Mozilla has just announced its first-ever Terms of Use for Firefox, accompanied by an updated Privacy Notice. Understandably, this update has already stirred some questions among Firefox users regarding potential privacy implications.
However, based on the information provided in Mozilla’s official announcement, there is no substantial reason for alarm. In fact, the new Terms of Use and Privacy Notice largely empower users by ensuring more transparency and control over the data collected.
A key point addressed in Mozilla’s update is the concern over licensing language. Some users worried that, by accepting these terms, they would be granting Mozilla ownership or extended rights to their data. The part that worries users the most is:
You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet. 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.
To dispel these concerns, Mozilla clarifies that this licensing provision is only intended to allow Firefox to function properly—for example, enabling the software to process and display what users type into the browser.
It does not mean the company gains ownership of anyone’s data or any broad right to use it. Rather, the data is used solely for functions described in the Privacy Notice, such as making Firefox more secure and user-friendly.
At the same time, the Mozilla Public License (MPL) remains in effect and continues to govern Firefox’s open-source code. In other words, while Mozilla introduces the new Terms of Use and an updated Privacy Notice for Firefox, the browser’s core code is still licensed under the MPL.
So, if you’re worried about the MPL going away or being replaced, you can rest easy.
In the coming weeks, new Firefox users will be prompted to acknowledge the Terms of Use and Privacy Notice during the initial setup process, while existing users can expect to see this acknowledgment prompt a bit later in the year.
For more information, see Mozilla’s announcement.
Disgusting!I home more people will fork it and clean it like they do for Chromium with the Thorium and Ungoogled-Chromium forks!Or at least contribute to LibreWolf!Too bad shitty Linux distros refuse to put LibreWolf in their repositories!
Mozilla single-handedly saved the web from Microsoft during the big Internet Explorer vs Firefox struggle. I appreciate and respect that. Now Google is dominant, and we need Firefox to help keep them in line. I continue to support Firefox and Thunderbird and I am willing to trust that Mozilla is doing this for a good reason.
microsoft was considered a monolpy but very little was done about it in my opinion after they appealed beyond allowing competitors software to be more integrated into the system. google is considered a monoply since it pays mozilla and apple and others to be the default search option. i’m not really sure if google handing out money to be the default option is such a bad thing when it helps fund other projects and you can still change the default. hopefully the government does not make things worse for all the projects that rely on the revenue. mozilla has wasted a lot of money over the years and apple never needed it in my opinion. if mozilla can no longer afford to fund there project in the future i guess they would do the same thing microsoft did and use chromium but make it there own with there own extension options or whatever. maybe google could be forced to break away from chrome.
Brave and Floorp… Here I come. Not going to be put under their thumb under a “Term of Use” agreement.
Well, that’s awful. Guess it’s time to move to Brave
brave is great once you get it setup how you want it. brave does not need money from google and they have there own search engine with there simple ai summary above the searches. I use to not like brave search but it has gotten a lot better or good enough and it is all i use anymore for search.
i use brave and firefox i like always having 2 browsers. i have moved away for firefox in past only to reinstall it after trying a fork. i used librewolf for a while but did not like that it was easier to fingerprint with its wonky way of doing some things like pretending to be on windows even though it is easily detected that you are not and other things that just added to the fingerprint. maybe i will move to another chromium broswer in future to replace firefox but not today.
i used the flatpak version of librewolf and it could be a week later sometimes before receiving the next update and when looking at what was being fixed security wise some of those vulnerabilities could let someone do all kinds of nasty things easily to your pc and many where already being exploited and because of that i rather have security updates as fast as possible.
brave seems to always get updated quickly
One more reason to finally ditch Firefox on my 5 laptops!
that is a lot of laptops for 1 person j/k.
Here’s the breakdown for my 5 Linux laptops:
1 – Production laptop1 – Testing laptop1 – My wife’s laptop1 – LR media laptop (TV)1 – Brm media laptop (TV)
The right number of laptops to make life interesting!
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Slippery slope. Mozilla has zero credibility so thank goodness for open source forks like Librewolf