Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke
Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke
Open source browser maker ties itself up in legalese and explanations
The answer to "what is Firefox?" on Mozilla's FAQ page about its browser used to read:
The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.
Now it just says:
The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.
In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.
A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ page. To answer the question, "is Firefox free?" Moz used to say:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it, and we don’t sell your personal data.
Now it simply reads:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it.
Again, a pledge to not sell people's data has disappeared. Varma insisted this is the result of the fluid definition of “sell” in the context of data sharing and privacy.
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In Firefox, type about:config in address bar, search for "sponsored" and "telemetry" and set all the paremeters you see from TRUE to FALSE. Done.
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We shouldn't have to do workarounds like that in the first place. It's getting to be like the Stockholm syndrome people have about Windows abuses. I didn't put up that shit, and I'm not gonna put up with this either.
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Seems like a much simpler solution is to just use LibreWolf where all these things are removed from the program already for you. That's the point of the fork.
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I would still suggest folks to at least go through Librewolf's FAQ and Docs. For example, Librewolf disables DNS over HTTPS by default. See https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#doh-whats-the-stance-on-doh
If anyone reading this is not configuring their DNS on their routers or on their Linux machines using systemd-resolved or something similar, I suppose they should probably at least configure their browser to use DNS over HTTPS. It should be better than using the default DNS resolver provided by your ISP.
As far as I'm aware, Librewolf's team isn't making significant changes to Firefox's code or "patching out" some spooky telemetry. Librewolf is essentially pre-configuring a bunch of "privacy" and "security" related settings in Firefox for their users. But alternatively any user can configure these things themeselves and make their own choices. Even pre-installing extensions and add-ons on fresh Firefox profiles can be easily done by any user using Firefox policies (which is what Librewolf uses to pre-install Ublock Origin.) But let's say you also want another extension like Bitwarden to be pre-installed on every fresh Firefox profile. Or you don't trust DuckDuckGo and instead want to configure Firefox to use a self-hosted SearXNG instance as your default search engine. Then maintaining your own Firefox policies can help you do all this.
I understand it is far simpler and far more desirable to have "privacy and security" out-of-box without having to configure anything at all. But it is probably not a bad idea to take the time to see what configurations you can make to Firefox yourself, even if you decide to use LibreWolf. You may end up wanting your own configurations in addition to what Librewolf's team decides for you.
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Seems insane that even after disabling all related options in the main settings GUI, there are still like two dozen things enabled in about:config.
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some are subcomponents of the main disabled feature. i checked this on my browser which was only modified by GUI, and nothing i saw 'enabled' was actually enabled, but instead a subfeature of what I had disabled.
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Or switch to librewolf (Ironfox on android).
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I wouldn't use Ironfox on Android since they have decided to promote a F-droid alternative that encourages proprietary software.
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How about on mobile?
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You could take a look at Fennec or Iceraven (https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser)
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Mobile sells your data by default, you don't need a browser to do it for you.
Yes, yes, there are the 0.0000002% of you who bought an expensive as hell Android phone and replaced its OS with a Free one. Good on you. Phone still triangulates your location from the cell signal and that data is collected on you, as well as whatever the firmware that you can't change does.
Phones are bad news. Period.
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How can ome do this on mobile? Doesn't run search on the terms or load a config page.
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How about, on your favorite operating system, go to "Firefox" and "Uninstall" because these folks aren't going to get any better going forward.
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said Ajit Varma, veep of Firefox Product
Pack up your shit, and get the FUCK out. You're a fucking disgrace.
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Given that this is a privacy community, I would think that it would go without saying, But I just like to point out, We should probably disable Firefox sync if were using it. Log out of Firefox accounts in the browser. Even if you're not giving them telemetry they have all that data.
You can use the x bookmarks sync plugin, Don't make an account with them just use the un-logged in plugin to backup and restore your bookmarks between browsers. On the upside it'll even let you copy bookmarks from Firefox derivatives to Chrome derivatives.Go down a comment or two and use Floccus, Just converted it's wonderful
at their location. However the want it
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Hey, just wanted to point out that xbrowsersync hasn't seen updates for quite some time. I would suggest folks to read this discussion and to perhaps check out Floccus as an alternative.
Both Floccus and xBrowserSync have Android apps on the F-droid app store as well.
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That's fair, nice that they support self cloud store
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Alternative to FF Sync?
I Iove this shit. Send to devices, multiple devices, bookmarks, passwords..
