Firefox

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Tos copy updates - "Does Firefox sell your personal data?" removed from FAQ (github.com)

submitted 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This is a link to a diff of Firefox where the FAQ are stored in a structured way. In the diff it can be seen that the question "Does Firefox sell your personal data?" has been removed:

        {  
            "@type": "Question",  
            "name": "Does Firefox sell your personal data?",  
            "acceptedAnswer": {  
                "@type": "Answer",  
                "text": "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. "  
            }  
        },

People in the comments are asking if the definition of the word "neven" has been changed or what's going on.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Mozilla FakeSpot promises that the following "is Sold and/or Shared [with] Advertising partners":

"browsing history, search history"
"Geolocation data"
"a profile about a consumer"

Instead of aligning FakeSpot (which they bought in 2023) with their pro-privacy stance, it seems they are realigning their stance with their actual activity.

Brownie points for being honest, I guess.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago

Damn, time to look for new browsers

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Fakespot and Firefox are different products. They should stay that way.

It's fine that Fakespot needs to collect some data from users to do the thing it does, and probably necessary for it to monetize that data to have a sustainable funding model. I don't want it to sell a profile about me to advertising partners, so I don't use it.

Firefox can function as a web browser without transferring any information about me off my local machine except that which I explicitly tell it to send to specific websites.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I swear that, at one point, the Mozilla websites said that every company under the MoCo banner would uphold the same ethical values as the Foundation, its parent, espoused. If that's still the case, it seems Mozilla is still sort of upholding their consistency, but it's eroding the base product.

Personally, I don't see any reason to sell any of that data to advertisement corporations. Not browsing history, not physical location, not compiled profiles of its users! (Up until December 2024, Mozilla's other in-house AI product, Orbit, also gave FakeSpot a shout-out for unknown reasons...)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 hours ago

I don’t see any reason to sell any of that data to advertisement corporations

You don't see the reason? I see the reason. I just don't like it.

I liked Mozilla better when it was a pure nonprofit narrowly focused on its core competency.