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 An archived version from January 30 says: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.
I see it said agian and agian. because its true. Firefox is one of, if not the best of the mainstream browsers. (Not included its many forks) but Mozilla is a horrible caretaker of it. Mozilla does not focus on firefox and they dont care/believe in it nearly as much as its users or devs who fork it.
The motivations of a company are extremely important, and has Mozilla does not care for a lightweight, good, privacy centric browser, the enshitification will and has corrupt firefox.
It’s only a matter of time until it is as bad as chromium or flat out joins it.
I don’t know why they haven’t floated the idea of some kind of subscription or one-time payment (though a subscription might be just as infuriating). I’m not above paying for software and if it was a reasonable price, say $10 one-time, I’d much prefer that over it becoming the new Chrome.
I’m pretty sure a $10 one time payment won’t pay for the costs of development that Firefox requires.
Open source only works when there are people motivated enough and skilled enough to maintain something for free or when the organization managing it has another source of income.
They’re already dying. This would be throwing themselves in the grave. People aren’t used to paying for browsers
Mozilla needs to understand that I don’t want it to have my data to sell or not in the first place.
deleted by creator
As an Australian.Do not trust us when it comes to privacy, security especially in tech or the digital space.
We are not a nation descendant of ‘convicts’ but of prison guards and other colonial boot lickers.
We are US lite or US 10years ago or maybe their tearing ground. Can’t figure it out.
Yeah don’t trust us, we’ve gutted all forms of STEM that aren’t directly related to digging shit out of the ground for Gina Rinehart and co
Serious intellectual brain drain in this country now, we really are the US 10 years ago, hopefully the US explodes enough to stop all our idiots blindly following their jingoism to our doom
Glad you shared this. I hate to be That Tin Foil Hat Person but it seems really convenient that a Musk and Thiel tied CEO happens to take over the one browser base that isn’t Chromium just before people start moving to it for privacy in escalating numbers.
McKinsey is honestly scarier. They may not be a household name like the others, but look them up. They are frightening.
I’m giving Waterfox a test drive and like it so far. No issues.
I’m considering adding it to the alternatives list I posted. Can anybody else validate their privacy policy? Seemd ok but I’m a bit iffy regarding their use of telemetry. Maybe I’m overthinking it
No telemetry, allegedly.
Edit: There does still appear to be some, although it’s less than FF and it’s anonymized. I ended up going with Fennec just in case.
I read somewhere that Librewolf is not recommended because they are a small team and slow to patch vulnerabilities / integrate security fixes from Firefox.
Is it true? (Sincere question)
Valid concern as I use their browser often. From their FAQ (link):
Also Zen Browser
Added
iOS browsers are all just skins around the safari engine.
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.
https://thehackernews.com/2025/03/mozilla-updates-firefox-terms-again.html?m=1
Apparently they changed it due to backlash.
Glad they clarified. To me the “selling data being defined broadly” argument made sense in the context of Google paying them to be included as a search provider. Because there is an argument that Google paying Firefox, and then the user entering a search and that being sent to Google’s servers could be legally seen as Mozilla selling data to Google.
Hm. Reading further in the article and since its not the first no-no… I have doubts.
That clarification is not making me calm
I’m about to get my tattoo removed wtf
Just get “RIP” tattooed under it.
Google really needs to be broken up. They’ve become the Ma Bell of the internet.
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.
This whole thing does not matter if you are living in the US anyway become of the Third-party doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties have "no reasonable expectation of privacy in that information.
Mozilla posted an update:
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.”
Why they need users ? If they operate Firefox by themselves why they not start paying for power usage for hosting Firefox on my machine.
Mozilla is trying to increase their revenue by doing everything other than improving Firefox
Like they could also make a FOSS alternative to VS-Code but nah
Vs codium is a FOSS vs-code
As in Mozilla own alternative from scratch with their own independent Plugin-repository
Could be a potential money-maker
Son of a bitch I just got back into Firefox.
Try LibreWolf then
I don’t get how something is allowed to be labeled “free” when the terms of usage make you barter your data.
