I've always supported Firefox and ignored all the telemetry changes issues, after all you can just disable them in about:config, but after this I think I'll switch to a fork. I installed zen browser, the only thing I want is syncing and extensions
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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Privacy
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"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)."
I happily switched to Zen on my desktop a while ago. Time to find a new mobile browser.
Firefox "never has and never will" sell your personal data was removed.
https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e
It was moved here, but there is no never will: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq
It seems like every company on the web is buying and selling my data. You’re probably no different.
Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.
Never trust them, they're still lying on their FAQ
Data collection still bugs me. Can I turn it off?
Yes. User control is one of our data privacy principles. We put that into practice in Firefox on our privacy settings page, which serves as a one-stop shop for anyone looking to take control of their privacy in Firefox. You can turn off data collection there.
You can't just turn off data collection by opt-out through this option :-/
Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“)
It's killing me x)
Search for firefox-tou.
The presence of that now magically removes mentions of privacy and not selling user-data in multiple places.
- <p>
- Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.
- </p>
+ {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}
+ <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>
+ {% else %}
+ <p>Firefox is independent and a part of the not-for-profit Mozilla, which fights for your online rights, keeps corporate powers in check and makes the internet accessible to everyone, everywhere. We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data. You’re in control over who sees your search and browsing history. All that and exceptional performance too.</p>
+ {% endif %}
Difference here is Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data.
- <h2 class="c-section-title">The best privacy</h2>
+ {% if switch('firefox-tou') %}
+ <h2 class="c-section-title">Always protected</h2>
+ {% else %}
+ <h2 class="c-section-title">The best privacy</h2>
+ {% endif %}
Pivoting from privacy to security in the tos.
- <li>
- <h2>{{ ftl('does-firefox-sell') }}</h2>
- <p>{{ ftl('nope-never-have', url=url('privacy')) }}</p>
- </li>
+ {% if not switch('firefox-tou') %}
+ <li>
+ <h2>{{ ftl('does-firefox-sell') }}</h2>
+ <p>{{ ftl('nope-never-have', url=url('privacy')) }}</p>
+ </li>
+ {% endif %}
As you mentioned they will apparently sell your data under tos.
Where does the tos apply and where the mpl now?
They would have removed all those mentions of privacy entirely if the mpl had no use anymore, wouldn't they?
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Does having a ToS mean that Firefox is no longer FOSS? Freedom 0 of FOSS is: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose". Isn't that violated if you can only use the software under the condition of accepting terms of service?
Arguably no. It's not "you may not use this if you don't agree." It's "the software does this and here is your warning."
Still incredibly fucked.
Firefox is FOSS, Mozilla's backend services are not.
I think they mean Mozilla services such as ai, sync, etc. The browser itself probably doesn't fall under it.
Mozilla updated their post at the top:
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.
Clarifying literally nothing.
"We couldn't use information typed into Firefox." Good. You don't get that information. My software, on my computer, does. Will some insane new law suggest Notepad spies on users by capturing their keystrokes? No? Then this aggressively vague bullshit is justifying a data-collection scheme. Metadata is still data.
We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible.
You have that! It's implied by provision when you distribute your software under eg.: GPL!
We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible
Gee whizz, like what? What "basic" functionality is missing that can only be solved with a ToS saying they're going to track how I use their browser?
Without it, we couldn't use information typed into Firefox
That's what I needed to see. So it's not missing basic functionality, they just want to make it legal to track your browser usage.
That's a nice disclaimer. They should clarify that in their privacy policy directly instead of just saying "oh that's not what we meant guys, pinky promise 😉"
They mean there stupid services such as sync and ai, but the idiots who wrote this should have clarified that this doesn't encompass the browser. They do require your data to provide those afterall.
The way it is worded is just bad they shoudl have specified services that need data like ai in the wording:
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.
Yeah, something like:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to provide the following services:
Then list the specific services.
If I don't use any of the services, they have no right to use any of my data.
Seriously Firefox include many services, specifying the TOS for the entire browser is stupid.
What is worse is that people are asking for clarification and there is no response from Mozilla:
https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e
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Mozilla and Firefox have been going downhill for quite some time now. I'm pretty surprised people are shocked by this.
