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Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#651

Post by nullc »

gf000 wrote: post #379
lukan wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Actions speak louder than words. " Indeed. Talking about privacy and having spyware and ads activated by default and now this probably to legally safeguard this and more speak a very clear language. The only reason to still use FF is indeed, that the competition is worse in this regard. But that will change, once Ladybird becomes mature enough.

Pinging a Mozilla server to see if there is an active and usable internet connection is not spyware, let's stop with these useless accusations. It's a product which optionally does accept some help from the users, e.g. opt-in error reports, which is a huge help. Certain people consider that a blatant violation of their rights for some reason, and they would apparently rather see the last bastion of a non-chrome inter…

If all of these 'phone home' features are as benign as you say-- why isn't there a clear, exposed, and stable user setting to disable them?

At best there is maze of about:config which incompletely prevent firefox from phoning home and are regularly undermined by new additions.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#652

Post by belorn »

apalerwuss wrote: post #511

The problem I have with these kinds of hot-takes is that they often don't tell the full story, and it's seemingly for the purpose of generating rage. For some inexplicable reason, this guy truncates the paragraph from the Terms of Use, repackaging the information without a key part of the final sentence: "....to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox."…

Im fully on board that people should try to include or link as much of a story they can so that I can form my own opinion. There are way too many times that I read a reasonable take, then you read the original source, only to find that the reasonable take is completely off base.

In this case I don't have the reaction, but I will agree that in general its a good idea to include more rather than less.

The redacted part here looks to be a GDPR boilerplate for consent. GDRP require consent to be specific. In order to do so the lawyers of Mozilla seems to have used industry standard phrasing to comply with the law, such as "to help you navigate, enhance experience, and interact with {INSERT SERVICE/PRODUCT}".

For those with some interest in legal history, there is similar stories in other boilerplate texts that consumer get exposed to. I always find the background to the WARRANTY DISCLAIMER text to have a fairly funny historical background that is a few centuries old legal case regarding a mill axle. The current form we see now was created as the first example in a list from US regulation guidelines (which reference the mill axle case). A company can use any other form given in that guideline, but as it happens, everyone just jumped on the first example, slapped it onto stuff and shipped it. Lawyers know it is valid for US trade regulation and that was apparently enough for the rest of the world.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#653

Post by smolder »

tiltowait wrote: post #236
laszlokorte wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what about synced bookmarks?

I wouldn’t expect the bookmark to run afoul of this clause, since the bookmark isn’t the content. Now it’d be a curious case if the bookmark contained a base64-encoded pornographic image.

You seem to be assuming competence on the part of the author. But, as is common with documents that lawyers generate, they probably don't care if it's reasonable or if practically every one of their users violates it. Like when you get an employee contract that claims your new company owns every idea you ever had. Some people will claim it's just "lawyer stuff" and is somehow okay. It's really not okay.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#654

Post by AshamedCaptain »

Digit-Al wrote: post #446
pmontra wrote: post #400

> When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information, Taken literally it means that when I use Firefox to upload a file to a customer's web site Mozilla is getting that file too, which does not seem likely. They could get a copy of the text I'm typing right now in Firefox or it means that the browser could do some local pro…

I have seen discussions of this sort of wording so many times over the years. My understanding is as follows (and I could be wrong, but this is my understanding of why that wording is used). If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file. Because of Draconian laws in many countries, to publish a file you have to have a legal right to the file…

By such logic, operating systems would need a disclaimer like this, as would keyboards, screens, etc.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#655

Post by amiga386 »

thorw93040494 wrote: post #495
pmontra wrote: post #400

> When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information, Taken literally it means that when I use Firefox to upload a file to a customer's web site Mozilla is getting that file too, which does not seem likely. They could get a copy of the text I'm typing right now in Firefox or it means that the browser could do some local pro…

[flagged]

> is easy to block network access (never plug ethernet)

Some TVs secretly include a modem and SIM card, to make sure they get your personal data back to their masters.

Every company in the world is coming after your privacy. How far are you willing to defend it?

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#656

Post by radlad »

nerdponx wrote: post #622
sph wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my question: in light of what Mozilla is doing, why don't other forks like Waterfox or Librewolf write a manifesto/contract saying they'll never sell your user data and won't turn "evil" (until they do, of course), and then decide to offer a paid version of their browser. Two possible outcomes: 1. No one cares. No one pays for it. Nothing changes and nobody loses anything. 2. Enough people pay for it to keep t…

Kagi is making the Orion browser, which you can pay for. I am a happy customer. There's also Ladybird and several Webkit wrappers.

Ladybird is targeting a 2026 alpha release and last time I looked they lacked site isolation and other sandboxing measures: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/issues/57

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#658

Post by pbronez »

Fnoord wrote: post #636
nerdponx wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kagi is making the Orion browser, which you can pay for. I am a happy customer. There's also Ladybird and several Webkit wrappers.

Orion works on Apple OSes only.

Kagi has started porting Orion to Linux [1]. They’ve stated that multiplatform support is just a question of resources [2].

You can contribute code [3] or money [4] to accelerate this process.

[1] per 2/25 subscriber newsletter: “What’s coming in 2025? … We started working on Orion for Linux!”

[2] https://orionfeedback.org/d/2321-orion-for-windows-android-l...

[3] https://help.kagi.com/orion/support-and-community/contribute...

[4] https://kagi.com/orion/orionplus.html

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#659

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

sph wrote: post #590
MrAlex94 wrote: post #450

I might have differed with Brendan Eich on a few matters, but he was a good steward of Firefox in my book. When Mitchell Baker took the reins, Mozilla became rather more heavy-handed towards us - the irony being that Waterfox was once proudly displayed on the Mozilla website under their "Powered By" banner. I appreciate the constant existential wobble Firefox faces, but they've made some peculiar decisions as of late…

Here's my question: in light of what Mozilla is doing, why don't other forks like Waterfox or Librewolf write a manifesto/contract saying they'll never sell your user data and won't turn "evil" (until they do, of course), and then decide to offer a paid version of their browser. Two possible outcomes: 1. No one cares. No one pays for it. Nothing changes and nobody loses anything. 2. Enough people pay for it to keep t…

The problem with paid versions, is that I don't really trust them either. MBA creep will happen and suddenly the TOS changes and my paid tier is going to have data collection and 'some' ads. I have to move to a high tier to avoid them. After a few cycles of that, one day all the tiers have data collection and ads.

Re: Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Firefox

#660

Post by amiga386 »

qwertox wrote: post #514

What I ask myself is why is Firefox collecting months of telemetry data if sending telemetry is disabled. If I disable telemetry, I would also expect it to not get collected.

So that there's plenty to send when they oops-accidentally forget that setting during an upgrade, and ask you to set it again.

They will of course assume opt-out rather than opt-in, and send what they've collected the moment the browser launches, then they're ready to give you the choice of opt-out once again.

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