Firefox maker Mozilla deleted a promise to never sell its users’ personal data and is trying to assure worried users that its approach to privacy hasn’t fundamentally changed. Until recently, a Firefox FAQ promised that the browser maker never has and never will sell its users’ personal data. An archived version from January 30 says:
Does Firefox sell your personal data?
Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.
That promise is removed from the current version. There’s also a notable change in a data privacy FAQ that used to say, “Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.”
The data privacy FAQ now explains that Mozilla is no longer making blanket promises about not selling data because some legal jurisdictions define “sale” in a very broad way:
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).
Mozilla didn’t say which legal jurisdictions have these broad definitions.
lolololol
They can’t just promise they “never will” and then get rid of it. People who used the service under the original agreement should still be able to claim that benefit since it was promising to never sell it.
I haven’t been presented with any Ts and C’s. Do they apply if I already installed Firefox before this?
Trust me bro
They’re cash strapped and cash strapped companies are the worst when it comes to being trustworthy. That’s all the calculus that needs to be done.
They’re not that cash strapped though. Their blog post says that they need the revenue to ‘grow’, and they go on to talk about the new people they’ve added to the board. So it isn’t really about getting enough money to survive. It’s about getting money to support a top-heavy company structure.
So sad. I have used Firefox since 2006. Today I removed it for good from all of my devices. So long old friend. I cant wait for Ladybird to release.
what is your current open source / FOSS alternative?
zen i heard is good. probably gonna give it a try one of these days
please pay me if you want to sell my data. At the end of the day I am a business and need to cover operating cost.
https://thehackernews.com/2025/03/mozilla-updates-firefox-terms-again.html?m=1
Apparently they changed it due to backlash.
Ok so I don’t have to change browsers?
There are no alternative browsers out there. Our situation has came down to choose one of the least evil out there.
Google really needs to be broken up. They’ve become the Ma Bell of the internet.
Oh for fuck’s sake! List of Firefox alternatives:
Windows/Linux/MacOS:
Android:
- DuckDuckGo? f-droid
- FOSS Browser? https://codeberg.org/Gaukler_Faun/FOSS_Browser
iOS: ??
No User Tracking
We don’t collect personal information from users. We don’t track users. We don’t sell user data. We have no affiliation with any advertising companies.
I read somewhere that Librewolf is not recommended because they are a small team and slow to patch vulnerabilities / integrate security fixes from Firefox.
Is it true? (Sincere question)
Valid concern as I use their browser often. From their FAQ (link):
Brave is fine with for iOS with build in adblocker
Isn’t Librewolf tied to Firefox’ TOS?
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Five.
No.
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I’m checking right now, but it’s kind of unclear. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like Librewolf picks and chooses what to use from Firefox, yeah?
I’m also looking into the TOR browser.
The thing about open-source software is that if you fork the software, then your fork can have its own rules.
You can even make the fork of the software fully closed source except for the open source software that you used to originally develop it.
You can sell open source software as if it were proprietary.
You can basically do anything you want with it as long as you respect the original source from the code that you have taken.
Once the software is no longer in Mozilla’s hands, then Mozilla’s portion of the license no longer applies.
That’s what I thought, but there are many people in this very thread saying the opposite. From what I read on Librewolf’s site, it seems to back up what you are saying.
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Oh look, that’s four.
All the forks pick and choose but features can be enabled or disabled, or removed entirely. Telemetry is always removed, whereas DRM or cookie settings can be turned off by default.
If you want some kind of Tor browser without all the Tor thing, Mullvad has its fork too from Tor (like the fixed display as a rectangle to prevent fingerprinting).
It’s free and open-source but it’s probably a bit annoying to use daily and it’s barebones: https://mullvad.net/en/browser
Mullvad needs to make an android version.
Ironfox for Android?
Too new to recommend, IMO.
Added
Also Zen Browser
Added
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Why wouldn’t they be optional? Every other change like this has been before.
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There’s also Servo by the Linux Foundation and Ladybird.
These are actual different browsers and engines all together compared to FF spin-offs.
I’m still super waiting for Lady Bird. I cannot wait to give it a try, but it’s gonna be like 2026 before they start rolling out builds for general use.
I’m excited for these to mature but they are still developing and would not recommend them for regular use
I moved to LibreWolf a couple of months ago. I’ll move further away if I need to.
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)
So in other words we sell your data and get paid for it, and some countries won’t let us lie about it.
Probably caving into googles demands
Yeah, I think it would be very fucking easy to say “we don’t sell your data” by any definition… Literally all you need to do is not fucking sell people’s data
I don’t like this but it’s gonna take more for me to switch. I am very happy with Firefox for my use-case and workflow it works really well. However I think they are shooting themselves in the foot by starting to take away some of the most crucial advantages with Firefox compared to Chrome. I mean if both are awful for privacy then why use Firefox?
If you’re going to a Chromium browser, at least go to Vivaldi since it’s a) based on Chromium not Chrome and b) not based in the US.
The only bad thing it has going for it is that it uses the Chrome web store for extensions.
VIvaldi is cool, but its not open source. If you worry about the trustworthiness of you browser, picking an open source one would be best IMO. Among the chromium-based, there are chromium itself, brave, …
And what they say about being commercially viable is true, they can’t die on this hill. It means death of complete privacy either way.
Mozilla are a non profit organisation. Their recent blog post says that they will invest in advertising to increase short-term revenue that they need to “grow”. The blog goes on to talk about the increase in board members, and new leaders being added. The CEO and these new leaders are highly paid…
To me this looks bad. It looks to me that Mozilla’s new leaders have pushed out the old; and are now moving towards advertising and selling user data not because they need it to stabilise and survive, but because they need it to pay the people making the decision to burn trust and reputation. It has become a top-heavy organisation, and greed has seeped in.
A few people will be self-enriched by this, and then the orgasation will be weaker as a result.
Another decade and we’ll be back inside libraries, let’s stock up on epubs while we still have internet browsing.
Mind you, this is just step one and other steps WILL follow. Mozilla looked at other enshittified products from large companies that make a lot of money and thought “we could have that too!”
It’s a pattern I keep seeing, over and over. This is the end of Firefox as we knew it. I’m sure a good fork, run by a non profit foundation will sprout soon enough, but the name for a privacy browser won’t be Firefox no more
You can always install a fork
I remember a time when Google wrote “Don’t be evil” all over their stuff…
dude i worked in a buncha different college libraries around the time of google’s initial ascension. Google slayed. it was awesome, in 2000.
now? google is a drippy search engine.
There’s a phrase that is still very close to that in some company statement still, I sort of view it as pointless to talk about. We know they’re evil by their actions, and they were evil before they removed it in sure. If the statement is what matters, it’s still basically there, just not the motto. It’s just not worth worrying or talking about. They do so much worse shit. A friend of mine was recently let go after protesting about their response to the genocide in Gaza.
