Mozilla, the non-profit company behind the Firefox browser, is reassuring users about the use of their personal data after a controversial change to its FAQ earlier this week.
A segment of the browser’s FAQ, titled “Does Firefox sell your personal data?”—which assured users it “never has” and “never will” offer their data for sale—recently disappeared. Users quickly spotted the change.
The move rapidly picked up intense criticism on Mozilla’s GitHub and Reddit communities, ArsTechnica notes, with some users even recommending different browsers.
One Firefox user writing on X even posted “RIP Firefox,” in response to the amendments.
Meanwhile, a new clause appeared in Firefox’s terms of use. “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,” the term read.
Mozilla was quick to react to the complaints, calling them “a little confusion.”
“We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible,” Mozilla said in a blog post on the incident. “Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.”
Mozilla chalked up the change in the wording of the FAQ to legal considerations, saying the word “sell” has a broad legal definition in “many jurisdictions.” It also clarified that any data it shares with third parties “is stripped of potentially identifying information.”
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Mozilla has had to contend with other privacy controversies over the past year. In September 2024, a nonprofit digital privacy group called Noyb filed a complaint against Mozilla over a Firefox feature dubbed Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA) that was added to the browser in July of that year.
Mozilla said the feature helps Firefox send data about user activity to advertisers in a way that preserves individuals’ privacy, though the group alleged the feature was in violation of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR.)
If you’re still concerned about your data, you can head here to learn how to tweak your privacy settings on Mozilla Firefox. And if you’re considering trying out different browsers, check out PCMag’s comparison of the most popular choices.
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About Will McCurdy
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