Mozilla Revises Firefox's Terms of Use, Clarifies That They Don't Own Your Data (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0176582193
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/03/01/2111254/mozilla-revises-firefoxs-terms-of-use-clarifies-that-they-dont-own-your-data
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/news/622080/mozilla-revising-firefox-terms-of-use-data
But Friday they went further, and revised those new Terms of Use "to more clearly reflect the limited scope of how Mozilla interacts with user data," according to a [3]Mozilla blog post . More details [4]from the Verge :
> The particular language that drew criticism was:
>
> "When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."
>
> That language has been removed. Now, the language [5]in the terms 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...."
>
> Friday's post additionally provides some context about why the company has "stepped away from making blanket claims that 'We never sell your data.'" Mozilla says that "in some places, the LEGAL definition of 'sale of data' is broad and evolving," and that "the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they're considered to be 'selling data.'" 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.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-news/firefox-terms-of-use/
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/02/28/1147239/mozillas-updated-tos-we-own-all-info-you-put-into-firefox
[3] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/
[4] https://www.theverge.com/news/622080/mozilla-revising-firefox-terms-of-use-data
[5] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/
100% Bull (Score:2, Interesting)
> "We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible," Mozilla explained Wednesday in a clarification a recent Terms of Use update. "Without it, we couldn't use information typed into Firefox, for example.
100% Bullshit. The "basic functionality" is to take me to the website I typed into the URL Bar and render the page. To say you need a "license" for that is beyond stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
Considering I have said the same thing about browsers, take me to the website, and yet keep getting messages the site is insecure, or it's missing a cert, or some other BS, it doesn't seem to be working.
If I type in an address the browser should take me to that site. That's it. No warnings, no hedging, no nothing. Take. Me. To. The. Site. That is your only job. How about do it.
Re: (Score:2)
The certificate check doesn't need any external service. Checking for known scam sites can be done in different ways, either involving loading large dictionaries / bloom filters or potentially leaking a proof of interest. They do not require further data access though.
Focus on Firefox & Thunderbird (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla should stick to it's core business and focus on FireFox & Thunderbird. There is no reason to be wasting money on anything else.
Being a non-profit, their ONLY goal should be ensure the future survival of it's core products. Not trying to be another startup, chasing down fever dreams of AI
Not Reverted (Score:4, Interesting)
As [1]pointed out elsewhere [slashdot.org], this language also disappeared :
> 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.
AFAICT we just lost this clause to sleight of hand, because all headlines will say "Mozilla Backs Down" or whatever.
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23623333&cid=65201443
My choice for now: keep using Firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
The original ToS change was very unfortunate, and legitimately caused an outcry from our communities, with old timers threatening to move to something else. I seriously considered switching to Waterfox. Hopefully the question is resolved with this clarification. However the question remains of which gecko-based browser to use in case Firefox would take a wrong turn. Were cited: Palemoon, Zen Browser, Sea Monkey, Waterfox, Librewolf. I'd add GNU IceCat. Or, on the Blink side, Brave was cited, and I'd add ungoogled-chromium, Bromite/Cromite, Vanadium/Mulch.
Personally I'd favour a customized Firefox patchset (Librewolf, Waterfox, IceCat) or configuration (Arkenfox) rather than a fork (Palemoon) because the state of the world is that it is right now impossible for a small group of contributors to follow the speed at which the standards need to be implemented. Palemoon can only remain very far away than a privacy focussed patchset over current Firefox.
However, after thinking it through, I decided I would nevertheless continue using Firefox, based on this opinion:
> I think their conclusion for not recommending does have some merit. Using Librewolf adds an additional layer of trust, not only to not be malicious (which I don’t suspect they are) but to also be able to adequately fulfill what they set out to do reliably. -- [1]https://slrpnk.net/post/173706... [slrpnk.net] (summarizing [2]https://discuss.privacyguides.... [privacyguides.net] )
Even if Mozilla starts moving into the same shady space as the others, their evil potential is relatively limited to what we know of e.g. Microsoft. The risk is much larger when switching to a small operation, e.g. Librewolf/Waterfox/Palemoon, where a bad actor could relatively easily infiltrate the team and take over critical parts of code review and push really nefarious code. Like what happened to the recent case of Disney engineer who downloaded code from a compromised github repo which stole session cookies and credentials [3]https://it.slashdot.org/commen... [slashdot.org]
With a browser a critical piece software on our computers, I personally decided to keep using Firefox; I already do mission-critical tasks on the official Firefox Mozilla binary without any add-ons, and my regular browsing on a distro packaged build with more personalization. Maybe I will also sandbox the whole browser (bubblewrap, firejail).
[1] https://slrpnk.net/post/17370625
[2] https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/librewolf-browser-firefox-fork/148/12
[3] https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23621529&cid=65196827
"Operate Firefox"? (Score:3)
I'm...deeply puzzled...on why any license or data would be needed to 'operate firefox'.
This isn't a thin client where I'm asking Mozilla to process stuff for me and return the results; it's a local binary doing stuff in response to local inputs and the remote hosts I point it at. No licensing involved with me processing my own data; and any chatter with remote hosts would be subject to their terns. Unless they are in fact tapping the line why are they talking as though using firefox makes Mozilla Inc. a party to the data transfer?
Still calling shenanigans - moved to LibreWolf (Score:2)
The new board is doing legal dances that as far as I can tell still allows them full access to use and sell my data as they see fit.
It was trivial to move to LibreWolf which contains no such legalese. Near as I can tell so far I'm losing nothing Firefox offered except their corporate EULA.
All of it? (Score:2)
Is the "We will never sell your data" promise back? Or are the user rights still weakened?
Re: (Score:2)
And "Does not give the ownership" is not worth much. You cannot give away the ownership (but an exclusive license if you want to) and they didn't claim that before. They claimed a license, so they can use your stuff.
what info is event sent? (Score:2)
"Without it, we couldn't use information typed into Firefox" what? why would i ever consent to that? use information i typed? wtf? are you crazy? Can anyone elaborate what exactly is sent to Mozilla? i get search and sync, but what else?