Firefox Threatens Suicide, Then Backpedals

On February 26, 2025, Mozilla announced a new Terms of Use (TOU) for Firefox. Their actions caused an immediate uproar from loyal Firefox users around the world. Once you see the original change to their TOU, you will fully understand the uproar. Below is that text:

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.

Say WHAT?!

Even to me, that sounds a bit extreme. And I’m not as conspiracy minded as some. I do like to do what I can to preserve some resemblance of privacy, but there’s only so much you can do. With Google vacuuming up all of your public and private data it can get its grubby little paws on, to the vast majority of websites that have the Facebook Pixel embedded on it so that Facebook can track users across the web (whether they are Facebook members or not), some of that control of your data is simply … well … out of your control.

Aside from taking what many consider to be drastic measures, there’s little I can do about the Facebook Pixel embedded on so many webpages. And, while it’s totally possible to “de-Google” yourself, you will end up missing out on many options, services, and features available on the internet, given the wide breadth of services that are tied to Google.

Let’s not even get into the discussion of all of the “metadata” that’s collected by various government agencies (and corporate entities, too) across the globe. One or two pieces of metadata aren’t going to tell you much by themselves. But, thousands of pieces of metadata, put together like that 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle at your dining room table, will paint a quite accurate profile of you and your interests.

The outrage among Firefox users over the change to the Firefox TOU, as I mentioned, was almost immediate. Check out this thread on Reddit. You can literally feel their anger.

Mozilla’s change to the Firefox TOU, along with the outrage of Firefox users, caught the immediate attention of media outlets around the world.

Here’s the Mozilla blog entry announcing the new TOU text, announced just two days (February 28, 2025) after the original text was posted:

On Wednesday (February 26, 2025) we shared that we’re introducing a new Terms of Use (TOU) and Privacy Notice for Firefox. Since then, we’ve been listening to some of our community’s concerns with parts of the TOU, specifically about licensing. Our intent was just to be as clear as possible about how we make Firefox work, but in doing so we also created some confusion and concern. With that in mind, we’re updating the language to more clearly reflect the limited scope of how Mozilla interacts with user data.

Here’s what the new language will say:

You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.

In addition, we’ve removed the reference to the Acceptable Use Policy because it seems to be causing more confusion than clarity.

Privacy FAQ

We also updated our Privacy FAQ to better address legal minutia around terms like “sells.” While we’re not reverting the FAQ, we want to provide more detail about why we made the change in the first place.

TL;DR 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. We changed our language because some jurisdictions define “sell” more broadly than most people would usually understand that word. Firefox has built-in privacy and security features, plus options that let you fine-tune your data settings.

The reason we’ve stepped away from making blanket claims that “We never sell your data” is because, in some places, the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is broad and evolving. As an example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) defines “sale” as the “selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by [a] business to another business or a third party” in exchange for “monetary” or “other valuable consideration.”

Similar privacy laws exist in other US states, including in Virginia and Colorado. And that’s a good thing — Mozilla has long been a supporter of data privacy laws that empower people — but the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they’re considered to be “selling data.”

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our Privacy Notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

We’re continuing to make sure that Firefox provides you with sensible default settings that you can review during onboarding or adjust at any time.

Some Words About Privacy

I do not subscribe to the school of thought that goes something like, “well, I’ve done nothing wrong, so I have nothing to worry about.” I do expect to be able to maintain a certain level of privacy in my online activities. If I send a snail mail letter, I have a reasonable expectation that only me and its recipient know its contents. I should expect nothing less with my online activities. That is the reason I have my Google Ads settings set so that it is the least “targeted” to what Google perceives as “my interests.”

That is also the primary reason I use a VPN. I don’t believe that my ISP has any right to know where I go or what I do on the internet, and I don’t want them to be able to send me “targeted ads” based on my use of the internet. I pay them to provide internet service to me, not to monitor my every move and then target me with ads that they “think” I might be interested in. Talk about visions of George Orwell’s 1984! Thus, by using a VPN, the traffic between my computer and my VPN’s server is encrypted. My ISP can only see traffic, and not the specifics of where I go or what I do. But, at the end of the day, there’s only so much I can do to protect my privacy and that of my data. I consider it a trade-off. Call it an acceptable level of risk.

I do have to admit, in the interest of full transparency, that I am one of those loyal Firefox users. I’ve used Firefox for well over 95% of my web activities ever since it was Netscape Navigator. I’ve strayed a few times (and usually for very short periods of time), but I’ve always come back to Firefox as my primary web browser. I’ve always liked their philosophy, as well as the abundance of useful add-on tools that make my “web life” a LOT more enjoyable and productive.

Summary

To say that the change from Mozilla was unexpected and unanticipated would be a gross understatement. Anyone should expect Mozilla to, at least by this time (what … well over 20 years later?), have a pretty good understanding of their user base, and the ideals that are important to them. It was almost as if Mozilla was threatening to commit suicide with its poorly implemented rollout of the Firefox TOU agreement. From the outside looking in, this definitely feels like Mozilla’s marketing and legal departments overextended and made a mess of everything. Of course, the “higher ups” had to sign off on this overreach, too.

Even though Firefox isn’t the top choice in browsers these days, they still have a sizable share of the browser market. Today, the Chromium-based browsers, led by Google Chrome, occupy that top spot in the browser market. I’ve not hidden my utter disdain for the Chromium-based browsers. At least twice a month for the past several years, we’ve heard about the security vulnerabilities that riddle and rifle throughout their code. I’ve found the Chromium-based browsers to be literal hogs, both for memory and CPU cycles, to the point where if I “push them too hard,” they become inoperable and lock up my computer.

So, do I have Chromium-based browsers installed on my computer? I sure do. There are a handful of poorly-designed sites (meaning that they don’t conform to W3 standards) that ONLY support Chromium-based browsers. It actually reminds me of a similar situation not all that many years ago surrounding Internet Explorer and Microsoft not insisting that it follow W3 standards. I actually have three Chromium-based browsers installed, but I certainly don’t use them very often. And, they definitely aren’t my “daily drivers.” I’ll occasionally use them to access those poorly-designed sites, and to sometimes just open them to check their development progress from time to time. While I used to have a whole host of add-ons that I used in Chromium-based browsers, I no longer even bother with any add-ons, since I so rarely use the browsers they are intended for.

But, I don’t put all of the blame for this fiasco on Mozilla. I also have to find fault with many of those loyal Firefox users for their hypocrisy. Many of these users bemoaning the TOU language also have Facebook accounts, yet don’t think twice about how much of their personal and private information is being vacuumed up by Meta, simply by using Facebook. How can you be worried about the privacy of your data while using Firefox, but be utterly unconcerned by your total lack of privacy on Facebook? It simply doesn’t add up.

For me, I’ll continue using Firefox as my go-to, daily-use web browser that I use for the vast, vast majority of my web traffic. I don’t feel as if I have any other choice.