- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- privacyguides@lemmy.one
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 An archived version from January 30 says: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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I have been advised it’s not a fork but a reconfig of default firefox, therefore it would technically be subject to the same ToS.
Edit: here’s where I got that (with a link to the cfg) https://lemmy.world/comment/15368938
Depending on how the requirement to accept the ToS is implemented, a config file might be able to disable it and any features that depend on it.
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I doubt implementation of terms will be optional.
You are all up and down these comments repeating this statement.
Why?
How exactly has Mozilla handled changes like this before that leads you to this conclusion? Do you have anything to back this up other than your own dogged insistence?
Surely there must be something I’m missing for you to be so adamant on this point. Please enlighten me, because to my knowledge about how all this works and has worked in the past this just seems like baseless fearmongering to me.
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So… entirely vibes based take. Maybe take some time to step away and come back later.
Spamming a doomerism opinion, when not backed up by anything but feelings, helps nobody. It’s an overactive immune response. The fever worse than the illness your body is trying to burn out using it.
I get that it feels like the world is going to shit, and especially when things you thought were trustworthy start doing this, it’s a blow. But this shit (repeated as fucking much as you have repeared it) makes the community, and people who need a non-corporate controlled browser, weaker and more vulnerable.
Six.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression it didn’t call out to mozilla servers if you didn’t enable sync.
I guess Mullvad would be the next popular browser yeah?
afaict Mullvad browser doesn’t support plugins which - it does some adblock by default (more ifyou have the VPN) and so on but i gots to have my DarkViewer so it’s a sometimes browser for me atm.
It does work with Firefox plugins, there just isn’t a button to open the extension “store” in the extensions settings page like stock Firefox has. You can add them by manually going to the url though, it’s just recommended that you don’t since that increases your risk of adding a malicious plugin or being fingerprinted, etc. I still added a few plugins that I really dislike not having though, like a password manager and darkreader, just because I valued the convenience slightly more than the added security.
Nice, thanks!
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What? Some proof here please. Firefox is 100% open source. You can audit the entire code for this.
It’s not like chromium with the pre-compiled binary blob in the middle provided by google.
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And again. 100% open source. There is no way for any functionality (including functionalitt that does that) to exist somewhere that people making forks can’t modify/remove it.
How good is mullvad browser?
please pay me if you want to sell my data. At the end of the day I am a business and need to cover operating cost.
Is there an open source tool to generate fake user activity data for Firefox to consume?
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,
Fuck off Mozilla. Maybe don’t pay CEOs millions and don’t force things like Pocket and LLMs on users if you want to be commercially viable, I’d gladly pay for Firefox that doesn’t make me dodge new features and services. But it would be a donation towards development of a browser that is commons, since you have no product to sell, only GPL’d code that’s mine as much as yours.
You have NO fucking leverage, Firefox is better than Chrome, but there’s projects that will gladly repackage your code with no telemetry whatsoever for any platform while you’re brainstorming just the right amount of monetization to prevent the frog from jumping.
It’s kind of sad I don’t use Chrome and therefore never think of it, while I like and use Firefox and am therefore constantly at odds with Mozilla.
A lot of these browsers seems to be obsessed with AI that nobody wants.
Mozilla needs to understand that I don’t want it to have my data to sell or not in the first place.
That’s the thing that bothers me about all these companies now. My data is my data, not theirs. They shouldn’t even be allowed to collect it, let alone sell it or give it to anyone who wants it.
Nahhh, trust them, bro. People working on other things with the same product name as their company name were great people. That should be endorsement enough.
Wait. They have this ‘open source’ flag. If they wave it about - oooh, pretty - does that help?
Just uncheck all telemetry and never use an account. Its open source so it should be verifiable that data collection is turned off.
I don’t get how something is allowed to be labeled “free” when the terms of usage make you barter your data.
There are different kinds of free. Free beer, free speech and free weekend are three different kinds of free that software can have, but not necessarily at the same time.
I was thinking more along the lines of “install and play this free unity game while it siphons personal data off your computer and sends it back to epic servers”
They’re specifically getting something of value in return for the good or service and then claiming it’s free and that customers are not customers, merely “users.”
but all of those taste better with free beer
Don’t collect anything on your own and don’t sell the things you don’t collect. Bam, problem solved.
Anyone still using Firefox after this probably hasn’t been keeping up with Mozilla’s many controversies. If this is your first time here, I can see why you’d decide to overlook it. I did for a long time, but this is the final straw for me. Luckily, instead of building anything useful over the past decades, Mozilla leadership has been instead focused on enriching themselves. That means deleting my Mozilla account right now was easy.
I’ve now moved to LibreWolf, because I don’t want to support Chromium’s dominance, but if that project dies out I’ll jump ship. It’ll be a real shame if the world gets stuck with Chromium as the only viable browser, but it won’t be my fault. It will be Mozilla leadership’s fault.
It makes me sad because I’m a donator and supporter to Mozilla - and have been for years. I truly believe the web should be open, free, and not for profit and there are great people at Mozilla which is why I hate seeing the leadership do things like this. I wish there was an active group that shared the same ideals, were ethical, and not full of transphobes and cryptobros that could take up the mantle and fund another fork like Librewolf.