Yeah, I'm in no way surprised by this, but still somehow deeply disappointed.
I am so tired of feeling like I have an adversarial relationship with everything in my life
It's because This Is The Bad Place
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Before everyone freaks out over "terms of use = Firefox bad now" (I'm citing the actual Terms of Use and Privacy Notice)
I'll add emphasis as needed.
You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet. 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 doesn't mean you're giving them a license to do whatever they want with your data, it means you're giving them the ability to use that data explicitly as you choose to navigate the web. (e.g. you use Firefox to make a post, they have to process those keystrokes through Firefox to send it to the server, and thus could require permission to do that in the form of having a license)
They explicitly have the license only to use the information in line "with your use of Firefox," and to "navigate, experience, and interact with online content." not to do whatever they want. They should have worded this better, but this isn't one of those "we own everything you ever put in your browser" kind of clauses.
If you give Mozilla any ideas, suggestions, or feedback about the Services, you give Mozilla permission to use them for free and without any additional obligations.
This is standard on basically every site, and kind of obvious. You shouldn't be able to say "you should do this thing," have them do it, and then say "actually I own the license to this and you have to pay me"
These Terms apply until either you or Mozilla decide to end them. You can choose to end them at any time for any reason by stopping your use of Firefox. Mozilla can suspend or end anyone’s access to Firefox at any time for any reason, including if Mozilla decides not to offer Firefox anymore. If we decide to suspend or end your access, we will try to notify you at the email address associated with your account or the next time you attempt to access your account.
Nothing requires you to stay in this contract after you stop using the services, and this is just reaffirming the fact that, yes, they can stop offering Firefox in the future if they simply can't sustain it, without somehow breaking contract. More legalese just to protect them from frivolous lawsuits.
Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.
You agree to indemnify and hold Mozilla and its affiliates harmless for any liability or claim from your use of Firefox, to the extent permitted by applicable law.
This basically just means "don't do crimes using our browser." Again, standard clause that basically everything has to make sure that nobody can claim in court that Firefox/Mozilla is liable for something a user did with their software.
To the extent permitted by applicable law, you agree that Mozilla will not be liable in any way for any inability to use Firefox or for any limitations of Firefox. Mozilla specifically disclaims the following: Indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or exemplary damages, direct or indirect damages for loss of goodwill, business interruption, lost profits, loss of data, or computer malfunction. Any liability for Mozilla under this agreement is limited to $500.
Standard liability clause, basically everything also has this.
And that's it. That's the terms of use. Nothing here is out of the ordinary, uncalled for, or unreasonable for them to have.
Now let's move on to the new Privacy Notice.
You have the option to use a third-party AI chatbot of your choice to help you with things like summarizing what you’re reading, writing and brainstorming ideas, subject to that provider’s terms of use and privacy notice.
If you choose to enable a chatbot in the sidebar and/or through a shortcut, Mozilla does not have access to your conversations or the underlying content you input into the selected chatbot. We do collect technical and interaction data on how this feature is used to help improve Firefox, such as how often each third-party chatbot provider is chosen, how often suggested prompts are used, and the length of selected text.
This just states that if you use the chatbots, you're subject to their policies, and also Mozilla will collect very light amounts of data to understand how often and to what degree the feature is used. The first part is functionally no different from saying "If you go to OpenAI's website and use ChatGPT, you'll be bound by their ToS." Yeah, of course you will, that's obvious.
Review Checker is a Firefox feature that helps you determine whether reviews are reliable when you shop online with sites like Amazon.com, BestBuy.com and Walmart.com. If you opt in to using Review Checker, Mozilla will process information about the website and the product identifier of the products you view using our privacy preserving technology called OHTTP. OHTTP combines encryption and a third party intermediary server, helping prevent Mozilla from linking you or your device to the products you have viewed. We also collect technical and interaction data on how this feature is used to help improve Firefox.
By opting in to using Review Checker you also agree to be shown product recommendations and sponsored content. If you do not want to receive product recommendations and sponsored content, you can opt out of this feature under Review Checker settings at any time.
