Mozilla has introduced a disappointing terms of service and privacy policy into Firefox. Let's look at the most controversial changes:
In the "You Give Mozilla Certain Rights and Permissions" segment from the terms of use:
It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox.
They say it doesn't grant them ownership of your content, but it's written too vaguely for me to trust it. Realistically, it's probably written like this to easily train AI models (which for a lot of people is already bad enough). But unnecessary data collection is still unnecessary data collection, especially for a browser that claims to be privacy-friendly.
In the "Termination" segment:
Mozilla can suspend or end anyone’s access to Firefox at any time for any reason, including if Mozilla decides not to offer Firefox anymore.
To me, this is the most damning change. Firefox isn't even free (as in freedom) software anymore!
And lastly, they removed promises of never selling user data from their update page and FAQ. This is definitely the final nail in the coffin for anyone who used Firefox for privacy reasons. (Also let me just say this: Any software or service that claims to be privacy-friendly but has a privacy policy with more than two screens worth of text should NOT be trusted in my opinion).
By the way, if you're using a fork of Firefox, don't worry! These new terms shouldn't apply to those versions.
All of these changes are really disappointing, because Firefox used to be one of the more mainstream ways of taking back user privacy. While it isn't hard for me and possibly you reading right now to switch to a better alternative, most people won't know where to look. So to help anyone who doesn't know where to get started, here are two recommendations:
- Librewolf: A fork of Firefox that removes Mozilla's telemetry and services, has better privacy and security defaults, and comes pre-installed with an adblocker.
- Ungoogled Chromium (Windows, Linux & Mac): A fork of Chromium that removes Google's telemetry and services.
There are other great alternatives out there, but just to be safe, I won't include them here since I haven't used them personally.
