this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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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 An archived version from January 30 says: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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[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 55 points 15 hours ago (1 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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[–] afk_strats@lemmy.world 64 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (29 children)

Oh for fuck's sake! List of Firefox alternatives:

Windows/Linux/MacOS:

Android:

iOS: ??

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 8 points 11 hours ago

Floorp?

No User Tracking

We don't collect personal information from users. We don't track users. We don't sell user data. We have no affiliation with any advertising companies.

[–] moe90@feddit.nl 1 points 7 hours ago

Brave is fine with for iOS with build in adblocker

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 20 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

There’s also Servo by the Linux Foundation and Ladybird.

These are actual different browsers and engines all together compared to FF spin-offs.

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 16 points 15 hours ago

I'm still super waiting for Lady Bird. I cannot wait to give it a try, but it's gonna be like 2026 before they start rolling out builds for general use.

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[–] ded@lemy.lol 5 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

Librewolf is mostly a autoconfig file for Firefox (which is a Firefox feature).

https://codeberg.org/librewolf/settings/raw/branch/master/librewolf.cfg

I doubt implementation of terms will be optional.

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[–] wizzim@infosec.pub 12 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

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)

[–] afk_strats@lemmy.world 12 points 12 hours ago

Valid concern as I use their browser often. From their FAQ (link):

1000007404

[–] TheGiantKorean@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I'm giving Waterfox a test drive and like it so far. No issues.

[–] afk_strats@lemmy.world 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] TheGiantKorean@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

No telemetry, allegedly.

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[–] parmesan@lemmy.world 11 points 12 hours ago (7 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.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world -3 points 5 hours ago

To generalise, just as Reddit is the neolib centrist hivemind and Facebook is the conservative boomer hivemind, Lemmy is some overlap of privacy/techy/ultrapolitical groups - so whenever you get this kind of news that is ultimately pretty mild and uncontroversial to most you get lots of Lemmings buttons pushed and what seems like an oversized reaction in the comments.

Is Firefox perfect? No. Is it still the best available mainstream browser option? Yes. And if the small groups that presently use it walk away and its tiny market share (~5%) declines to a point where Firefox becomes insolvent - well then browsers will be just a two-horse race between Google (Chromium) and Apple (WebKit). Every web spec and page will be beholden to the desires of those companies - I'm sure the same Lemmings will be complaining about that too, and by then it will be too late to realize what they've lost.

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[–] Gloria@sh.itjust.works 10 points 15 hours ago
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