Thar🇪🇺6h ago
javi

Firefox updated their Terms of Use? Let's see!

As you type a search query within Firefox, Firefox offers search suggestions to provide you with faster and more direct access to what you’re looking for. Some of the search suggestions come from your search provider (“Search Suggestions”). Others come from Firefox, and are based on information stored on your local device (including recent search terms, open tabs, and previously visited URLs), or content from Mozilla and Mozilla’s partners, including paid sponsors and internet resources like Wikipedia (“Suggestions from Firefox”).

Here chat. Here. This is where Firefox dies.

"information stored in your local device" and "content from mozilla's parners" and "paid sponsors".

This is a very convoluted way of saying "we use your personal data to segment you into something we can sell to advertisers".

This is EXACTLY what chrome does, this is exactly why a lot of us stopped using Chrome and moved back to Firefox. In some circumstances Mozilla’s partners will receive de-identified search and interaction data, in order to serve relevant suggestions and measure user engagement with suggested content.This is making me really mad. THIS IS JUST CORPO-SPEAK TO DESCRIBE HOW THE ENTIRE INTERNET ADVERTISEMENT INDUSTRY WORKS. This is HOW FACEBOOK WORK. This is how GOOGLE WORK. This is how the entire programmatic advertisement industry work. This is what we call "sell your personal data". No, no one sells your address, no one sells your name. BECAUSE IT'S ILLEGAL IN A SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE WORLD.
We also work with advertising providers to deliver relevant sponsored content using programmatic technologies. To support this, we may share limited, non-identifying information — such as device type, IP-derived location information, and category of content viewed — to help determine which ads to display. We don’t share any information that identifies you. You can turn off sponsored content in your New Tab settings at any time.Oh it's so nice of you Mozilla, to do THE MINIMUM LEGAL REQUIREMENTS when selling our data. You don't share information that identify me? so nice of you! you know how else does that? Meta! Google! Tiktok! Somehow big tech mega corporations are willing to comply with the minimum legal requirements as you do, mozilla!In some cases, we may share or publish aggregated and anonymized data to facilitate research or as part of the lawful business purposes outlined above (such as sharing aggregated insights with advertising partners).This is called "advertisement segmentation" and it's what it paid for Zuckenberg fortress in Hawaii!! Going places, Moz, you are operating exactly as how Facebook used to do in 2016!To provide our services as described above, we may disclose personal data to: Partners, service providers, suppliers and contractors"We never disclose your personal data!!! well, unless it's one of our partners who pays us for it, of course!"

oh wait! they include a table of what kind of data they share with partners!Technical dataLocationLanguage preferenceSettings dataUnique identifiersSystem performance dataInteraction dataSearch dataBrowsing dataThe SHARE FUCKING EVERYTHING. THEY ARE SELLING EVERYTHING. "Unique identifiers" is the closest to personal identifiable data they can sell. That's what advertisers can use to make a profile of you: They may not know your name, but they will know everything else about you.

This is the same information that google collects and sells from you. THE SAME.

Fucking ghouls. This is where Firefox died, folks.

Firefox Privacy Notice

Mozilla
Mar 23 at 9:07pmWeb
Show threadjavi23h ago
But hey, who could knew that putting the VP of Marketing of facebook (2012-2023) in charge of Mozilla's new ad division would led to the very predictable outcome of Firefox becoming just another panopticon selling your personal data uh? WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING
Show threadGlitzersachen18h ago

@javi

Who, yes who? It's unfathomable. Practically out of the blue sky.

(One would have expected that for a foundation the minimum requirement would have been "is not a corporate shill without a conscience").

Show threadChaddicus12h ago
@javi I made the mistake of letting Firefox download onto my new CachyOS installation and was appalled to see how far downhill it's gone in just a few months. Trying push an AI sidebar and other nonsense down my throat. It's so sad to see Mozilla succumb to the dark side like this.
Show threadTarek Ziadé5h ago
@javi mmm... why are you saying they are selling your personal data? I am very interested, because I worked on the search suggestions with local browsing data and its all happening on your device. Also https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/
Mozilla’s Data Privacy FAQ

At Mozilla, we respect and protect your personal information.

Mozilla
Show threadMiha Markič2h ago

@tarek @javi do you think they are giving their partners data for free and place their ads to you also for free?

Edit: connect->ads

Show threadxenia  23h ago
@javi i want to see the web die and dance on its corpse
Show threadSneezy23h ago

@javi

they don't seem to have got the message

1. most normal users don't use Firefox - they use chrome or safari or edge

2. atypical users seek out Firefox and they tend to care about shit like privacy and bloat and attack surface and 100 other things

3. they've turned Firefox into something those atypical users do not want

And they just won't listen, again and again. So fuck #mozilla .