Another optional feature that, if you choose to turn on and use yourself, will obviously have to collect data that is required for such a thing to work. It can't check reviews if it can't see the reviews on the website. As for the product recommendations and sponsored content, that's not desirable, but they do very clearly mention that you can just turn it off in settings.
You can install add-ons from addons.mozilla.org (“AMO”) or from the Firefox Add-ons Manager, which is accessible from the Firefox menu button in the toolbar. We process your search queries in the Add-ons Manager to be able to provide you with suggested add-ons. If you choose to install any add-ons, Firefox will process technical, location and settings data, and periodically connect with Mozilla’s servers to install and apply the correct updates to your add-ons. We also collect technical and interaction data on usage of add-ons, to help improve Firefox.
If you search on their site for extensions, they have to process your search, and if you need to install addons, they'll have to connect to Mozilla's servers and collect the relevant data to make sure the extensions are available where you are. Shocking. /s
Mozilla runs studies within Firefox and makes certain experimental features available through Firefox Labs to test different features and ideas before they’re made available to all Firefox users or become part of the core Firefox offering — this allows us to make more informed decisions about what our users want and need. This research uses technical, system performance, location, settings and interaction data.
We also need to process data to keep Firefox operational, improve features and performance, and identify, troubleshoot and diagnose issues. For this we use technical, location and settings data, as well as interaction and system performance data (such as number of tabs open, memory usage or the outcome of automated processes like updates). In the rare situations where the information needed also includes limited browsing data (e.g., Top Level Domain annotations for page-load performance monitoring), it will be transmitted using OHTTP; this helps prevent Mozilla from linking you or your device to the data collected for this purpose.
This has been around for a while already. If you choose to use beta features, then yeah, they'll collect some diagnostics. That's why it's in beta: to get data on if it's working properly.
Because maintaining the latest version of Firefox helps keep you safe against vulnerabilities, desktop versions of Firefox regularly connect to Mozilla’s servers (or another service that you used to install Firefox) to check for software updates; updates for Android and iOS versions of Firefox are managed by Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store, respectively.
We also process technical data and settings data to protect against malicious add-ons. In addition to these standard processes, we use Google’s Safe Browsing Service to protect you from malicious downloads and phishing attacks, and validate web page and technical data with Certificate Authorities. As part of our work to improve privacy and security for all internet users, we collect technical data via OHTTP, to better understand, prevent and defend against fingerprinting.
Checking for updates and providing malicious site blocking requires connecting to servers to download the updates and having a list to block bad sites. Again, very shocking. /s
And that's basically it for that.
I seriously don't understand the reactionary attitude so many people have towards things like this. Read the policies yourself, and you'll see that their explicit purpose is either:
- Legally clarifying things to protect Mozilla from legal liability they shouldn't have, and frivolous lawsuits.
- Making sure it's clear that to do certain things, they have to, y'know, process the data for that thing.
- Explaining where different features might rely on parties outside Mozilla.
None of this is abnormal.
The problem is that using vague language makes people suspect, because companies nowadays tend to move towards enshittification.
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Honestly you already start at paragraph 1 with a wrong premise and then go down from there. Allow me to point you to the very beginning, to your first emphasis:
You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox,
This doesn’t mean you’re giving them a license to do whatever they want with your data, it means you’re giving them the ability to use that data explicitly as you choose to navigate the web.
Here's the trick: they are not operating Firefox, we are. It's a system that runs locally and under our instruction on our devices. When I type something in the URL bar, or when I click Open File, or when I mouse over the screen, Mozilla doesn't have to do anything: everyhting happens locally. No data should be being transmitted or be processed over their systems: Firefox is not a remote desktop / "live service" application.
...Unless...
And there you have it. That's why those terms are here.
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None of this is abnormal.
Yes, it absolutely is. I do not say this lightly. While I'm not an attorney, I review FOSS licenses regularly for my personal projects and for work. Consider:
- Linux Mint uses GPL2
- LibreOffice uses MPL 2
- Countless, countless FOSS software all use free, open-source licenses
They all take user actions and user content. None of them have anything like this.
This is very worrying because each of these points can be refuted with the same quotes. I'll add my own emphasis:
You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet. 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.
