this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Read the post and I don't understand how the author reached the conclusion that this has been happening since 2017. They enabled telemetry by default in 2017, but there's no proof that data started being sold starting then.
Did you see that the privacy policy was updated to use Technical & Interaction data to "suggest relevant content"?
It's a package deal.
The "suggest relevant content" refers to their sponsors like websites that show up on the front page. It's not evidence that they actually sold that data to other companies.
To get rewarded for having those sponsors, Mozilla needs to inform those sponsors that its users clicked the sponsors. How would they do that without sending data about how many users clicked the sponsors? Any monetization of an Internet feature requires some form of tracking to be implemented.
I'm a little confused about where we disagree - but it might make it simpler to clarify that I said "shared", not sold. That seems to be exactly what they are saying in the privacy notices from both 2017 and today.
Whether it was sold and what that entailed isn't something we're going to be able to know without Mozilla telling us.
There's a big difference, the old privacy policy is written like Mozilla processed that data themselves to suggest sponsors, not that they shared that data with other companies.
I agree - so the question is if anything changed -- Mozilla has said that they are just clarifying their existing usage of data. Hence my read. Yes, this implies that Mozilla was previously deceptive and is being more transparent today, but that is also what they are saying.
If you disagree, I'd be curious to see where we see that Mozilla has explained that the new Privacy Notice is describing new practices by Mozilla rather than a clarification of their existing practice -- basically, why do you believe that.