Preferably would love that any group be a collective not a corporation.
I use brave and librewolf, anybody know if those are still safe from this dort of thing? (Probably not I guess, so what browsers are left?)
Someone earlier said that brave was based on chrome and when google blocked ublock origin on Chrome, it would stop working on brave too.
People don’t like Brave because they believe it’s a crypto scam, and the CEO is a douchebag. But Brave has said they’ll continue to support extensions regardless of Google’s change.
Don’t forget the CEO’s worst crime: he’s the inventor of javascript
Also the fact that he’s a rabid homophobe and transphobe.
I didn’t know that, but tbh not surprising. Dotcom-era tech bro billionaires are all the same.
Yeah he was a big donator to California’s prop 8, which tried to ban gay marriage - it’s one of the reasons he stepped down from Mozilla.
COVID-denier, too.
Clearly not someone you can trust.
I have yet to see YouTube ads on brave, but are you saying that will soon cease to be the case? Bugger.
Also, Brave has really shitty features like redirecting referral codes.
Librewolf is privacy-hardened so it’s probably the best option. Brave is Chromium-based. Realistically though, all web browsers come with compromises, and internet anonymity is virtually impossible without unrealistic amounts of effort.
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I don’t get your point, are you saying that using LibreWolf will still send your personal data to Mozilla? A privacy hardened config should be enough to disable all data collection, unless there’s some kind of hidden telemetry in Firefox. That’d be hard to hide considering the open source nature of Firefox.
Also, looking at the source repo, it seems like LibreWolf is not just a config file, it’s also a bunch of patches to the source code, plus they do build from source and publish their own binaries. So if Mozilla does try to sneak telemetry in, the LibreWolf maintainers are well positioned to patch it out.
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Son of a bitch I just got back into Firefox.
Try LibreWolf then
Is there any android port?
Not at the moment, but the Librewolf folks recommend Ironfox.
Interesting. How’s water fox?
Switched yesterday, feeling right at home so far.
Me too. Practically 0 difference, works for me!
None of Librefox Waterfox or Ironfox are on Fdroid. So Fennec (aka: Firefox) is still the only FOSS option on Fdroid
Get in loser, we’re going to librewolf apparently. Fuck me I’ve reached the age of seeing all the things I like die. I don’t even remember a time I didn’t use Firefox. God damn it
Icecat’s good too. In fact in some ways, eg. cutting Sync out entirely where LibreWolf disables it by default but lets you enable it if desired, it’s even better than LibreWolf.
This is why I am an advocate for publicly-funded Internet, like how people fund NPR and BBC.
I don’t blame Firefox because at the end of the day, they are still a business and need to cover the operating cost. I blame the system that we’re in and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative.
and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative
That’s like blaming wolves for eating you when it’s winter, they are hungry and you are in the forest
We are still in a capitalistic. Money still prevails.
What operating costs? You could argue there are development costs, but development is driven by the community. The only operating costs are forced stalking behavior.
I don’t understand what you mean by Firefox’s development is driven by the community? It’s not a community contributed open source software; my friend worka on Firefox and is a Mozilla employee.
I can’t remember the details, but if I remember correctly, Firefox used to get a lot of cut from hosting Google’s ad. But Google cut that deal and Firefox lost 90% of its revenue as a result. That’s why I can’t blame Firefox for doing what they are doing at the moment.
Us users want services for free but we can’t have our cake and eat them in the current paradigm of the internet. That’s why we have to think outside the box and I advocate for a publicly funded internet. It is the same model as NPR and BBC and that is why they have little to no ads unlike private broadcasters. The same principle should be applied to the Internet if we want to keep using it for free.
I’m sorry, but first of all Mozilla actually employs developers. And the development process isn’t just the developers’ salaries. There’s R&D, QA, management, administration, accounting. All of these cost money, and this isn’t even touching on the expenses associated with offices (electricity, general upkeep, maintenance).
Then there’s the costs associated with packaging the binaries, hosting the binaries, bandwidth…
Even if you’re giving everyone a miser’s pay, and getting cheaper unreliable hosting, it adds up
Yup I’ll be sticking with Firefox forks… Unfortunately i have to keep a chrome install around because i can’t get alternative browsers to do redirects for PayPal
the problem with that is - if everyone switches to forks, development of firefox stops, killing it, and the forks are guaranteed to follow.
Hm? Paypal redirects work for me, even in my browsing profile with trimmed useragent and strict same-origin/cookie policy. This one was never a problem, even if no other webäpp worked. Seems they have good fallbacks.
Have you tried “un-googled chromium”? Should work pretty much the same as regular chromium in that regard…
Or even just a good old fashioned user agent switcher?
+1 for agent switcher
Everything turns to shit in the end.
The screw-ups keep mounting like they want to be Google.
They (and we)'ve got to admit, the solution is not going to come from within their (managerial) ranks.
At this point I’d be happy to offer my services as a BDFL for Mozilla, at but a small fraction of the wages of any of their C-suites.
