this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025

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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 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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 An archived version from January 30 says: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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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago

That clarification is not making me calm

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'm about to get my tattoo removed wtf

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If it's really you...

Wtf?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Would you like to see my tattoo of Tom from MySpace I got on my left testicle? Hey man, in 2005 it seemed like MySpace Tom would be in our lives forever. Why WOULDN'T you get his profile picture inked into your body with needles on the most painful part of your body? It made sense in 2005!

But noooooooooo! Facebook had to be a dick. And now whenever I pull my pants down in front of some hot 20 year old with daddy issues, she's like "Is that your uncle or something?"

Meanwhile Tom sold my MySpace for hundreds of millions of dollars, and now does photography of bikini models on his yacht! While I have to explain who Tom is to Gen Z....

sigh

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Am I the only one here who's pretty much okay with this? I do wish they'd clarify exactly what they mean by "Mozilla doesn't sell data about you (in the way that most people think about 'selling data')," but having my anonymized data sold so that Mozilla can continue to operate (combined with Firefox being the best browser I've used in terms of both performance and flexibility - ability to install add-ons from sources outside of the Mozilla store, for example) - seems like a worthy tradeoff to me.

They also have an option to opt-out of data collection, which I do wish was opt-in instead, but with the way every other mainstream browser operates I'm just happy the option is there at all. Let me know if there's something I'm missing here though.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago (3 children)

The problem I have with this is that "anonymized" data in the past has often been trivial to de-anonymize. And if they can remove some promises now, they're going to keep going in that direction. Just like Microsoft telemetry used to be less but is getting worse and worse.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I'm using Fennec (based on Firefox, sans telemetry). Is there a good, reliable, and trustable way to export my bookmarks so I don't have to depend on Firefox Sync?

Edit: forgot to say: on Android.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I use Floccus cause it syncs to nextcloud bookmarks.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 month ago (1 children)

promises don't count if you delete them. everyone knows that

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"If I put my wedding ring in my pocket, it's not cheating..."

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This kind of thinking shouldn't be acceptable from a legal standpoint. Yet the courts do nothing...

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Everything turns to shit in the end.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Anyone recommend an iOS alternative?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

On iOS, all browsers are Safari with a coat of paint.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Nowadays that’s incorrect if you’re in the European Union.

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[–] [email protected] 155 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Mozilla needs to understand that I don't want it to have my data to sell or not in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

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?

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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)

So in other words we sell your data and get paid for it, and some countries won't let us lie about it.

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