Firefox maker Mozilla deleted a promise to never sell its users’ personal data and is trying to assure worried users that its approach to privacy hasn’t fundamentally changed. Until recently, a Firefox FAQ promised that the browser maker never has and never will sell its users’ personal data. An archived version from January 30 says:
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.
That promise is removed from the current version. There’s also a notable change in a data privacy FAQ that used to say, “Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.”
The data privacy FAQ now explains that Mozilla is no longer making blanket promises about not selling data because some legal jurisdictions define “sale” in a very broad way:
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 didn’t say which legal jurisdictions have these broad definitions.
I see it said agian and agian. because its true. Firefox is one of, if not the best of the mainstream browsers. (Not included its many forks) but Mozilla is a horrible caretaker of it. Mozilla does not focus on firefox and they dont care/believe in it nearly as much as its users or devs who fork it.
The motivations of a company are extremely important, and has Mozilla does not care for a lightweight, good, privacy centric browser, the enshitification will and has corrupt firefox.
It’s only a matter of time until it is as bad as chromium or flat out joins it.
Considering how critical a browser is these days.
I’m surprised there isn’t a very popular Open-Source one that everyone is using.
It’s because it’s hard to maintain a browser. There’s lots of protocols and engines and other moving pieces; I remember when web pages would render in Netscape but not Internet Explorer, for example.
We take for granted how seamless and ubiquitous the internet is, but there were lots of headaches as internet devs decided to adopt or include different users (or not).
And now, it would take a lot of effort and market upset to convince the capitalist overlords to include something new in their dev stack. The barrier to entry is monumentally high, so most people don’t bother to try inventing something better.
Some people are trying: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird
Wasn’t there some stuff about the ladybird devs not too long ago?
I just hope that project doesn’t end up being the Voat or Parler of browsers.
It’s a browser, not a platform. Having a bunch of groypers use it doesn’t ruin the experience for everyone else so long as it retains good privacy features.
While I agree with this sentiment on the surface, using a privacy focused application that was built by folks who yield to cops as part of their identity doesn’t inspire long term viability in that space.
It’s the same reason I moved away from Proton when their CEO told us all where his values lie. It’s not outright backtracking on privacy promises but with so many comparable alternatives in this space, why chance it with the bootlickers?
Yeah, I have no doubt you are correct. It’s one of those situations that if it were that easy, it would already be done.
It looks as if it’s hard to maintain a browser by design by making overly complicated HTML/CSS/Javascript/etc standards.
It makes me want to spend more time using the Gemini protocol.
Yeah, the standards of the internet are just piled on top of each other. Rendering code and whatnot is the easy part. Keeping up with the standards is the hard part (or so I have read).
Ive seen a few foss options but they generally lack certain features alot of people have gotten used to either because they cant implement them or it was committed for privacy/resource reasons.
So it becomes a balance of features vs privacy and right now fire fox has been a good enough balance there hasn’t been enough backing for a “good” feature rich foss that less computer adept users can easily install and migrate to.
Do Firefox forks allow us to avoid this enshittification or will they also be affected as well?
Yes, they allow full avoidance of any potential data collection through the browser, if they remove the collection features.
Mozilla would need to change their licensing terms to prevent forks from being able to remove things like that, and forks could just use the last version of the code before the license change and just backport new features.
Also Firefox is fully open source, unlike chromium which relies on a closed source binary blob in the middle. Some chromium forks have replaced the binary blob with open source code, but the default is for chromium forks to have a nice chunk in them controlled by google that no one can deeply inveatigate what it does. Firefox does not have this issue.
Mozilla can’t hide any potential data collection in Firefox due to the full open source nature (unlike chrome forks). They also can’t stop fork devs from stripping out any data collection functions. And as of today, they have not introduced any data collection that is not supremely anonymized, and they have not introduced any data collection that cannot be opted out of through the browser settings (and about:config).
In theory yes. But remember that Chrome is based on Chromium which is open source. But nobody has stepped up to do a viable hard fork to take power away from Google.
Maintaining a modern browser is a huge undertaking which is why almost nobody except Google, Mozilla, and Apple are really even trying. Even Microsoft threw in the towel.
The more bad stuff is added to Firefox the harder it will be for any forks to keep up removing it while also keeping it up to date. Will anyone step up?
There are at least two projects trying. Ladybird is one and will make a splash next year. In addition, since the Servo project was adopted by the Linux Foundation it is again under active development.
Because it hasn’t been needed. Alternatives like vivaldi and brave do make some changes to allow you to disable Google services. Ungoogled chromium is also a thing.
For all the hate, Google has mostly done fine beyond a few boneheaded decisions.
