Mozilla, the parent company of Firefox, just changed its Firefox FAQ. The old Firefox FAQ included a promise that Mozilla would never sell a user’s personal data. But Mozilla removed that promise in its new FAQ.
The Old FAQ
If we go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and enter the URL for the Firefox FAQ and select a January date, we can pull up an archived version of the Firefox FAQ.
Looking at it we see that it has the following promise:
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.
Not only does Mozilla say that it won’t sell your personal data, but it also says it never will, Mozilla even had a link with the words “That’s a promise”.
The Promise Didn’t Last
That promise didn’t last! Mozilla removed that phrase from its current Firefox FAQ. In its Data Privacy FAQ, it added this phrase:
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).
Mozilla says it doesn’t sell your personal data, but if you use the “LEGAL” definition of selling, they do sell your personal data. Mozilla puts “a lot of work” into making sure the personal data it sells is anonymized (which third parties have ways to de-anonymize).
The Bottom Line
Mozilla just removed a promise that they will not sell your personal Firefox data. Technically, Mozilla is selling your personal data but they are anonymizing it in certain ways. As users, we now need to trust the third-party buyers of the data that they will not de-anonymize it. Do you use Firefox? What do you think about Mozilla’s removal of their promise? Let us know in the comments.
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All about the benjamins. Personally, I think it sucks. Will probably start using a different browser.
Hi Larry, Yes! BTW, I’ve been using Brave for years.
Is this like a tRump promise? Back to Brave (based in the USA, ugh?) or Tor I go, I guess…
Hey Terry, enjoy Brave or Tor or whatever you decide to use if you decide to switch away from Firefox.
Thanks for the heads-up John. What personal information could be sold/disclosed? Know of worse case programs which do more harm and people still use them. Our privacy is being constantly chiseled away. Not sure how many read the Privacy information. Personally still have faith using Firefox, Mindblower!
Hi Mindblower, Firefox has the ability to collect the content and advertising shown in your browser, and your interactions with that content and advertising, including videos you watched, and web pages you’ve visited. They are saying that they anonymize the data and sell it. I would guess that the 3rd parties they sell to decide what kind of info they want to buy. But, 3rd parties have ways to de-anonymize the data if they want to.
Well John, if that’s the data they sell, I do believe I am protected. Use a VPN when viewing YouTube videos, and block ads except for sites DCT. Might use Brave a bit more, but again thanks for keeping us well informed. Mindblower!
Hey Mindblower,
The VPN would not protect you from Firefox knowing what sites you have visited. A VPN would protect you from your ISP knowing what sites you visited (and will also encrypt your DNS activity). Brave is a more privacy focused browser than Firefox.
John. Gulp! So do browsers have content access to our emails as well, Mindblower!
Technically, if you access the email through a browser, they have access to it. I’m not saying they are looking at it though