Mozilla has unveiled its official Terms of Service for the Firefox browser for the first time, along with an updated Privacy Policy. Previously, the company relied on an open license and made public commitments not to share user data with third parties. But Mozilla now believes the new documents should provide greater transparency and explain to users how the browser uses the information they enter. However, this update has already caused a scandal.
GitHub users noticed that the Mozilla repository has removed the phrase "Unlike other companies, we don't sell access to your data" from the browser's terms of use.
Mozilla has not officially commented on this, but on the questions and answers page they essentially confirmed the fact that the Firefox browser does transfer certain user data to third parties, but the organization emphasizes that it is not personalized:
"Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP)."
In addition, users were outraged by the fact that the "Firefox Terms of Use" included a phrase stating that when you enter any data into Firefox, you transfer a free license to Mozilla. "When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information," the terms of use state.
Mozilla was quick to deny claims that the organization was allegedly taking away users' rights to their data.
"We’ve seen a little confusion about the language regarding licenses, so we want to clear that up. We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. 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 said in an explanation.
In fact, there is nothing catastrophic in the first "Terms of Use" of Firefox, users of any commercial browser, such as Chrome or Edge, are unlikely to even notice such changes. However, as is often the case, Mozilla received negative feedback for departing from previous statements, thanks to which Firefox stood out against the background of competitors, which never promised not to sell user data or not to use it to improve functionality. And since Firefox's fortunes in the browser market have fallen quite significantly in recent years, Mozilla will have to rely more on active monetization to survive. Firefox fans will have to accept this, or look for alternatives that may later also change the rules of use towards greater commercialization of the product.