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For sending things to devices I use KDE Connect. I realize it is a fundamentally different application, but it is what I use generally to send / receive links between devices, as well as documents, images etc. It also is good for notification mirroring, and really just integrating Android devices into Windows / Linux computers.
For passwords I used KeePass (and I sync them between devices with SyncThing), but I usually recommend Bitwarden (which is what I used to use). Both are open source, have apps for all platforms, can integrate into your browser if you choose. The main advantage of Bitwarden is that it is open source, all necessary features are free, and you can host the server yourself if you want. It also integrates into some services, notably email aliasing ones, to allow you to generate new emails every time you make a new account.
For bookmarks / history your best bet is the extension everyone else is recommending here!
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Soo... where do we go now? What open source alternative exists that is on the side of its users?
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Just keep using Firefox. Nothing in the code has changed, and if it does you can switch to forks. You all are evangelizing about how important FOSS is to prevent this exact scenario and yet you keep switching browsers for no need at all.
Note: I love Foss, I just think this is an overreaction
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Oh sure, but browsers are an entirely different beast.
Eventually, they'll take it closed source, now I know what you're thinking "Then one of the forks will just become the dominant one!"
But here's the thing, the browser engine is very complicated just to keep up with. The W3C spec that all engines must follow is thousands of pages long. So all those forks will wither and die once the engine has been cut off from upstream updates.
None of those forks touch the engine as-is
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I mean, FOSS doesn't prevent this on its own. We should probably all switch to LW and try to keep an eye that those telemetry settings don't become disabled upstream.
Also of concern would be anyone using Firefox accounts and sync.
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Librewolf
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Zen Browser
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Now that Mozilla's fucked. What's the next option that's not Chromium?
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- Mozilla is sliding down a slippery slope to enshitification; but they're still near the top of that slide. The bad stuff hasn't actually come yet. So Firefox is still top-tier in the short term.
- In the medium term, we can look towards a fork such as Librewolf or Waterfox.
- And in the long term, we'll probably turn to a new project using Ladybird or Servo.
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It do be a slippery slope though
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Ladybird in a few years, forks of Firefox for now.
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Disable tor in tor browser.
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IceCat
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That isn't ready for common use by most people until there they offer binaries for easy installation.
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Librewolf, degoogled chromium, private windows. If you don't want your data to be sold, don't give out your data.
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"Flamed", that's a new one
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Tim’s an old one, actually. Back in the old internet forum days, flaming was the act of going off on someone during an argument. Most forums even had “no flaming” rules, that could result in warns or outright bans if a mod thought an argument had gotten out of hand.
To be clear, flaming is the act of insulting the user, not the act of arguing against them. You can argue against a user without attacking the user directly.
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That's an OLD one. Wow I haven't heard that term in like 20 years
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Appropriate callback too given the pun.
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I wanna hear them get SLAMMED
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Come on and SLAM and welcome to the JAM
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Its pretty accurate
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Are there any specifics about this? It all seems fairly theoretical to me. What do they [want to] do that contradicts "doesn't sell your personal data" within the context of the fluid definition of "sell"? Do they sell my personal data or don't they? What definitions of "sell" are relevant here?
It's all sounding a bit Bill Clinton to me: "it depends on your definition of 'is'."
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The ambiguity is the smoking gun.
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One thing to keep in mind is thar mozilla is now an ad company and can use this data itself for whatever advertising it wants to sell, so they dont even need a third party they can just sell targeted ads directly to companies while not technically "sharing" the info they gather to anyone.
Basically, why sell the data to other people when you can profit from using it directly?
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Soon the only private option left will be to curl the website, read the html and picture it in my head.
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stallman was right
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Another year another browser to avoid. It's an endless cycle...
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Use their privacy friendly forks.
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Mozilla shares your data under certain circumstances. This helps people realize that Mozilla is able to share your data, regardless of 'selling' potential. Some people assumed 'we dont sell your data' meant 'we dont share your data' when that was impossible for the definition of how some built in features work.
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They literally purchased an ad company
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I could give you some very long stories related to this. In the end of it, it comes down to how can they 'sterilize' the avenues of data collection and allow more opt-out scenarios, and more nuanced potentials that would provide comfort in your browsing habits and privacy desires. It remains to be seen how the situation pans out, but this isn't a 100% done with them action. They have opportunities here, and we'll see if their course turns evil or not.
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Just because “some people” can’t words, that doesn’t mean that you should change the words to suit the people who can’t them.
