Ask HN: Firefox may be selling our data. Can you recommend an alternative? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Firefox may be selling our data. Can you recommend an alternative?

19 pointsdevilsdata13 comments

Firefox just made a change their TOS copy that implies that they may begin selling our data [^1]. I'm a web developer– which means I need access to browser tools, and the 1Password extension. Are there privacy-focused forks of Firefox or an alternative browser you can recommend?

- [1] https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e#diff-a24e74e4595fa85440a2f4e7e5dcfe68aba6e1e593aef05a2d35581a91423847L60

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How does this statement [0] align with the claim in the title? Much less that Mozilla 'announced' such a thing.

> 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).

Maybe we can all take a step back before jumping to conclusions so quickly.

This feels more like legal posturing than a malicious change.

[0]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/faq/

> the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places

> We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners

This. What they seem to be saying is that -- at best -- they're riding so close to the edge of selling data that strict legal interpretations of the term "sale" have become important to them. It sounds like they're doing some shenanigans like not providing access to raw data, but doing some of the processing advertisers would do and selling that data.

You're correct that that statement conflicts with my post– I had only read diff in their `Tos copy updates` commit [0]. I also had just woken up, so I used the word announce incorrectly– I meant to say the diff implied it.

Thanks for your post. It's possible that they're preparing to sell our data, but it's also possible, based on the wording, that they're telling the truth about needing to change their privacy policy for different legal jurisdictions.

I do however want to raise a concern that Mozilla is currently facing a funding crisis[1], and they are likely scrambling to find a way to monetise something.

I've edited the title and description of my post for accuracy.

[0]: https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b...

[1]: https://lunduke.locals.com/post/5985554/mozilla-faces-financ...

Ah, I recommend LibreWolf - A hardened fork of Firefox, stripped of telemetry, with privacy settings locked down by default.

while librewolf is good, the default one is not viable for me

- delete data upon exit (cookies,... are gone): this is no go for day-to-day browser.

there are a few more i have to change out of the box as well but other than that, all is good.

I agree with this - you need to change a few settings unless you're an absolute purist - but once you have done that, it's basically a nicer, well-maintained professional Firefox fork

I just downloaded and fired up Waterfox.

Import of settings was confusing, but these restarts are a great way to prune bookmarks and never-used extensions. Other than this, operation has been smooth sailing.

GhostText just connected to the editor that Firefox and Safari were using. And ublock-origin was my first extension loaded.

https://www.waterfox.net/

The Duckduckgo browser seems to offer increased privacy compared to other browsers. In November 2024 Browsers page on link below showed: Significant protection scores out of 30 --> DuckDuckGo: 24 Brave: 19 Firefox: 4 Chrome: 2 Edge: 2 https://duckduckgo.com/compare-privacy

Iceweasel? Probably at least the Firefox versions packed by many Linux distributions will remove any unreasonable telemetry added, just like they used to remove the trademarked branding.

Stay tuned for Ladybird.

Or also try compiling it yourself right now.

it's not ready for day-to-day use yet. maybe in 2-3 years time

I'm posting this from Ladybird. It's easy to build but it's definitely not ready for prime time. Trying to search HN and sort results by date doesn't work, for example.

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