Has Mozilla Just Started Selling Data About Its Users?

As Chromium-based browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge continue waging war against ad blockers in compliance with Manifest V3, more and more people are seeking alternative ways to explore the internet, turning their attention to options like Opera, Brave, and Firefox. However, it seems no one is without a sin, as the latter from the list has recently found itself at the center of controversy due to a series of coincidences happening at the same time, leading many to believe that Mozilla has begun selling user data and should therefore be avoided going forward.

The first and most significant of these “coincidences” was the introduction of Terms of Use and updated Privacy Notice for Firefox, which now include a provision that some may find oddly familiar, stating that “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.”

While fairly standard for such documents, the wording sparked an uproar online, prompting Mozilla to issue an update to the initial statement announcing the changes, where they emphasized that the new Terms of Use “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.”

However, this clarification did little to alleviate concerns, as the Privacy Notice itself includes statements such as, “Mozilla collects technical and interaction data, such as the position, size, views, and clicks on New Tab content or ads, to understand how people are interacting with our content and to personalize future content, including sponsored content.” And although opting out of marketing data collection seems both possible and relatively simple, the uneasiness remained due to the following two updates.

The second reason many began shunning Mozilla was the company’s updated FAQ section, specifically its part on buying and selling user data. Earlier this month, this section was incredibly straightforward and brief, stating only that “Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.”

Sometime between early February and today, however, it was revised and expanded, now offering much more ambiguity and wiggle room with the following wording:

“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).”

Here’s the before/after of what the section in question was like on February 6 and today, February 28:

Lastly, Mozilla has apparently backed away from its promise to never sell user data, a commitment that was completely removed from Firefox’s FAQ, as seen in GitHub updates and via the Wayback Machine:

And what do you think about Mozilla’s recent updates? Should the company and its browser no longer be trusted? Or is it all just a big misunderstanding caused by the corporate and legal lingo replacing straightforward yes-or-no answers? Share your thoughts down in the comments below!

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