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The premise of 'sharing' and then receiving something from who you shared with IS a form of selling. If Mozilla .never. shared data,,, are you sure you 'can words'?
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Exactly what I expected: a restatement of the terms, pointing out that they're not onerous at all, and a link to jwz's blog, the single person on earth with the biggest hate boner for Mozilla.
They need money and they don't get much from donations. I'd love to hear everyone's ideas for how they can generate enough revenue to keep the lights on without either making deals with Google or engaging in any form of advertising or data trading.
There's absolutely a line where I would start looking elsewhere, but this ain't it.
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2 options:
- Ask their users for money. It's a tried and true system that works for a lot of projects.
- Stop spending their existing money on dumb things that nobody is asking for. A good start would be to cut out the CEO's pay.
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They could offer services that people want with paid tiers.
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They do already ask their users for money.
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Orion is much better. Vote with your computing power.
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Orion is a closed-source browser for MacOS and IOS only.
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Man! I've been out of touch for just a few weeks. I just switched from Mull to IronFox a few weeks ago. I use FF sync. I use Libre
FoxWolf on my PCs.This fight against surveillance capitalism is exhausting...
Edit: I'm more awake now. LibreWolf strips out tracking and dumb features (like PPA), buy I dont know if IF does the same. In short: Anyone using LibreWolf is still fine.
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I mean people would rather have Firefox propped up by Google (an ad company)'s donations then?
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No, that's a bullshit false dichotomy.
People would rather have Firefox developed ethically by a proper foundation that's supported by grants and donations even if its total operating budget is vastly lower. (It wouldn't be able to have a grossly overpaid CEO like Mozilla does now. Oh noooooooo....)
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I'm fine with that, people should advocate that more. I don't disagree with you, but a lot of the coverage and commentary seems to reminicse about a nebulous "the way it was before" which wasn't ideal either.
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Where are these grants coming from? They already take in donations and it's not nearly enough to pay the engineers. Sure I'd love it if the c-suite took a pay cut but the truth is that a modern web browser is a big enough project that it basically requires an enterprise-size team dedicated to its maintenance.
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Actually? Oh my God yes. We got to have our cake and eat it too. Google, in an effort to skirt monopoly laws actually paid for the open source browser we were using.
I personally love the idea of Google's ads paying for our untracked browsing
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I'd rather just use Google if we are throwing privacy out the window
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Well, a browser is extremely complex, and hence super expensive to make. So if Mozilla doesn't find any other way to monetize, I guess they have to do something about user data?
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Mozilla payed their last CEO seven million bucks a year. Seems like they were doing just fine without the ad tracking gravy train to afford that salary.
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Holy wild speculation pulled right out of your arse, Batman!
https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Mozilla
Scroll down to Excessive Executive Pay.
Mozilla has zero financial issues. Mozilla is a non-profit that is actively investing, and receiving dividends and interest in return. A nonprofit that is generating millions in revenue for essentially nothing and paying their executives fat stacks. They have zero reason to need to do this beyond greed and disregard for their user base.
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Stop citing this dude like he knows anything. Many of his videos he says he’s just yapping and doesn’t know why anyone watches. He’s not a citation of any value
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Well, now, I guess all the people who like to lecture me every time the topic of Brave comes up will just chill the f*** out now.
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Discovering that arsenic ingestion is bad for you doesn't make your ingestion of cyanide better.
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lololololol
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Its a sad day for sure, when the example of privacy and user respect just... Isn't anymore.
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no, see, while mozilla may be monetizing its user base, we know brave is.
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They both are pretty bad.
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But we've always known that Brave is and if we put any information into it it was because we were okay with that.
Now you've got a whole lot of people that have a whole lot of information swimming around and MOZ changes their business plan....
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Nah, fuck brave.
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Or we could just not use either? Just a thought.
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I've just learned not to say the B word on Lemmy.
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Naw brother (or friend if I'm being too presumptuous), they're just going to double down on being hypocritical.
Now theyll pull out all the things that Brave did most of a decade ago to stay afloat and laud it over you like it's not something mozilla's got on the table right now.
But their crypto... but their search... But that seven-million dollar moz CEO isn't going to pay for himself either.
Brave is going to sell my shit. That was never in question. But knowing that up front I don't give them anything that I want to play close to the heart.
Firefox has a fuckton on everone that they've had for ages that they can now sell because they changed their business model.
And sure we can turn telemetry off if we haven't already, But how long do you think that feature is going to work as intended once it's the only thing paying their top man to stay.
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