Posted on 03/02/2025 8:05:21 PM PST by martin_fierro
As noted a few months ago, Mozilla -- maker of the Firefox browser and Thunderbird e-mail client -- is facing an 80% revenue drop due to investigations into its “revenue-sharing” deals with Google.
That revenue drop is apparently prompting Mozilla's all-out search for alternate revenue streams. Mozilla's changes last week to the Firefox browser's privacy notice and usage terms indicate that users' privacy may be sold out.
Specifically, Mozilla's new use terms provide:
“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.”
This changed language, in conjunction with deletion of the following from Mozilla's Firefox FAQ page...
Does Firefox sell your personal data?
Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.
... leads to the inescapable conclusion that Firefox users' personal data is now very much up for sale.
Mozilla tried later last week to quell the resulting firestorm, including providing the following "clarification":
"You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content."
This inelegant and heavy-handed legalese strikes me as an attempt to appear to be backtracking, without actually doing that.
Plenty of others are commenting on Mozilla's New Way Forward, and it's not being well received. See for yourself, and consider adopting another browser.
I thought Mozilla severed ties with Thunderbird years ago.
"worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input..."
Whenever some corporation changes its policy "for your convenience" it becomes less convenient for me.
I have SRWare Iron on Ubuntu 20.04, and the browser brings up Bing when I do a search.
Do you get that when you do a search?
Could be. But based on viewing its home page, it looks like a (probably very good, very maniacal programmer's) pet project fork of Chromium. Not what I would hang my hat on for production use.
Sort of, but not really. T'bird is now under a subsidiary of Mozilla. According to Wikipedia:
Operated by MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, Thunderbird is an independent, community-driven project that is managed and overseen by the Thunderbird Council, which is elected by the Thunderbird community.
Nearly every program phones home.
I just want to know what exactly they are sending back and is it tied to me and can I block it with deleting cookies.
I saw a video where it was revealed that 47 cities are using cameras everywhere to track your vehicle by license including the condition such as has a dent, color brown etc. and your name is attached so the politicians know where you are 24/7. Police officers have been caught tracking their ex-wives, husbands, girlfriends etc.
These cities and the company behind it are sharing the info with each other and any law enforcement without a warrant.
Your own new car is tracking you!!
Perhaps, I haven’t checked it out yet. Yt has some videos on it. One by chris titus, which is where i heard about it. He wa s singing its praises. Butmyeah I gotta see what others are saying before I make any decision to try it.
I forgot to mention, there is also waterfox- very similar to Firefox, but again 8 have no knowledge of it other than looking at it briefly awhile back- not sure why I didn’t try it. I think I went with brave back then instead .
Despite last week’s changes, Firefox can still be configured to be more private by tweaking settings:
• Disable telemetry: Go to about:preferences#privacy and turn off data collection.
• Enable Resist Fingerprinting: about:config → privacy.resistFingerprinting → true
Bookmark.
Let’s not even get started on the TV.
Bkmk
I use Firefox too - hope you find something better... (and share with the rest of us...)
Thanks dayglored...
“Could be. But based on viewing its home page, it looks like a (probably very good, very maniacal programmer’s) pet project fork of Chromium. Not what I would hang my hat on for production use.”
I did too Bob. The first thing I noticed is he admits it is just himself and two others maintaining it when they have time. And he gives fair warning that this means they may not be able to stay right on top of security patches for vulnerabilities. I like the honesty he shares but while he brags about the speed I honestly could not find any mention about better security than other browsers, or I missed it.
The whole problem with browsers is that someone needs to reinvent the wheel. A whole new base core “framework” that is not compromised from the beginning to compete against Chromium, Electron, and Gecko. All the base frameworks utilized to spin off a new browser are still based on Google and Mozilla in their cores. And that is a problem, Google and Mozilla are still there and there is always that looming nagging question mark because there is still Google and Mozilla code in them all. It is no small task to build a browser core framework but it is time for it, it is long overdue.
One can even build their own browser. The problem is finding a truly independent base core framework that is absolutely secure without question to build on top of.
https://www.meetsidekick.com/how-to-make-a-web-browser/
Every browser comes out of the box with a default search engine installed. It is usually from someone who is financially supporting them. In your case it is Bing which is Microsoft, so MS is financially supporting that browser project. I have to be honest and say that is already a red flag out of the gate. If MS supports them then MS is getting data in exchange for that support.
You can go into your settings and change your default search engine to something other than Bing like Duck Duck Go. But it will still be suspect because it is probably still connected to MS because they sponsor the base browser project. This is a problem we are ALL having, even the most techy. It is almost impossible to get completely unhooked from all the ancestors like MS, Google, and Mozilla.
Yep - I stopped Thunderbird when it started developing “glitches”, now using the free version of eM Client...
Thank you dayglored!
swisscows is only a search engine, not a browser, right?
Yes.
Thanks for going to the effort to type all that up.... I looked at Claws the other day Read many reviews on it.
I hate IMAP, and don’t allow the people who have email accounts on my server to use it either. I suppose it has value to government entities, and for businesses that are legally required to keep such records, but to me, it is like buying gold and then letting the seller store it for you.
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