has sponsored links on the New Tab page. (they can be disabled of course)
These links are provided by a third-party, relatively privacy protecting ad marketplace. Your browser downloads a list of links from them if you have sponsored links turned on, and no data is actually sent to their service about you. If you click a sponsored link, a request is sent using a protocol that anonymizes your identity, that tells them the link was clicked. That’s it, no other data about your identity, browser, etc.
This generates revenue for Mozilla that isn’t reliant on Google’s subsidies, that doesn’t actually sell user data. Under these laws, that would be classified as a sale of user data, since Mozilla technically transferred data from your device (that you clicked the sponsored link) for a benefit. (financial compensation)
However, I doubt anyone would call that feature “selling user data.” But, because the law could do so, they have to clarify that in their terms, otherwise someone could sue them saying “you sold my data” when all they did was send a small packet to a server saying that some user, somewhere clicked the sponsored link.
I would definitely call that selling my data. The recipient can now add that to my profile as an interest.
The recipient doesn’t get any identifying data about you, because the data that shows the link was clicked does not identify you as an individual, since it’s passed through privacy-preserving protocols.
To further clarify the exact data available to any party:
- The ad marketplace only knows that someone, somewhere clicked the link.
- Mozilla knows that roughly x users have clicked sponsored links overall.
- The company you went to from that sponsored link knows that your IP/browser visited at X time, and you clicked through a sponsored link from the ad marketplace
There isn’t much of a technical difference between this, and someone seeing an ad in-person where they type in a link, from a practical privacy perspective.
Their implementation is completely different from traditional profile/tracking-based methods of advertising.
Louis Rossmann had a good video about this. Basically, California passed a law that changed what “selling your data” means, and it goes way beyond what I consider “selling your data.” There’s an argument here than Mozilla is largely just trying to comply with the law. Whether that’s accurate remains to be seen though.
Too late, I switched to Floorp.
Because of privacy stuff? No. Because of repeated drama? Yes.
I don’t have time for this stuff. I don’t have time to track every minute twist of the knife that Google’s funding drives Mozilla to embark on.
I’m bored of using software and watching it go through “death by a thousand minor dramas”
So now I use a web browser that has a name so stupid I don’t even recommend it to other people. Brilliant.
Floorp is a new Firefox based browser from Japan with excellent privacy & flexibility.
💀
The magic of forking!
✨
The drama isn’t exactly their fault. There are a lot of rich organizations that want them to cease to exist. Most 9f which want track you online and/or shove ads down your throat.
A fair amount of drama is exactly their fault. Mozilla chose to increase management pay and fire people, Mozilla chose to flirt with ai, Mozilla bought an ad firm, and so on. It’s not like someone was holding a knife to their throat.
Even if the name sounds stupid, you should still recommend it to other people :D
Have been doing so for a few months and haven’t had any negative feedback.
Try zen browser. It’s just like floorp but has that Arc browser aesthetic.
I was a floorp user until I tried zen browser. You should give it a try too.
Floorp isn’t recommended for its privacy features anyway, it’s recommended by users for the amount of customization you can do. It’s got some features that Firefox has that I don’t want to do without.
Truly an outstanding move
Pornhub now remembers what sort of porn you like while browsing incognito. Is this also happening with other browsers? I just don’t wanna have my wife know what kid of bdsm I really like. It keeps things fun that way. Fun, gun, hun, nun, are all too close on the keyboard. Autocorrect can’t fix that.
yet you missed the elephant in the room.
kid
Pornhub now remembers what sort of porn you like while browsing incognito.
Are you sure? All incognito windows run in the same memory space. If you open one window and do something in it, that session data is available to any other open incognito window open. To clear this ALL incognito windows need to be closed. Once they are all closed, you should be able to open a single new one and have no remnants of the previous sessions left over for the website to know you. The exceptions to this are if they are tracking activity from your IP address or if they are using Browser Fingerprinting on your session so they know even if you come from a different IP they know its your computer.
I run into the IP tracking sometimes. The wife will be doing searches for some specific thing, and I’ll see youtube recommendations show up on those topics even though I’m running youtube via incognito on completely different hardware (but we’re both using the same public IP).
I’m pretty sure there’s something even more perverse happening maybe IP tracking. Maybe phone location tracking. Like when I search for stuff on Google here at home on my phone that stuff appears on my work Google (where I have never actually logged in to Google with any account). It maybe a server side user profile tracking system that we haven’t seen before. Instead of tracking a user via IP, you look at a location… Then you look at what people are searching for in that location and you develop a profile for that particular hardware ID.
reddit does the same thing to, to identify ban evaders, except reddit turned it up a notch in doing this. i think only anti-detect browsers can alleviate that
Whats the alternative on android?
Waterfox if you are ok with getting it from the play store
Ironfox
I’m using Fennec.
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Is it? It seems to be maintained by a user named relan based out of Russia. It’s just a few scripts to build it for F-Droid and basically just removes some proprietary stuff. It’s not a fork, just a build script.
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IronFox is an option
Where do I get it? It’s neither on the playstore nor on Fdroid.
You can get the F-Droid repo from their GitLab or Github (they recommend Accrescent though)
Already uninstalled everywhere. Better luck next time, Mozilla.
I didn’t sell your shit, I collected it and shared it to keep myself comercially viable.
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