Is librewolf a good alternative? Most plugins seem compatible
I don’t know why they haven’t floated the idea of some kind of subscription or one-time payment (though a subscription might be just as infuriating). I’m not above paying for software and if it was a reasonable price, say $10 one-time, I’d much prefer that over it becoming the new Chrome.
Could you imagine the enshittification cries if they did this. “Mozilla to add subscription model to your browser”.
They have other products that have subscriptions you can pay for to support the company.
Instead of using Mullvad, use Mozilla VPN (it is literally exactly the same, you just pay Mozilla not Mullvad)
If you’re a web developer, Subscribe to MDN Plus.
Hate spam? Firefox Relay.
I learned more about their paid services from this one post than in the last 5 years of using their browser. Not that their browser should be constantly inundating you with ads for their other services but dang.
The problem is that none of this revenue or profit is guaranteed to go to Firefox. It goes to Mozilla and they decide how it is spent. It could go to pocket, a new overpaid CEO, or a hundred other ways that don’t benefit FOSS.
I would have donated hundreds of dollars to Firefox development already, if that were possible, but that is not an option. The only option is Mozilla, and they may spend that on anything else but Firefox.
Also Mozilla VPN is shit. It is a severely limited implementation of Mullvad, and they even enshittified their browser for it. You can only have per container VPN’s (a major gain for user privacy) if you pay for Mozilla VPN… They’ve already chosen to harm their users privacy for profit. This is the kind of shit that guarantees I will never donate as long as a for profit entity has control over Firefox, and its features.
I’m pretty sure a $10 one time payment won’t pay for the costs of development that Firefox requires.
Open source only works when there are people motivated enough and skilled enough to maintain something for free or when the organization managing it has another source of income.
They’re already dying. This would be throwing themselves in the grave. People aren’t used to paying for browsers
I don’t believe Mozilla doesn’t have the best interests of the browser at heart, I believe that they do think their browser is the their number one product.
But that’s the problem. It’s free software, going up against a juggernaut whose browser is just another side project to drive engagement with their core product.
A juggernaut who just so happens to be one of Mozilla’s primary source of income. All it will take is a little bit of legislation somewhere in the world to make that deal less attractive and Mozilla could be dead in the water. And it will take all of those forks with it, paving the way for Google to become the true web Hegemony.
Mozilla needs to diversify to ensure they can continue to provide stewardship to the browser.
But trying to make money in 2025 just seems to summon the enshittification brigade.
Free software is not free. Someone has to make it.
Have they considered just asking for money? Also getting rid of the giant holes that they keep pouring their money into?
A lot of people love Firefox, and would happily donate. They could also trim a lot of fat at Mozilla quite easily.
Chromium is bad only in your head. It’s a fucking rendering engine with different incarnations. How can this be bad? And no, FF is not “the best”, otherwise it wouldn’t have the shitty market share it actually has.
Ah silly us.
We spent a decade hating on IE, it’s slowness, poor support for any standards, plugins that fuck your shit up, etc.
But it was obviously the best because it had that huge market share.
It’s even worse. You spent several years worshipping a misguided Corp. making a mediocre browser fir laughable reasons and you have been f*cked in the end.
“Worshipping”? What online spaces have you been frequenting??
Found the t3.gg enjoyer
I don’t know what is that.
Mozilla needs to understand that I don’t want it to have my data to sell or not in the first place.
That’s the thing that bothers me about all these companies now. My data is my data, not theirs. They shouldn’t even be allowed to collect it, let alone sell it or give it to anyone who wants it.
Nahhh, trust them, bro. People working on other things with the same product name as their company name were great people. That should be endorsement enough.
Wait. They have this ‘open source’ flag. If they wave it about - oooh, pretty - does that help?
Just uncheck all telemetry and never use an account. Its open source so it should be verifiable that data collection is turned off.
Oh for fuck’s sake! List of Firefox alternatives:
Windows/Linux/MacOS:
Android:
- Iron Fox github
- DuckDuckGo? f-droid
- FOSS Browser? https://codeberg.org/Gaukler_Faun/FOSS_Browser
iOS: ??
There’s also Servo by the Linux Foundation and Ladybird.
These are actual different browsers and engines all together compared to FF spin-offs.
I’m still super waiting for Lady Bird. I cannot wait to give it a try, but it’s gonna be like 2026 before they start rolling out builds for general use.
I’m excited for these to mature but they are still developing and would not recommend them for regular use
I’m giving Waterfox a test drive and like it so far. No issues.
I’m considering adding it to the alternatives list I posted. Can anybody else validate their privacy policy? Seemd ok but I’m a bit iffy regarding their use of telemetry. Maybe I’m overthinking it
No telemetry, allegedly.
Edit: There does still appear to be some, although it’s less than FF and it’s anonymized. I ended up going with Fennec just in case.
