this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
775 points (97.2% liked)

Technology

63746 readers
3617 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
775
Mozilla is already revising its new Firefox terms to clarify how it handles user data (www.theverge.com)
submitted 1 day ago by Xatolos@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
172 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

AI Summary:

Overview:

  • Mozilla is updating its new Terms of Use for Firefox due to criticism over unclear language about user data.
  • Original terms seemed to give Mozilla broad ownership of user data, causing concern.
  • Updated terms emphasize limited scope of data interaction, stating Mozilla only needs rights necessary to operate Firefox.
  • Mozilla acknowledges confusion and aims to clarify their intent to make Firefox work without owning user content.
  • Company explains they don't make blanket claims of "never selling data" due to evolving legal definitions and obligations.
  • Mozilla collects and shares some data with partners to keep Firefox commercially viable, but ensures data is anonymized or shared in aggregate.
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] LittleRatInALittleHat@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago (2 children)

A FOSS browser has and never will require collecting user data.

This should not happen at all.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 46 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Certain features certainly could be considered as doing that, such as:

  • Firefox sync
  • crash reporting
  • add-on store

I certainly want those. And then there are others that I don't want:

  • Pocket
  • telemetry
  • studies
  • AI

My understanding is that this change is primarily motivated by a recent law change in California that has a pretty broad definition of "selling user data" and this is less likely to be a fundamental change in how Mozilla operates. However, let's see what they come back with.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

That second list should also include

  • Ads

Because ads in the search bar results are one of the things Mozilla cited as precipitating the need for ToS.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago

Is that a pocket thing? Because I disable pocket and changed the default search engine.

If they laid out precisely which features result in data collection by Mozilla and how to disable them, I'd be pretty happy with it. However, if they're unilaterally collecting data and not really separating concerns, then I'll need to find something else.

[–] verdigris@lemmy.ml 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

What do you think a browser does?

[–] Don_alForno@feddit.org 8 points 10 hours ago

The browser manufacturer doesn't need a license to my inputs to process them and give them to the server it's supposed to give them to. If you type a text in Libre office, does it ask you for a license to the text in order to save it?