Mozilla's new Terms of Use causes confusion among Firefox users
Mozilla has updated the Terms of Use for Firefox, alongside an update to its Privacy Notice. This move comes as the organization wants to provide transparency about its commitment to user privacy.
Among the new stipulations, users are required to grant Mozilla a "nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license" to use information entered through the browser. This vague terminology has triggered alarm bells, as it leaves ambiguous the nature of the data Mozilla may access, potentially including personal information, saved passwords, or browsing history.
Here is the clause in question:
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.
Users were puzzled by the new terms, as they believed Mozilla could modify these Terms of Use at any time, while they continue to use the browser. Some called it reminiscent of practices commonly associated with big tech companies, starkly contrasting with the ideals of openness that Mozilla professes to uphold. These accusations were further compounded by Mozilla's right to reserve the ability to terminate user access to Firefox at its discretion. Several people in the community wanted the organization to consider revising its recent Terms of Use to avoid losing the confidence of its user base altogether.
However, the situation is not as alarming as some users might have perceived it. An updated statement from Mozilla clarified the issue. The organization insists that Firefox remains open-source software, these new terms only apply to the official version of the browser, arguably establishing a disconnect between the source code and user experience.
Here's what it said:
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.
The new policy merely allows Firefox to function as it always did, to help users visit web pages, allow the browser permission to store your personal information such as form data, or to access a file that you wanted to upload to a website.
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“These accusations were further compounded by Mozilla’s right to reserve the ability to terminate user access to Firefox at its discretion.”
Clearly Firefox is spying on its users if they
This article (probably written with AI using Mozilla’s blog as input) minimizes the problem.
Mozilla bought an advertising company.
Mozilla deleted the statement to not sell your data, as noted in an earlier comment.
Mozilla must be spying on its users with their statement
” Mozilla’s right to reserve the ability to terminate user access to Firefox at its discretion.”
How would they know who to terminate, if they weren’t spying on you?
I’ve always used Firefox as my main browser, but now I’m considering switching.
There’s always Floorp which is a Japanese browser which includes a translator for whichever language you choose. https://floorp.app/en
I used to use it myself on Windows 8.1, but then they stopped support that OS. But I’m just adding the final touches to Windows 11 22h2 and might start using it again given the changes at Mozilla.
Last but not least, apparently Donald Trump’s decision to gut the U.S. government science and technology grants which Mozilla benefited from may yet play a (negative) role in Firefox’s survival.
@ Hrolf,
You can change telemtry settings in about:config. Type “Telemetry” (without quotes) in the filter at the top and then use the pen on the right hand side to change true to false (or vice versa as appropriate). The new settings are saved immediately.
As regards saving passwords don’t use that option and use an open source password manager like Keepass instead. https://keepass.info/help/v2/setup.html
In addition, subscribe to a trustworthy VPN like Mullvad: https://mullvad.net/en
I install Firefox when I’m offline. I change what’s needed via about:config and install uBlock Origin.
I use sane DNS settings, I use a sane hosts manager. I say Firefox servers GOODBYE
BUT the browser, and the forks, are still useful to me.
Their CEO is a corrupt ___. Their Mozilla Foundation, always begging for money, is a front for the extreme left agenda. Mozilla has not cared about it’s users for a very long time.
@ina
Exactly. Firefox does not promote your favorites sites like stormfront or dailystormer. Instead they have Amazon Ebay Home Depot and Google on their default start page. Who uses those websites? WOKE!
Another reason not to use firefox along with the telemetry you cannot avoid.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/mozilla-does-not-respect-user-requests-to-stop-tracking-telemetry-data/
There is no longer any reason to stay on this dying browser
For those who don’t want to read entire rant. He hates Firefox, Youtubers, Preachers.
Why are you defending this? why is that you Mozilla fanboys can’t just be objective and actually do the same you do with other companies? stop being hypocrites… use the same for any company.
There is literally NO reason why a browser that is installed in your computer will require this type of text in their ToS. The only reason they need this is because they want to be ‘legally ready’ for whenever they need it.
This sounds exactly like when Google removed the “don’t be evil”….
