Mozilla's Updated ToS: We Own All Info You Put Into Firefox 122
New submitter SharkByte writes: Mozilla just updated its Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for Firefox with a very disturbing "You Give Mozilla Certain Rights and Permissions" clause:
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.
H/T to reader agristin as well, who also wrote about this.
Scandalous (Score:5, Insightful)
A real pity because I always liked Firefox.
Re: Scandalous (Score:3)
I'm like "what the hell, Mozilla???"
But then, which non-Blink/Chromium/WebKit browser wiki I use?
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You might try Vivaldi or Opera.
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I like Vivaldi. Comes with a pretty good ad-blocker out of the box. Works on YouTube, but sadly for for Slashdot. For that I use the brave browser.
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You can click on the SSL lock, select 'site settings' and disable javascript to get rid of ads on slashdot.
Re: Scandalous (Score:2)
Those still fall under the categorias I mentioned
Re: Scandalous (Score:2)
Vivaldi isn't Chinese
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Indeed. AC moron claims bullshit. What else is new?
Re: Scandalous (Score:4, Informative)
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Yep. There are choices. Unless you need peak performance (For web-browsing? Serioyusly?) there are quite a few options.
Waterfox? (Score:2)
Waterfox (never had heard of it before) recently posted about this [waterfox.net] - might be an alternative (until their own exit strategy?)
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WaterFox will be a good alternative unless/until development on Firefox slows down or ceases from lack of support. Mozilla is probably committing suicide with this policy statement. WaterFox relies on Mozilla for core browser updates and puts their own polish on the final product.
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You can still use Seamonkey
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I've just switched to Waterfox and so far it's pretty much indistinguishable.
Only caveat is for whatever reason they don't offer import from Firefox of all browsers. But if you are on Windows, copy your Mozilla Firefox profile over to Waterfox and set it as the default it picks it up without issue. Assume that would be the same for other OSs.
Re: Scandalous (Score:2)
If Linux was like Mozilla, Linus would've been fired ages ago.
Re: Scandalous (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scandalous (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be nice if the software we use every day could be just useful product that works, rather than an ongoing war like the one in Ukraine.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The roadmap is clear: if Mozilla does not back down on this, and there's no efficient way to prevent the data collection, all Linux distributions should remove Firefox from their repositories and Windows should flag Firefox as malware,
Re:Scandalous (Score:5, Interesting)
Of many forms of unerring suicide, it makes you wonder why they chose this one to end their era.
Goodbye, Firefox. You had loyal fans until you were pulled out of every repository in the FOSS space.
WTF were you thinking?
Re:Scandalous (Score:4, Interesting)
The roadmap is clear: if Mozilla does not back down on this, and there's no efficient way to prevent the data collection, all Linux distributions should remove Firefox from their repositories and Windows should flag Firefox as malware,
This has to be a mistake. As a long-time firefox user I trust Mozilla to correct their mistake quickly, with an explanation. Don't break my trust Mozilla.
It's been a bad week for trust. First NATO and now this. Plus its Friday so one can only imagine more Bad News being announced tonight before the weekend starts.
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You do realize Mozilla acquired an ad-tech company a couple of years back, right? One started by 2 former Meta executives? They forced a default opt-in to data collection for it in Firefox 128 last year (you can disable it, but they hid the option midway through the long settings page)
It's simply the next stage of enshittification. Except in this case, Mozilla really doesn't have much runway left since most of their users are the hardcore Firefox users. The ones who really care about stuff like this.
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> Plus its Friday so one can only imagine more Bad News being announced tonight before the weekend starts.
You seen the Trump-Zelensky shitshow yet?
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Microsoft doesn't flag chrome or any other privacy invading software as malware, because if they did, they'll be forced to label themselves the same way.
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they'll be forced to label themselves the same way.
Don't be ridiculous. Both Google and Microsoft (and Mozilla, apparently) have the same M.O.: unnecessary, overreaching, unilateral, anti-consumer data collection is okay when WE do it.
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If this is true that's one thing but when it's not possible to disable it is a good reason to look for another browser.
Current link including the text effective February 25: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/... [mozilla.org]
Archived link February 9 without the text: https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
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It's worse than the summary. The new licence also mentions that they can sell your data. They will attempt to anonymize it, but we know how ineffective that tends to be.
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Oh, they can? Good. Makes this illegal in the EU. They need to do a lot more than just the TOS or an EULA and they need to make it opt-in.