If Mozilla wants to limit their use of my input, why the do I need to give them a full, non-exclusive license? This is the very language that LinkedIn, et al have used to train their LLMs and said that we all gave them permission to do so. While the letter of the law that may be true, we know that if we had the option to opt out, we would have.
This doesn’t mean you’re giving them a license to do whatever they want with your data, it means you’re giving them the ability to use that data explicitly as you choose to navigate the web.
I'm sorry but the license does not say that is the only way they will use this data. It's not explicit, like you claim. It's implicit. The explicit part is "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license". They say that it will be used to "help you navigate the internet" but what the does that mean?!
"Navigating the internet" does not require me to grant a license. Much of this would fall under fair use and to this day, it's fallen under fair use. And even if it did require a license, why have it be nonexclusive? Language that specifies the length of the license shall be limited to the amount of time necessary to make the connection to a website, provide the necessary services of a website, etc. would all that would be needed.
And this is even BEFORE we get into the whole reasoning of even needing a license. The only reason you need a license from anyone is if you plan on storing, transmitting, transferring, or otherwise utilizing a right protected under copyright law. The only reason why Mozilla could possibly need a license is if they plan on storing or processing your data outside of your device. Best case scenario: they are using your data to "speed up" connections by processing it through their servers. Worst case (and more likely scenario): they want the data to train AI.
These Terms apply until either you or Mozilla decide to end them. You can choose to end them at any time for any reason by stopping your use of Firefox. Mozilla can suspend or end anyone’s access to Firefox at any time for any reason, including if Mozilla decides not to offer Firefox anymore. If we decide to suspend or end your access, we will try to notify you at the email address associated with your account or the next time you attempt to access your account.
Nothing requires you to stay in this contract after you stop using the services, and this is just reaffirming the fact that, yes, they can stop offering Firefox in the future if they simply can’t sustain it, without somehow breaking contract. More legalese just to protect them from frivolous lawsuits.
While you are factually correct, Firefox is explicitly stating here that they have the right to terminate an individual's use of their browser, a freedom that was protected under the MPL.
Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.
This basically just means “don’t do crimes using our browser.” Again, standard clause that basically everything has to make sure that nobody can claim in court that Firefox/Mozilla is liable for something a user did with their software.
This part really made my brain itch so I had to dig deeper. This is worse than I initially thought: Mozilla is replacing the MPL as the governing license for their executable and replacing with their TOS.
I'm not sure how I can read their TOS as anything but "terms of use = Firefox bad now". You are losing your freedom under the MPL to use Firefox however you see fit. What concern does Mozilla have if I decide to use their browser for crimes? They aren't facilitating it and under the MPL, they were protected from it. Since the TOS is now replacing the MPL, introducing an "Acceptable Use Policy" no longer makes this FOSS. It makes it Source Available.
As an avid Firefox user for decades and a former supporter of the Mozilla Foundation, this is the last straw for me. I will not agree to use a browser where my data is going to be used by them without any exclusions.
I hope you are right and I'm wrong. But given the current landscape, Mozilla likely feels the pressure to "do something with AI" and we're their products. You can continue to use it, but I'm spending the weekend figuring out alternatives.
While you are factually correct, Firefox is explicitly stating here that they have the right to terminate an individual’s use of their browser, a freedom that was protected under the MPL.
Shit, just noticed this. This means Firefox stops being FOSS and can't any longer be distributed by several distros, right?
I wonder if Debian is going to restart Iceweasel...
I'm not 100% sure how Firefox gets included into distros (e.g. licensing, etc.).
I think it's worth me making a clarification on this because I was thinking about it early this morning.
Mozilla is making a similar distinction to their pre-built executable as Microsoft does with VS Code. Microsoft distributes VS Code binaries under a non-free (libre) license whereas their source code is licensed under MIT. VSCodium fills that gap by taking their source code and compiling it under MIT. The two versions are more-or-less the same and extensions work without any compatibility issues.
I suspect in the near future, we'll have something similar for Firefox where someone forks the project and keeps up with the upstream, releasing libre versions of it without the TOS.
So to clarify: Firefox source code is still fully FOSS under their MPL2 license. Firefox executable is source available.
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Fuck your Ai and your license agreement. Enshittification stops at no company.
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