No User Tracking
We don’t collect personal information from users. We don’t track users. We don’t sell user data. We have no affiliation with any advertising companies.
Ironfox for Android?
Too new to recommend, IMO.
Added
I read somewhere that Librewolf is not recommended because they are a small team and slow to patch vulnerabilities / integrate security fixes from Firefox.
Is it true? (Sincere question)
Valid concern as I use their browser often. From their FAQ (link):
Brave is fine with for iOS with build in adblocker
Also Zen Browser
Added
Isn’t Librewolf tied to Firefox’ TOS?
No.
I’m checking right now, but it’s kind of unclear. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like Librewolf picks and chooses what to use from Firefox, yeah?
I’m also looking into the TOR browser.
All the forks pick and choose but features can be enabled or disabled, or removed entirely. Telemetry is always removed, whereas DRM or cookie settings can be turned off by default.
If you want some kind of Tor browser without all the Tor thing, Mullvad has its fork too from Tor (like the fixed display as a rectangle to prevent fingerprinting).
It’s free and open-source but it’s probably a bit annoying to use daily and it’s barebones: https://mullvad.net/en/browser
Mullvad needs to make an android version.
The thing about open-source software is that if you fork the software, then your fork can have its own rules.
You can even make the fork of the software fully closed source except for the open source software that you used to originally develop it.
You can sell open source software as if it were proprietary.
You can basically do anything you want with it as long as you respect the original source from the code that you have taken.
Once the software is no longer in Mozilla’s hands, then Mozilla’s portion of the license no longer applies.
That’s what I thought, but there are many people in this very thread saying the opposite. From what I read on Librewolf’s site, it seems to back up what you are saying.
What @bizarroland@fedia.io is saying is not correct, because it depends on the license. For example, GPL software requires that ALL the source code that uses some GPL code to be released as GPL too. That’s why some people avoid GPL at all costs.
Other licenses, such as LGPL allow you to link your proprietary code with open source parts and only release the code of the open source part (along with any modifications you did to it).
So what license does librewolf have?
promises don’t count if you delete them. everyone knows that
“If I put my wedding ring in my pocket, it’s not cheating…”
This kind of thinking shouldn’t be acceptable from a legal standpoint. Yet the courts do nothing…
In the US at least, the courts are seemingly bought out.
Sad it’s even acceptable.
I’m about to get my tattoo removed wtf
Just get “RIP” tattooed under it.
If it’s really you…
Wtf?
It is lmfao it was my first one 🥲
Would you like to see my tattoo of Tom from MySpace I got on my left testicle? Hey man, in 2005 it seemed like MySpace Tom would be in our lives forever. Why WOULDN’T you get his profile picture inked into your body with needles on the most painful part of your body? It made sense in 2005!
But noooooooooo! Facebook had to be a dick. And now whenever I pull my pants down in front of some hot 20 year old with daddy issues, she’s like “Is that your uncle or something?”
Meanwhile Tom sold my MySpace for hundreds of millions of dollars, and now does photography of bikini models on his yacht! While I have to explain who Tom is to Gen Z…
sigh
Honestly at this point, I wouldn’t be embarrassed having a tattoo of Tom from MySpace.
For a second I thought Tom did photography and bikini models on his yacht. We’ll he probably does, but I just read your comment wrong.
I mean, he’s worth hundreds of millions, on a yacht that he owns with hotties in bikinis hoping to get discovered as their own ticket to fame from the photos being taken of their oiled up sexy bodies.
The sex was implied.
You’re a good friend
Edit: also the style shows through, not everyone can get a watercolor vibe without the water
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)
So in other words we sell your data and get paid for it, and some countries won’t let us lie about it.
Yeah, I think it would be very fucking easy to say “we don’t sell your data” by any definition… Literally all you need to do is not fucking sell people’s data
They can’t just promise they “never will” and then get rid of it. People who used the service under the original agreement should still be able to claim that benefit since it was promising to never sell it.
This is why I am an advocate for publicly-funded Internet, like how people fund NPR and BBC.
I don’t blame Firefox because at the end of the day, they are still a business and need to cover the operating cost. I blame the system that we’re in and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative.
and the elites will tell you there is no other alternative
That’s like blaming wolves for eating you when it’s winter, they are hungry and you are in the forest
We are still in a capitalistic. Money still prevails.
What operating costs? You could argue there are development costs, but development is driven by the community. The only operating costs are forced stalking behavior.
I can’t remember the details, but if I remember correctly, Firefox used to get a lot of cut from hosting Google’s ad. But Google cut that deal and Firefox lost 90% of its revenue as a result. That’s why I can’t blame Firefox for doing what they are doing at the moment.