Re: Scandalous (Score:2)
License? Then Firefox is not free software anymore. The Debian distro, for example, will have to exclude Firefox from their "main" package set and put it in "non-free" per their DFSG policy.
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Doesn't Debian already replace Firefox with IceWeasel, the same thing just no Mozilla branding?
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They reached an agreement with Mozilla and changed it back quite a while ago. Currently the Firefox in their repos is blessed by Mozilla and generally the latest version is the repo within 24 hours of Mozilla releasing it.
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Thanks, I didn't know the history of it.
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Might not apply to quite a few Linux distros.
> Mozilla grants you a personal, non-exclusive license to install and use the “Executable Code" version of the Firefox web browser, which is the ready-to-run version of Firefox from an authorized source that you can open and use right away.
Linux distros typically compile the Executable themselves, so unless the distro has explicit blessing from Mozilla, these ToS shouldn't apply. At least that's my reading, and I'm pretty sure I never agreed to any ToS w
Deadend (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Deadend (Score:4, Interesting)
Some time ago, I took a look at the Pale Moon project [palemoon.org], which is a fork of FF. Maybe I'll take a second look.
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Pale Moon isn't great, to be honest. They insist on sticking with the old XUL based add-on system, so the whole browser has to be single threaded and slow. It's also a huge security issue, because as well as making it impossible to sandbox parts of the browser like FF and Chrome do, it means that every add-on is also a potential security vulnerability as well because it runs in the browser context.
LibreWolf is a fork of modern FF, with a few tweaks to the default config and any kind of telemetry or data col
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Waterfox is another option. Trying it out now and so far it's indistinguishable.
Moving your data over isn't user friendly though. Basically had to manually copy the Mozilla profile into Waterfox directory and then set that as the default profile.
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No, it won't. Most users will glance at it, click OK or close the tab, and move on.
People claimed that Chrome use would plummet when they announced the move to Manifest 3. That's underway, and I don't think Chrome's market share has meaningfully moved.
This means (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"They have a way to look at all the data you send through the browser"
That way is called "being a web browser".
How could a web browser work without access to the data you're sending or getting back?
Re:This means (Score:4, Informative)
How could a web browser work without access to the data you're sending or getting back?
By not sending said data to a third party's server wholly unrelated to the two talking.
I wonder what the Tor project will do (Score:5, Interesting)
Because that sounds very much like a planned interface to spy on all users.
Tale as old as time (Score:2)
Re:Tale as old as time (Score:5, Funny)
I had nothing to do with this mess.
UK Online Safety Act (Score:4, Informative)
It seems ridiculous and invasive on the face of it but I'm guessing Mozilla's lawyers are looking at the UK Online Safety Act, similar bills introduced into US state legislatures with a non-zero chance of enactment, and talk in the US Congress of repealing Section 230 and telling their executives that the operation of the browser - which by nature does see and pass all the information the user exchanges to/from the rest of the world - could be construed as being an accessory to violation of those laws and upcoming laws. A more extreme version of photosharing sites needing some sort of license to your work to be able to display it.
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That's what I was thinking too.
It doesn't help that ToS documents are written in 'legalese' which means they always use awkward and annoying language. Hopefully someone will learn from the uproar and use plain language instead. Like:
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I suspect this is more to do with hoovering content for their push into AI.
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The correct way to address that is to move your company to different jurisdiction.
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I'm guessing Mozilla's lawyers are looking at the UK Online Safety Act
It may also have to do with the EU's Data Act, [europa.eu] which essentially means you own all data you create, and need to give permission for companies to use it.
well then.. (Score:4, Funny)
excuse me, i seem to have encountered an urgent task to uninstall Firefox. brb.
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What's your suggested alternative? Falkon is the best that comes to mind for me.
Zen Browser (Score:1)
Firefox: Chrome and Edge say "welcome"! (Score:3)
And the enshittification of user computing continues unabated...
Storm in a teacup (Score:3, Informative)
Before everyone goes ballistic, I think this is just sloppy/terrible wording rather than something nefarious. For a reasoned analysis, see this [taggart-tech.com].
Re:Storm in a teacup (Score:5, Insightful)
You might think so, but they explicitly removed this:
That kinda sums it up...
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Yes. Instead of an explicit promise not to do something they can't legally do, now you have to rely on them to just not do it.
What makes you think they can't legally do it?
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I also read the FF Privacy Policy and FF Privacy Notice, a combined total of just under 9000 words. I've worked the last 20 years with and for lawyers, and survived. Weasel words or Weasel Clauses is a big part of what lawyers do. You say "We protect privacy" then spend 1000 words putting clauses an
The end of an era? (Score:3, Insightful)
clickbait (Score:5, Insightful)
The text quoted from the license doesn't mean what you say in the headline.
