Comment by tomwphillips
1 year ago
>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.
Emphasis added.
I've read that a few times now and I'm trying to decide what I think they are actually asking for. It's a bit too vague to pin down.
Mozilla does not need a world wide royalty free licence to use anyone's content if the browser is just a pipe through which connect to the web.
So what exactly are they going to use that licence to your content for and how long are they going to retain it?
Mozilla does a lot of talking about creepy behaviour. Maybe it's just the wording of this but so far it feels a bit off to me.
Mozilla.ai
I'll admit to being utterly confused by literally the first part, even before the emphasis. What follows is nitpicky, but I'd imagine every word is there for a reason. What does "operate" really mean in this context?
Mozilla(the corporate entity) is operating(=controlling?) Firefox(the software) on my machine?
Mozilla(the corporate entity) is operating Firefox(whatever corporate subdivision on their side) to further my interests as a user (gather telemetry, error reports, "privacy preserving" data about me)? In that case, does "acting on your behalf" mean that the corporate entity is browsing on my behalf? Can I download all the Metallica mp3s using Firefox and forward all happiness letters to Mozilla since they were acting on my behalf? (I know, I know, "You Are Responsible..." section disagrees with my take)
And that's before approaching the can of worms of granting a license which I may or may not be able to do depending on the original license.
> Mozilla collects certain data, like technical and settings data, to provide the core functionality of the Firefox browser and associated services, distinguish your device from others [...]
So we are granting them worldwide royalty-free licence to identify us uniquely and transfer that info to others.
Not the best privacy protection or control, and yet they claim "At Mozilla, we believe that privacy is fundamental"
Can someone please explain why they'd need that? Sure, if Firefox sends the data to Mozilla, I can see why they'd might need that type of language. It's just that Firefox is a desktop application, why would it need to send my input to anyone besides the site I'm using?
That looks like end of road for FF for me.
Have to see what other people (serious people) make of it, but that looks like a deal breaker. That's 100% spying on everything I do, because FF has a copy of it.
"Input information" on the face of it can be taken to mean moving the pointer, clicking, scrolling.
I hate to say that I am probably in the same boat.
Mozilla is totally out of touch with their users. Going to give LibreWolf a try for a while I guess.
In case anyone is unaware...
https://librewolf.net/
Genuinely asking : Who is behind librewolf and why should i trust them? They don't seem to be available in any official repos yet other than ones they self-published
> Who is behind librewolf and why should i trust them?
https://librewolf.net/#core-contributors
They also have links to join other community spaces so you can probably ask them yourself.
> They don't seem to be available in any official repos yet other than ones they self-published
The only official repos are the ones which the community decides are so. https://codeberg.org/librewolf They've been around long enough that if they're not on github (for example), it's probably intentional. (One can imagine why this particular community might prefer to avoid directing people to Microsoft-owned github.)
I'm not sure what you think of as "official", but it's been in nixpkgs for years at least. You can also take a look at what it's doing. The librewolf repo itself is basically a collection of generally small patches. Mostly you've got patches to change branding and remove antifeatures, plus fixes like preventing pages from detecting you've opened devtools and enabling JXL support.
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I was unaware, thank you!
This is bonkers, utter insanity. Read defensively (which is the only safe way to read legal text), this renders Firefox unsuitable for any sensitive communication: prima facie, accepting this means I violate FERPA when I talk to my students via email through Firefox. Most likely health professionals would violate HIPAA by using Firefox in a similar manner. Furthermore, this has to violate at least the spirit of GDPR in the EU where I am located.
What is this absolute clusterfuck? No, I do not consent to any of that. Which, if any, update, informed me of this change in policy? And how on earth do my data, and which data, pass through Mozilla's servers?
Unbranded forks of Firefox are not covered by that terms of service document.