In fact, it’s not just this text about giving rights and permissions to Mozilla for whatever, but also, how they removed the parts when they talk about ‘not selling data’.
Stop being dumb and defending these type of BS, it’s obvious why they are doing it, and why they need this type of ToS with some awkward lines full of ‘legal advices’ from a lawyer.
Why aren’t you talking about the commit, the whole thing, not just this piece of text in the ToS?
Look at everything they changed:
https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e
yeah, not suspicious when they removed this exact line:
“@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. ”
So now they don’t promise they won’t sell it and it will be a matter of time if necessary?
The excuse is they need these changes for upcoming version, well, sounds dumb excuse.
But I know it is asking too much from Mozilla fanboys to use their brain and actually understand who gives them money and if that Google money is gone, nobody is going to rush and make a new search deal with them and they need to get money somehow, and guess how? oh yeah… it MIGHT be by selling users data for AI training and all that.
I mean, it’s not like they are selling anything at the moment, we won’t know that, but it is silly to pretend you are not taking the risk by trusting these weirdos and how they don’t care about Firefox but about the money they can make through virtue signaling their braindead ideologies.
So, work at Google do you?
Heaven forbid someone challenges statements or views made in an article.
So, work at Mozilla do you?
Mature, aren’t you? Your massive reply can’t be seen as anything but the views of a Google shill. Also “fanboys” give it all away. Grow up.
Your are not mature and labelling People for truth they are telling
I will never use Firefox again.this doesn’t mean I am going to use Google kid
I used Firefox from start not because it was fast because it was not selling any kind of data .but now Firefox is finished for me.
Nothing will change the perception of the Mozilla zombies here and especially on r/firefox. To them the company will always remain the plucky tiny privacy crusading rebel against evil megacorps, that absolutely totally needs your donations to survive.
People saying that Firefox respects your privacy and is a more private browser than the rest is in my opinion a deception. Firefox and Mozilla continue to exist only because of the deal with Google to have it as the default search engine. Google also keeps Mozilla afloat so it’s not accused of being a monopoly. I am also inclined to believe that the data from Firefox users is also being sold to Google for more funding under the table and Firefox users just vehemently don’t want to accept it or even think about it because it makes them feel bad.
So I think Firefox will keep losing face and relevance and the Manifest V2 vs V3 change won’t bring it any relevance. And stunts like this with the TOS only shows sheds light on one of the many flaws of Firefox that Firefox fans refuse to acknowledge, because it makes their browser even less credible and for whatever reason it really hurts them.
I’m not a fan of Blink, Chromium, Brave or anything like that, I’m just being realistic – that’s the only rendering engine that’s worth using right now, it has limitations and Chromium-based browsers are extremely boring and limited, but they just work, while Firefox becomes less and less relevant.
The only future I see for a successful Firefox is a complete rewrite from scratch or migration to the Blink rendering engine.
I’ve heard Google is no longer paying Mozilla.
Yes it is, because there is a valid, legally binding contract.
How long this contract will hold (because of the antitrust court ruling) is a different thing.
Google appealed the verdict and we had a change of US administration, so it depends to be seen, what comes out of it.
But as of now: Mozilla still gains the major chunk of its income from Google.
How long it will continue like this, is something to be seen.
Other browsers like Vivaldi get handouts from search engines. All your other points are garbage opinions. Only you care about what you think. An ecosystem with one browser engine would not be a good thing at all.
@ihateverybody
Prove to me with facts why my points are garbage opinions. You can’t.
It means you said nothing and are just unhappy with the truth.
I don’t want one ecosystem, Blink is just the best right now. I would want there to be a viable alternative to Blink, but so far there isn’t one. And Firefox is by no means an alternative. It’s a dying project and the only ones to blame are the ones in charge – Mozilla. Who are dishonest and have been stealing and selling their users’ data for years, they only publicly admitted it now.
The Firefox fans are the ones giving it the worst reputation possible, because they are radicalized and detached from reality, repeating the same tripe over and over – Chrome is bad, monopoly is bad, we will use Firefox until the end. There need to be efforts made to create a new browser with its own rendering engine and Firefox needs to be left to disappear finally.