Show threadMartin22h ago
@javi Time to try out DuckDuckGo browser.
Show threadEmergencyJoe22h ago
@javi I dumped Firefox for Vivaldi
Show thread0===}::::::::::::::::::::::::>21h ago
@javi I moved to Firefox months ago damn, any good alternatives?
Show threadArchitekt die Welt7h ago
@victor_leries @javi i switched to Vivaldi both on my phone and Desktop and never regretted that.
Show threadMarkus Unterwaditzer21h ago
@javi I don't understand where you read out of this that they upload your browsing history anywhere. That the Omnibar shows my browsing history together with search suggestions is already how it works today.
Show threadjavi21h ago
Well, I read it in the new Terms of Use document I liked, it's very explicitly there, in several places even. For example:



"

In some cases, when ads are enabled on New Tab, additional browsing and interaction data (including interactions with our advertisers) may also be processed locally on your device to measure the effectiveness of those ads; the shortcuts feature also uses browsing data locally on your device to select top shortcuts, some of which may be sponsored. Any such data will only be shared with Mozilla and/or our advertising partners via our privacy-preserving technologies on an aggregated and/or de-identified basis."
Show threadJ.V.B.21h ago
@javi @untitaker They just measure the click trough rate of the couple of ads. Not that ads are nice even if you can just disable them in settings
Show threadjavi20h ago
It's literally in the text. The sponsored content (ads) are picked based on the data they have from you. This is segmented advertisement: they don't sell your home address to advertiser, they sell them which cohorts you belong to. Advertisers buy Mozilla ads for "men, 25-35, great London area, interested in winter sports" and Mozilla use the data on your browser to determine you fill those requirements and show you that ad.



And this is, exactly, how both Meta and Google make money from their users.
Show threadJ.V.B.20h ago
@javi but the data is not available to them on their servers. Mozilla doesn't know shit about any of their users and it's not collecting the data. They basically just send you all of the if then ads and you see whichever ends up passing the filters browser side. Also they're not that targeted to mostly related to browser history or word matching in the omnibar.
Show threadJ.V.B.20h ago
@javi If you can tell me facebook doesn't know anything about people and couldn't produce any identifying data when subpoenaed then sure they're the same
Show threadjavi20h ago
Your only problem with facebook is that they store the personal info of their users in their servers??? for real???? not how they monetize that data? not that they actually use that personal data to hyper-targeted advertisement?? just where they store the data?!?!?!?
Because the only meaningful difference here is that Mozilla seems to mine your data using your own computer instead of uploading it to their servers. But then, the usage they do of your data is exactly the same than facebook does. Their business model is exactly the same, the only difference being where the data they sell is stored.
Show threadJ.V.B.20h ago
@javi mozilla does not sell anyone's data
Show threadjavi20h ago
They same exactly the same amount of 'anyone data' than google or meta.
Show threadblausand 🐟7h ago
@DenJohn
Oh, good morning! How was winter sleep?
Show thread4044h ago

@DenJohn @javi it doesn’t have to be available to them on their servers. They get your device fingerprint and are sharing all of the data associated with it with their partners.

This is completely against the whole reason I use #firefox this is a gross breach of #privacy and trust.

Fugg.

Show threadFleur Kelpin1h ago
@javi @DenJohn that is a foolhardy argument. The moment the ad is selected you download it and they harvest your cookies and ip and other attributes and associate it with the criteria for the ad. Age, gender, into skiing.
Show threadJared White (ResistanceNet ✊)20h ago
@javi yeah, fuck that shit. 💩
Show threadMarkus Unterwaditzer2h ago
@javi Reading through this and the follow-up replies you still haven't sourced your claim that they upload _browsing history_ (or in your words, "everything"). You've pivoted to click-rate on ads, which are absolutely not the same. You say "they use your browser's data to do targeted advertising" but i'm talking about which exact data they use. That shit matters.
Show threadjavi2h ago
they DON'T UPLOAD BROWSER HISTORY. I've never say that (through they literally say it in their terms of service, but I don't think it's literal because it wouldn't make any sense). I also never talked about click-through rate, I don't know what you mean about it. What they do, what the startup they bought last year to take over their advertisement business, is to process your personal data LOCALLY and upload your anonymized profile, instead of uploading your personal data and creating that anonymized profile in their servers, as Google and the rest does. The key part here is that THAT DOESN'T MATTER: No one sells your browsing history or your personal data. They sell your profile they create based on that data. What mozilla is doing is selling exactly the same product than google, with the only difference being they use your own CPU to create it instead of doing it in their own servers. And they are trying to tell us that's a much more ethical way of doing this because of potato potato.
Show threadＮｅｘｙ ⋆˙⟡21h ago
@javi im tired of jumping from browser to browser and mod them every time by hand to not be shit. My god, is exhausting
Show threadKazara21h ago

@javi

my question for things like this is, as always, how much of this is new versus how much of it has been there before and only noticed because the company said there was a terms update and didn't supply a changelog? Because when I look at the wayback machine for their terms of use… the search query stuff has been there since at least 2023. Mozilla's search partners also got data back during that time period, and sponsored content has ABSOLUTELY been there for years.

