Mozilla is introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

Context please.

So far I have seen nothing that implies any changes to Firefox, that were not already implied before.

I seems, the more Transparent you are, the more people are going to dislike what you are attempting to explain, or do.

Where is the Transparency in the other browsers people are so, so ready to jump ship to in response to these changes and additions.

These changes and additions are clearly in response to changes to Laws in various Countries, and it seems to me some of those are related to EU privacy regulations, and possibly the Political situation in the US.

1 Like

From my perspective its mainly a self-covering from litigation.
Mozilla is based in the US.

The ā€˜I cannot upload or download sex/violence’ seems to be taken from sections that pertain to mozilla services and not, like, you cannot watch violent movies through firefox.

2 Likes

Hi everyone, let’s add Lebrewolf to the official Manjaro repositories, is this possible?
So Brave is a good browser, we already met on this topic once, don’t we?(I can’t find something on this forum topic) Vivaldi I wouldn’t even consider, closed code, a lot of difficulties, and it’s also slow and slow.

2 Likes

Just wondering if my Manjaro news notifier is going to pop up an alert every time a web browser, or any other popular internet-connected app in the repos, updates their user policies?

Or is Mozilla being singled out for attention for some reason? I just can’t recall ever seeing something like this appearing in my notifications before - was the intention to cause some sort of panic in the Manjaro user community?

3 Likes

I copied that passage right from Firefox’s Acceptable Use Policy about not being able to download or upload graphic depictions of sexuality or violence.

1 Like

i feel like the space is shrinking more more
soon free from tracking and open source will become scarce.

i second the request to add Librewolf to the repositories for persons to which it would feel more natural to switch to in case of need.
i don’t see myself using Brave or vivaldi.

4 Likes

Even ā€œgovernmentsā€ sell their citizens’ personal information to companies and other countries for financial gain. It is a country with personal data protection laws, mind you. Dont ask me which country. So even laws can not protect you. A web browser collecting anonymous info on my browsing habits, i can live with that (if that is all there is). They can not be as evil as the rich and powerful who are sitting in the big chairs.

Ladybird isn’t ready for beta, it’s still in pre-alpha.

2 Likes

@ben75 @linub @Sam_Fisher :point_up_2:

@cscs Exactly.

4 Likes

Why would they remove the promise to never sell your data unless they plan to sell it?

2 Likes

I’m guessing, because legally they can’t make that promise, due to the technicalities of various laws in various International Domains, given that they are already sharing anonymised Data with Google, for one, and getting something in return (I’d hazard a guess that, that already in the eyes of some Domains constitutes a trade - or sale).

4 Likes

No, actually it appears the problem is that their statement must apply worldwide… and in some countries the law is strange. The fact that they have deal to set Google default search, and that Google would sell your data, is vague enough that they can’t pass that claim globally.

It’s a legal issue, not a trust issue. No need to get paranoid about this…

But remember, Mozilla is based in the country that now has a bipolar orange Baby dictator in charge… so they do have to be careful, and that’s likely the main issue here.

I guess the main question is - why is this applied to Firefox, when it is Mozilla… perhaps some things specific to VPN are included (and VPN agreements include many things not included with Browser agreements - like illegal content etc).

3 Likes

You can say ā€˜I extracted these words to take them out of context’.

The context of not being able to download or upload graphic depictions of sexuality or violence is a VPN related byte which is included in all agreements for all VPN services - it’s nothing new at all.

This is the definition of someone taking a few words out of contexts and reposting them to support an alternative, subversive, or otherwise negative agenda.

Why no 'blanket claim' that they will never sell your data

The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that ā€œWe never sell your dataā€ is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of ā€œsale of dataā€ is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines ā€œsaleā€ as the ā€œselling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third partyā€ in exchange for ā€œmonetaryā€ or ā€œother valuable consideration.ā€

Similar privacy laws exist in other US states, including in Virginia and Colorado. And that’s a good thing — Mozilla has long been a supporter of data privacy laws that empower people — but 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 ā€œselling data.ā€

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our Privacy Notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies

2 Likes

…As we begin small-scale tests of our first generative AI features in Firefox Nightly.