It's not "ownership", it's a limited license for a limited purpose.
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The limited purpose being monetization.
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The text quoted from the license doesn't mean what you say in the headline.
It's not "ownership", it's a limited license for a limited purpose.
Which, ironically, is what you get from any software company when you buy their product.
Re: clickbait (Score:1)
This.
It's probably some dipshit lawyer got ahold of it and thought "wait, the user MUST EXPLICITLY ALLOW Firefox to post the image when she clicks the submit button".
I've seen this elsewhere: you grant(ed, back when I used it) Twitter a non-exclusive license to your tweets so they can post and show them to the world. You're probably granting /. such a licence to your posts.
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Not seeing much in the way of limitations there. Let's get my lawyer to interpret "navigate, experience, and interact with"... hmmm.. I think that covers just about everything, don't you?
Let's split hairs here: what exactly is "help?"
This is all subject to extremely broad interpretations, the opposite of "limited"
Alternatives (Score:2)
Tabs I have open from yesterday are Librewolf and Floorp - both Firefox downstreams that are open source and privacy-preserving.
Judging only by their issues page it seems like Floorp is further along.
Re: Alternatives (Score:1)
FireDragon from Garuda.
Re: (Score:1)
HINT: Do not upload creative content (Score:2)
Do not upload creative content through Firefox after this change. Not that I typically upload through a browser anyway, but some folks upload songs (Soundcloud and the like), upload fiction they've worked on, and digital paintings or pictures of other artwork. This most likely gives them license to train whatever AI they're planning on spinning up with your hard work. They did just mention a moment ago that they were planning on adding AI to their future focuses.
Seems everything surrounding the web is turni
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That's not what the ToS are about. What do you think what shitstorm they would get, if they really send a copy of anything you upload to themselves? Of course they are not doing that.
But they allow themselves to do different other stuff they deem more legitimate. For example they may think now that your telemetry data can now be sold by them. Or they can use some "ad attribution" data for their advertising company.
Mozilla posted an update to this, just FYI (Score:5, Informative)
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Then they might want to clarify that in the Tos of what they are using it for.
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The license wording hints that they want to use it for AI.
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"It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice." IS NOT "It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything."
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We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.
The first part is pure bullshit, the second part is hilarious. I suggest you read their "privacy note", which starts with "we can't do bad things, unless it's specified in there" and then goes on specifying it in there.
I'm also curious why a web browser privacy "note" have to mention AI, online review checking, anonymization of user data, exfiltration of navigation data outside the scope of the active website, exfiltration of partial search query outside the scope of the search engine, etc.
If anything, thei
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The main question is, why a software should have ToS. A software has a license, and that's it. ToS are required for services, but as a Firefox user I don't need any Mozilla services.
No accident (Score:2)
nobody in corporate America with lawyers makes such mistakes. Somebody deliberately DID intend exactly what they said.
These are the folks that named, shamed, and FIRED Brendan Eich over his PERSONAL donation of $1000 to a political cause they did not like. [don't go off on a tangent on this in response, I'm making a point about their ability/willingness to be accountable] They can name, shame, and FIRE who ever did THIS if it's indeed an "error" and they do not like it. Lawyers can write clearly if and when
good luck mozilla (Score:3)
This is ridiculous (Score:2)
Mozilla is supposed to be the champion of data privacy. Why in the world would they put this into their clause? This literally means that they can take data from your account as well as passwords and use them indiscriminately. I'm cancelling my mozilla account and switching browsers and you should too.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean because they don't have telemetry and don't run experiments on their users? Oh wait ...
How to disable telemetry (Score:1)
(posting as a/c because I've modded up several posts)
https://www.howtogeek.com/5579... [howtogeek.com]
about:preferences#privacy and disable everything in "Firefox Data Collection and Use". All I've needed to do so far here is turn of the "daily ping"
about:config and search for "telemetry". Disable anything that looks suspicious - there's a list in the above link.
I Turned off "bhrPing.enabled", "toolkit.telemetry.firstShutdownPing.enabled", etc.
"telemetry.toolkit.enabled" is locked on - this seems to be because I build nig
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The article is just another bunch of copy&paste pref.js lines the authors probably don't understand themselves.
They for example recommend to set "devtools.onboarding.telemetry.logged" to "false". This setting stores, if devtools telemetry was already sent (true) so it is not sent again. By changing it to false, you send the telemetry data a second time. // Only ping telemetry once per profile.
Have a look at the code:
const alreadyLoggedPref = "devtools.onboarding.telemetry.lo
Turn off all datacollection (Score:2)
You can do this in Settings->Privacy and Security->Firefox Data Collection and Use.
You can also turn off a similar setting if you use a mozilla user account.
Make them pay
Re: Turn off all datacollection (Score:2)
All your base are belong us. (Score:2)
Try another browser.
Brave, DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi, etc.
Re: (Score:1)
Does Firefox sell your personal data? (Score:5, Informative)
GitHub repo [github.com]
So regardless of the legalese & its interpretation, this kinda sums up what they want to do...
Re: Does Firefox sell your personal data? (Score:2)
Now THAT's the buried lede in this story.
As it's in the GitHub diff, it's apparently true.
Why not include Mozillas answer? (Score:3)
Mozilla answered this two days ago. One may not agree, but reasonably I think it should have been included.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/pr... [mozilla.org]
UPDATE: We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.
We’re introducing a Terms of Use for Firefox for the first time, along with an updated Privacy Notice.
Why now? Although we’ve historically relied on our open source license for Firefox and public commitments to you, we are building in a much different technology landscape today. We want to make these commitments abundantly clear and accessible.
While for most companies these are pretty standard legal documents, at Mozilla we look at things differently. We lay out our principles in our Manifesto:
Your security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.
You deserve the ability to shape the internet and your own experiences on it — including how your data is used.
We believe that practicing transparency creates accountability and trust.
Firefox will always continue to add new features, improve existing ones, and test new ideas. We remain dedicated to making Firefox open source, but we believe that doing so along with an official Terms of Use will give you more transparency over your rights and permissions as you use Firefox. And actually asking you to acknowledge it is an important step, so we’re making it a part of the standard product experience starting in early March for new users and later this year for existing ones.
In addition to the Terms of Use, we are providing a more detailed explanation of our data practices in our updated Privacy Notice. We tried to make these easy to read and understand — there shouldn’t be any surprises in how we operate or how our product works.
We have always prioritized user privacy and will continue to do so. We use data to make Firefox functional and sustainable, improve your experience, and keep you safe. Some optional Firefox features or services may require us to collect additional data to make them work, and when they do, your privacy remains our priority. We intend to be clear about what data we collect and how we use it.
Finally, you are in control. We’ve set responsible defaults that you can review during onboarding or adjust in your settings at any time: These simple, yet powerful tools let you manage your data the way you want.
You deserve that choice, and we hope all technology companies will start to provide it. It’s standard operating procedure for us.
Whenever you use a search engine (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
but it used to be you / the browser / and the site you are visiting.
now it is you / the browser / browser vendor / cdn network / the site you are visiting / a twitter bug / a facebook bug / 20 advertisement bugs / several unnamed data collection brokers / third party content from timbuktu / China within the internet infrastructure / FBI / and your neighbor's little dog too.
- privacy and individuality are dead, and you watched it happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Sternly Worded Form sent (Score:2)
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/... [mozilla.org]
Mitigating Control (Score:3)
I've been using my firewalls as a form of mitigating control to keep Firefox from leaking anything. Once I download Firefox and get my extensions loaded, I block everything mozilla and log all other requests. I'm using host based firewalls (little snitch), and the firewall functions in my ubiquiti router. They can try to collect data but won't be able to exfiltrate it.
Headline is incorrect (Score:2)
The actual terms, quoted in the summary, say that they have the right to use the data you put into FireFox, to carry out your intentions with your use of FireFox. It does not give them "ownership" of what you enter into FireFox.
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.
This clause seems appropriate and reasonable to me, if a bit clumsily worded.
No source (Score:2)
Um, it's a limited use case (Score:2)
to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
"As you indicate." IOW, reasonable person here, if I type something into a box, Firefox has to be able to use that in the way that I specify.
The rest of it, "royalty free," "worldwide," etc. is just boilerplate indemnifying Mozilla from litigious psychos. Bonus, it looks like the clause was written by Chat-GPT.
The important language here is "non-exclusive" and "as you indicate" which says that they have set a reasonable expectation to respect your intent, and you still retain rights for all other purposes y
Well Hell (Score:2)
I really liked Firefox.
Definitely not ok (Score:2)
Re:Open source (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
That's the problem. It was forked so long ago that most sites think it's an ancient version of Firefox and trip over their shoelaces.