The search and interaction data, the data sharing to facilitate research/lawful business, disclosing data to contractors, the table showing all that stuff? There in April 2025 at the latest.

Basically, they've been like this for months, if not years, and it's only noticed now because companies don't make comparisons easy.

Show threadjavi20h ago
The problem is not so much the sponsored content, but the usage of your personal data to segment you into a narrow target they can sell to advertisers. I may be wrong on this, but I think that part wasn't there a few months ago.
Show threadjavi20h ago
ok I just checked the same page from last summer. While there was some 'sponsored content based on your habits' stuff already, it looked that it was limited just to the new tab page. For example, the sponsored results in the search suggestions didn't involve segmenting you by your browsing history, while now they do.
they went from this, back in July 2025:
"Mozilla may also receive location-related keywords from your search (such as when you search for “Boston”) and share this with our partners to provide recommended and sponsored content."
To this, March 2026:
"Mozilla processes this data to serve you relevant suggestions, understand how useful the suggestions are to you, and improve the service. In some circumstances Mozilla’s partners will receive de-identified search and interaction data, in order to serve relevant suggestions and measure user engagement with suggested content."

Also, it looks like now they are using 3rd party programmatic ads, while they didn't last summer:

"We also work with advertising providers to deliver relevant sponsored content using programmatic technologies. To support this, we may share limited, non-identifying information — such as device type, IP-derived location information, and category of content viewed — to help determine which ads to display. We don’t share any information that identifies you. You can turn off sponsored content in your New Tab settings at any time."



Programmatic ads are only really profitable when you share as much (anonymized) personal data with the ad exchange as you can. There's no way of making money with programmatic ads that doesn't include selling end-user segmentation data.
Show threadCaio C. G. Oliveira10h ago
@javi @kazara either they are selling the data OR they are selling access to filtered profiles based on data collection (which is also a bad thing)
Show threadFelis_Catus_Domesticus18h ago

@javi

https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

GitHub - ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium: Google Chromium, sans integration with Google

Google Chromium, sans integration with Google. Contribute to ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub
Show threadFelis_Catus_Domesticus18h ago
@javi https://github.com/librewolf-community
LibreWolf Community

Join us on Codeberg at https://codeberg.org/librewolf - LibreWolf Community

GitHub
Show threadMensh12312h ago
@javi Okay, so they do ads when I don't turn them off… oh, and I guess they also use my browser history and their ad servers for when i have the respctive options enabled.
I am shocked. SHOCKED!
Show threadjavi11h ago
oh yeah, good for you, power user. I'm sure you could also be using chrome (-ium) and keep it fully private. Now, for an average user who don't even think on this things, how this is anything different from using Chrome?
Show threadMensh1239h ago
@javi The UI for turning it off is incredibly easy to find. I trust people who are capable of installing Firefox to be able to change the setting should they want to.
Show threadjavi8h ago
well, and installing chromium instead of chrome so you opt-out to most of the data sharing is also trivial, but that doesn't mean that chrome is good, right?
Show threadMensh1238h ago
@javi There's an importmant distinction here: You'd have to install another program whose name and what it does you'd have to research. My argument was more about that being a Firefox user means having installed either Firefox or a Linux distribution that comes with it (probably) manually. This requires very, very basic computer literacy. Certainly enough to click on the pencil on your home screen (where the sponsored shortcuts live), then click “Manage more settings” and uncheck either “Support Firefox” or “Sponsored Shortcuts” (the latter is below the former and visually indented).
You can't compare this intuitive trip to the well-labeled and easy to find settings to opt out with doing your own research only to install Chromium which, fun fact, still contains a lot of Google's stuff.
Show threadjavi7h ago
So your point is that this doesn't really matter because Mozilla won't serve a single targeted ad because everyone using firefox knows better and disable the data collection? Well, then I wonder why Mozilla even did it. Oh, or maybe they have enough telemetry about their users to know if this is going to be profitable or not, uh?