Us users want services for free but we can’t have our cake and eat them in the current paradigm of the internet. That’s why we have to think outside the box and I advocate for a publicly funded internet. It is the same model as NPR and BBC and that is why they have little to no ads unlike private broadcasters. The same principle should be applied to the Internet if we want to keep using it for free.
I don’t understand what you mean by Firefox’s development is driven by the community? It’s not a community contributed open source software; my friend worka on Firefox and is a Mozilla employee.
I remember a time when Google wrote “Don’t be evil” all over their stuff…
dude i worked in a buncha different college libraries around the time of google’s initial ascension. Google slayed. it was awesome, in 2000.
now? google is a drippy search engine.
There’s a phrase that is still very close to that in some company statement still, I sort of view it as pointless to talk about. We know they’re evil by their actions, and they were evil before they removed it in sure. If the statement is what matters, it’s still basically there, just not the motto. It’s just not worth worrying or talking about. They do so much worse shit. A friend of mine was recently let go after protesting about their response to the genocide in Gaza.
That clarification is not making me calm
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,
Fuck off Mozilla. Maybe don’t pay CEOs millions and don’t force things like Pocket and LLMs on users if you want to be commercially viable, I’d gladly pay for Firefox that doesn’t make me dodge new features and services. But it would be a donation towards development of a browser that is commons, since you have no product to sell, only GPL’d code that’s mine as much as yours.
You have NO fucking leverage, Firefox is better than Chrome, but there’s projects that will gladly repackage your code with no telemetry whatsoever for any platform while you’re brainstorming just the right amount of monetization to prevent the frog from jumping.
It’s kind of sad I don’t use Chrome and therefore never think of it, while I like and use Firefox and am therefore constantly at odds with Mozilla.
Mozilla posted an update:
Update at 10:20 pm ET: Mozilla has since announced a change to the license language to address user complaints. It now says, “You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.”
Why they need users ? If they operate Firefox by themselves why they not start paying for power usage for hosting Firefox on my machine.
Son of a bitch I just got back into Firefox.
Get in loser, we’re going to librewolf apparently. Fuck me I’ve reached the age of seeing all the things I like die. I don’t even remember a time I didn’t use Firefox. God damn it
Try LibreWolf then
Is there any android port?
Not at the moment, but the Librewolf folks recommend Ironfox.
Interesting. How’s water fox?
Switched yesterday, feeling right at home so far.
Me too. Practically 0 difference, works for me!
None of Librefox Waterfox or Ironfox are on Fdroid. So Fennec (aka: Firefox) is still the only FOSS option on Fdroid
This whole thing does not matter if you are living in the US anyway become of the Third-party doctrine that holds that people who voluntarily give information to third parties have "no reasonable expectation of privacy in that information.
Gahhhh this is horrible
I spent some time switching to Librewolf this morning but at the end of the day, it having Firefox as the upstream means it’s all fragile and tenuous anyway
Switched to librewolf the other day, and it’s great
Been using it all day now and yeah, it’s very smooth sailing. The tweaks I made basically involved removing fingerprinting protection, which I saw people online deride as “defeating the entire purpose of Librewolf”. Well, not true anymore.
I just want manifest v3 and to not have to consent to ToS agreements implicitly allowing some suspicious organisation to harvest and sell literally any keypress I enter into the browser, which has become the de facto cross platform way to do almost everything.
How do the fingerprinting protection things defeat the purpose of librewolf? Seems like an unambiguously good thing for privacy… Or does it conflict with another feature?
Oh, sorry for the confusion. The posts online I’ve found about the subject of disabling fingerprinting protection in Librewolf are full of people who state that doing so “defeats the purpose of Librewolf”. Which probably WAS true before Mozilla’s recent changes, since the sole reason Librewolf had to exist was to be a hardened version of Firefox.
That’s no longer the case since Librewolf has a new purpose (now that Mozilla thinks they own the right to sell all your data): a Firefox fork without Mozilla.
I disabled a lot of that stuff because it’s kind of annoying for usability, e.g. browser won’t render anything at more than 60fps. I know this is a trade off and I’m cool with that. I have other tools and strategies in place to protect my privacy.
I installed Librewolf despite being a furry that loves foxes and it legit fixed every Firefox issue I had. But they were all local issues.
Nice, what issues?
TBH I was tempted to try IceCat first because of the name (I’m not a furry but I do think cats are cool). But no official binaries and I’m already running enough custom-compiled software, thing I need least is for my browser to be like that too haha
just uninstall firefox
Yep, I have Chrome and its a better browser anyways /s
chrome is a better browser because it’s compliant
please note; fuck chrome and fuck google
edit: the point is better and freer internet. if your name is musk then you have shown your trash.
Its compliant because they write fekin standards (or at least have significant sway about what becomes standard). It’s almost like monopolies are bad ^^
