Firefox Revokes Commitment to Protect Personal Data: What You Need to Know and How to Stay Calm

Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, recently made some changes to its privacy promises, sparking concern among users. Previously, their FAQ clearly stated that they would never sell users’ personal data. An archived version from January reads:

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.

This promise has been removed in the current FAQ. Additionally, the data privacy FAQ used to say that “Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.” This statement has changed.

Mozilla now explains that they are stepping back from absolute promises about data selling. This is due to legal reasons, as some places have broad definitions of what “selling” data means:

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).

However, Mozilla didn’t specify which laws they are referring to.

Users React: “Not acceptable”

Many users took to GitHub and Reddit to voice their concerns. One major issue raised was the new terms of use, stating that when users upload information through Firefox, they grant Mozilla a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to use that info to enhance user experience.