Anyway, being extremely lenient with Mozilla intentions here, the best you can think about modern firefox is "it's as invasive as Chrome was circa 2018", back when Chrome actually also allowed disabling all the surveillance features. Giving how fast they are introducing 'advertising industry standards' into firefox, I think trying to justify their intentions is pretty naive. "yeah, I'm sure Facebook's VP of Marketing just added your browsing history as a way to profile you, plus 3rd party programmatic ads, with my best interest in his mind..."
Show threadIvo Limmen12h ago
@javi #enshitification #capitalism
Show threadOtimsis12h ago
@javi I happen to use LibreWolf in my daily setup and am curious to read more on the topic. I guess I'll try to find out how the default settings of LibreWolf deal with this kind of telemetry and data collecting. I know it is very entitled of me to say this, but I "just" want a web browser, I just want to be a FOSS "user" (I know, a contradiction in terms perhaps, I promise I will eventually muster the courage to contribute to FOSS)
Show threadCaio C. G. Oliveira10h ago

@javi since google is the major source of money for Mozilla, maybe this is even operated / executed by Google.

Time to update that spider man with glasses meme.

Show threadjavi7h ago
well... From their new ToS:
"We also work with advertising providers to deliver relevant sponsored content using programmatic technologies. To support this, we may share limited, non-identifying information — such as device type, IP-derived location information, and category of content viewed — to help determine which ads to display."

Who runs the biggest programmatic ad exchange in the industry? Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Ad_Manager

So yeah, I would be surprised if those programmatic ads are not coming straight from google.
Google Ad Manager - Wikipedia

Show threadCaio C. G. Oliveira5h ago
@javi Aha! So, there it is. Right now, Mozilla serves data to google. Surveillance Capitalism in operation.
Show threadyak10h ago
@javi *sigh*
time to go even more hardline librewolf user, I guess.
Show threadwoffs9h ago
@javi links -g forever ❤️‍🔥
Show threadblausand 🐟6h ago
@woffs @javi
links has no -g flag, so please elaborate...
Show threadwoffs5h ago
@blausand @javi -g activates graphics mode in http://links.twibright.com/
Twibright Labs: Links

Show threadBreizh8h ago
@javi But… that’s not new, it’s there since a while, and can easily be disabled. Why freak over it now?
Show threadjavi8h ago
oh but there are a bunch things that are new(ish, to be fair, I'm not sure if the changes have been introduced last week or a couple of months ago, but for sure weren't there last summer). What's not new is they have ads, but they are escalating what they sell to advertisers. And they are aligning with how their ads work with how they work elsewhere (they seem have just introduced programmatic ads)
Show threadjavi8h ago
(also, this is not the first time I personally freaked out about the slow-by-steady move of mozilla to become a data-mining operation, I've been freaking out and posting about it for over a year at least :D )
Show threadfran 🇱🇧🇧🇷8h ago
@javi this is so upsetting.... i really liked using firefox
Show threadCassandrich7h ago

@javi That's only if you have that misfeature on, and only if you use their default search. The notice may be new, but these bad defaults have been there for decades and they're just something you have to fix at new device setup time (or have a policy file you drop in to fix them all at once).

This does not excuse Mozilla's trashy and abusive behavior. But it is what you need to navigate the present world safely.

Show threadKraftwerk-Das Model Collapse7h ago
@dalias do you have a link/recommendation for such a policy file?
Show threadCassandrich6h ago

@dngrs Documentation of how to make one is here: https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/

I was looking for a good example one with all the privacy stuff done right but I don't see it at the moment. I'm more familiar with prefs.js so I just copy that to new profiles, but the policies.json approach seems more robust for things it can control, since it prevents them from getting reverted by accidental user action or by updates (and lets you nuke automatic updates entirely, which otherwise can't be done on Windows).

policy-templates

Policy Templates for Firefox

policy-templates
Show threadRich6h ago
@dalias @dngrs just tell me what to use instead!
Show threadCassandrich6h ago
@richardnosworthy @dngrs There really isn't a "what to use instead". There are lots of Firefox forks that might be good choices, but picking one requires digging in and researching their attention to security, long-term viability, values of the people running them and whether those are aligned with your interests, etc. Otherwise, everything else is a reskinned Google Chrome with most of the bad that comes with that.
Show threadDennis Flood6h ago
@richardnosworthy @dalias @dngrs Vivaldi
Show threadSocProf6h ago
@richardnosworthy @dalias @dngrs @Waterfox ftw
Show threadkhm5h ago
I made a policies.json that I use on my computer (and my kids' computers) you can use as a starting point.

https://ffprofile.com/ is a good resource that will walk you through making a profile for a more complete solution, or you can look at my config explainer which I try to keep updated.

CC: @[email protected]