1 Like

As the mainainter of the server behind the maytray app, I totally agree, that should NOT be in the Manjaro feeds.
I was very surprised too to see such an announcement in an app that is about Manjaro news and updates.
@philm I hope this was just a mistake, but just to be sure: Please keep privacy policy news out of the main feeds.

2 Likes

It appeared in the matray app because it was posted in the forum category Notices.

2 Likes

I seems, the more Transparent you are, the more people are going to dislike what you are attempting to explain, or do.

The very problem is that they are not at all transparent, but that the whole text is so vague as to be meaningless, just like we’re used from the likes of Google and Microsoft.

I have no doubt that using Firefox is still an enormously better choice than Chrome or Brave or any of the others (even better than Vivaldi, and I’m somewhat partial to them). The problem is that removing clear and definitive statements like ā€œWe’ll never sell your dataā€ and instead saying things like "you grant us worldwide exlusive licence to do certain things with certain data as laid out in <link to huge sprawling document you'll never read> … sorry mate, it doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, and rightly so.

Phrases like ā€œwe are passionate about privacyā€ are almost meaningless these days, since Mark Zuckerberg has been using them for ages, and by now they are actually triggering me the other way: Why state something that cannot be tested or enforced when you could instead clearly say what you do or do not do with what data, when? Why mix up using the browser with using Mozilla services? Why remove the lines about not selling data, ever? It smells fishy, and it’s a communication style designed (By Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon… the likes) to obfuscate what’s actually going on. it is, in other words, lack of transparency.

I want to know what type of data Mozilla may use/collect/store etc., in which scenarios, and under what conditions:

  • On a fresh installation with no plugins and under default settings
  • With the least data-leaking settings (and which are those settings?
  • …and then separately what data Mozilla receives if I do use their services (Pocket, or a Mozilla account, their VPN…), for each service separately

Also: I wonder (and see no way to figure out!) whether Mozilla has just adopted Google’s and Microsoft’s habit of ignoring the difference between the organisation, the organisation’s servers and their software running on somebody else’s machine.
And that kind of crap is evil, even if your software collects no data at all because it makes it look as if everything I ever did on my own devices was already in the hands of whoever made the software I’m using.

Vivaldi’s terms of use and privacy policy sound much more user-friendly than Mozilla’s.

EDIT: I just tried to use Vivaldi. It crashed twice within an hour. I don’t like its GUI much either. For now, I will stay with Firefox but disable all data collection preferences.

I’ve got Vivaldi running here, no issues at all.
UI-wise, it requires a bit more ā€œinvestmentā€ to figure out its features, and then it shines.

The reason I don’t recommend it is that their financial model is still selling user’s attention, by preconfiguring search engines, bookmarks etc… and that means that they will sooner or later have no choice but to sell out their users, because it’s not the users who are paying their bills. Also, of course, Chromium is Google’s attempt to own the internet

Their reasoning sounds somewhat sensible to me, but here’s what I’m missing: Why no concrete example of some transaction that most people will agree is both completely harmless and very hard to avoid, which could be construed as ā€œselling informationā€? The description is still so abstract that I still can’t come up with any example myself where I would be okay with Mozilla doing something that counts as a ā€œsaleā€ under Californian law. Still worse: I have no flippin’ idea what data Mozilla (the organisation!) actually has about me. I am willing to bet that it’s much less than what Google had if I used Chrome for two days, and probably less than what Vivaldi would get if I used their browser as often as I use Firefox, but the point is: I am mostly in the dark, and these policies are getting vaguer and vaguer, until it becomes anyone’s guess.

Of all browser makers, Mozilla should be the one to care most about this trend, and the fact that they still partake in it is what makes me nervous. It means that I have no choice than to trust Mozilla and accept whatever they do or don’t do, without actually knowing what that even is.

FUD

3 Likes

I know very little about these issues but, if one wants to use something other than a chrome-based browser, is the GNU IceCat a good option? I know very little about the GNU also.

It sounds as though it’s supposed to be Firefox with the ā€œbadā€ stuff removed and the non-open-source components replaced.

1 Like

It’s a very good question, and I was contemplating the ramifications on account of IceCat earlier myself in that regard. It was indeed intended to avoid any kind of freedom-inhibiting measures that Mozilla introduced, including (but not limited to) the non-free branding. :thinking: