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Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke (www.theregister.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The answer to "what is Firefox?" on Mozilla's FAQ page about its browser used to read:

The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.

Now it just says:

The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.

In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.

A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ page. To answer the question, "is Firefox free?" Moz used to say:

Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it, and we don’t sell your personal data.

Now it simply reads:

Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it.

Again, a pledge to not sell people's data has disappeared. Varma insisted this is the result of the fluid definition of “sell” in the context of data sharing and privacy.

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 3 weeks ago (45 children)

In Firefox, type about:config in address bar, search for "sponsored" and "telemetry" and set all the paremeters you see from TRUE to FALSE. Done.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 weeks ago (13 children)

Seems like a much simpler solution is to just use LibreWolf where all these things are removed from the program already for you. That's the point of the fork.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

But it erases history. I use history all the time. Very annoying.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Is the same checkbox in the settings that Firefox has, it's just on by default. Have you considered just turning it off?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I haven't used it in a long time! It didn't occur to me maybe it's changed in the meantime.

I'll give it a shot.

EDIT: The history can be turned on np.

But there's no dark mode? In the setting for Dark Mode, there's just a statement that reads something like, "We believe people who are TRULY dedicated to leaving no fingerprints would NEVER use dark mode, so we disabled it!"

Like, that attitude sucks. I am only nominally concerned with fingerprints but hugely concerned with telemetry (and having my retina's fried out by blinding light).

I installed the Darkreader extension & it's fine, but it lays bare the developers' attitude about user choice & autonomy.

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