I was a Firefox user from 2007 until 2010 and I liked it a lot, it was the best way to browse the internet, but Firefox was slow and bloated. Then Chrome came and revolutionized browsing with a browser that was fast and compatible. Now Firefox is still bloated, Chrome is also very bloated, only the hardware is more powerful so it’s less noticeable.
There needs to be a browser that comes completely stripped down of all but the most baseline features, it only needs to include a built-in content and tracker blocking where users can add their own filters, as well as support for extensions. All the features that Chrome and Firefox provide as built-in, be it VPN, AI garbage or page translate and others, should be presented to the user as optional extensions upon first launch and hosted on the browser’s extension store. None of that needs to be built-in the browser making it more bloated.
The browser needs to be like Linux – you have complete freedom to uninstall parts of it that you don’t want.
Shouldn’t TOS be open and transparent and yet Mozilla new TOS brings more questions? A company that has at least on the surface claimed transparency seems to create more murkiness when it makes changes. The only thing Firefox has left is keeping its users that value privacy and being open about it. Given Firefox is now a niche browser will a slowing dwindling market share. I am not sure why Mozilla see’s a need to ruffle feathers of what users it has left.
Simply to not get sued, which can (in the US) be quite costly. Avoiding such nasty things is part of the job of the corporate layers, which is one reason why all the T&Cs/ToS look and sound the same (independent of the corporation being for- or non-profi), because they all have to avoid the same legal trapdoors.
+1
I can smell the nasty whiff of ‘AI’ behind this latest PR failure.
Mozilla seemingly want to make it crystal clear that they have a license to use all our manually entered data, for whatever purposes they like, limited only by whatever they commit to in their Privacy Policy.
Unlike other companies, Mozilla may promise to obfuscate, depersonalize that data. But they still want to use it as training data for all the ‘AI’ malarkey they intend to throw at us, seemingly like it or not, in the near term future.
That seems to be the crux of this change: force users to agree to divulging their data to Mozilla, apparently with no choice to opt out.
The possible real motivation here is potentially down to Mozilla’s jumping on the ‘AI’ bandwagon with too much enthusiasm, too soon. Tripping over over their own feet in the process. Firefox already contains ‘AI’. Meanwhile lawsuits and fallout from the ‘AI’ rush to pump all their LLMs with whatever data they can find, is now reaching fever point. So Mozilla’s lawyers have clearly got wobbly knees having realised they’ve screwed up by not asking Firefox users to sign away their rights – give Mozilla a license to use our data – before ‘AI’ was built into Firefox and foisted upon users as just one of the potpourri of changes (known as “updates”) slipped through with every (security .. and more!) ‘update’ foisted upon regular users monthly.
Now, they’re rushing to fix this mistake / cover their arses before they join the growing list of companies who have been named as defendants in lawsuits already.
Trying to mask this change as just another move to protect users is typical of recent convoluted efforts from Mozilla’s dubious PR dept.
Instead, they should be more transparent. Anyone who reads tech news is aware that lawsuits and protests are flying around all over the world against the use of data for LLM (‘AI’) ingestion (‘training’). Mozilla has been no more capable of ignoring the rush towards so-called ‘AI’ than any other company. Just like all the others, manifesto or not, Mozilla failed to ask their users to agree to a license to use their data before doing exactly that.
Next thing you know, Mozilla is scrambling to correct this mistake in the light of the legal vulnerability it increasingly appears to have exposed them to.
I’m not one to jump on the reactionary hysteria bandwagon against every breathe Mozilla takes. That’s the same PooTuber ‘content’ mentality that is causing the confusion because Mozilla’s PR dept is twisting itself inside out trying to write releases that defend against such inane mentalities. However, it would seem that Mozilla’s PR dept does need to recognize this problem and stop trying to write press releases that defend against the “keyboard nutters” of this world.
Simply stating the reality of each situation or topic, that a press release attempts to reference, would be the best way to write your press releases in future.
Instead Mozilla press releases are being written in a tone that is sanctimonious whilst obfuscating away, from the real topic / situation at hand, by citing their oft-deferred-to manifesto. In this, Mozilla press releases are reminiscent of obsessed preachers speaking in tongues when they really should just be straight up honest with people.