Information about the New Terms of Use and Updated Privacy Notice for Firefox

[AshleyT]

For the first time, we’re introducing a Terms of Use for Firefox, alongside an updated Privacy Notice.

Earlier today, we published a blog post explaining why we’re making this change and what it means for you.

Now, we want to hear from you.

We’re committed to engaging with our community and keeping you informed about how we build Firefox—and why we make the decisions we do. Firefox wouldn’t be where it is today without the support of our users, and we want to continue working together to build a better internet for all.

To kick off the discussion, here are a few key points from the blog post:

• Transparency matters. We’re introducing a Terms of Use to provide clarity on what users agree to before starting to browse.
• Privacy remains a priority. Our updated Privacy Notice gives a more detailed, easy-to-read explanation of our data practices.
• You stay in control. Firefox is designed to respect user choice, with responsible defaults and simple tools to manage your data.

We’d love to hear your thoughts! Check out the full blog post and share your feedback here. If you have any questions, let us know—we’ll be actively monitoring the discussion and will reply where we can.

[jkaelin]

You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet. 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.

This sounds like a clear violation of:

• Principle 4 - Individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.

It also sounds like boilerplate AI harvesting language. If this is intended specifically for the AI chatbot, that needs to be clearly carved out, and not included in the general terms.

[0x4261756D]

Why would Mozilla need a license for the information a user enters into Firefox? There should be no exchange of information with any service of Mozilla necessary upon entering information or uploading media somewhere, unless of course that somewhere is a Mozilla website.

I am deeply disturbed by the possible implications of this ToU document and will be actively searching for an alternative to Firefox unless this is changed.

It is quite sad seeing Mozilla repeatedly alienating their core userbase and ruining the only sufficiently advanced alternative to the Chromium monopoly.

Best regards,

a not angry, just very disappointed Firefox-user

[Quackles]

Something I'm confused about. I see the terms links to the Acceptable Use Policy.

If Mozilla plans to enforce that for users of Firefox, how does it intend to determine if users are violating the policy while protecting privacy?

If not, why is it in there? The terms make it sound like it applies to the Firefox browser itself.

[welyr]

"Privacy remains a priority": Every company tells us  something to the effect that "We value your privacy".... while they collect and sell our data. 

"You stay in control" : Every company tells us something like this... while they bury "opt out" mechanisms for features we don't know we need to opt out of about three screens deep.

Ordinary people ARE NOT LAWYERS.  And we cannot read and actually understand massive blocks of legal jargon constantly presented to us during the course of operating a device.  Unfortunately, every company today has discovered that they can bury a fifty page long legal document in a link on any app or website and people will click "OK" to it our of a sense of learned helplessness.  That is part of the reason some of us prefer open source software.

One of the worst things all such services contain are provisions like this one: "Every once in a while, Mozilla may decide to update these Terms. We will post the updated Terms online. We will take your continued use of Firefox as acceptance of such changes. We will post an effective date at the top of this page to make it clear when we made our most recent update"

This is basically saying that every single time I use Firefox, it's apparently my job to go look up your terms of service and determine if they have changed since the last time I used it, and see if I am still OK with the new terms. 

Your "Acceptable use" for terms for FireFox raise all kinds of issues.  A person in some countries might find themselves doing something that would violate your "Acceptable use" for FireFox because they are living under an oppressive regime which makes things like exercise free speech illegal, just as one example.

Some FireFox users in the US might now be in a similar situation.  We are at the very least about to lose most or all of the few consumer protections we had.  But also some might now have a lot more to worry about than targeted advertising.  Think of scenarios like a whistleblower talking to a reporter, a protester organizing a rally, or someone trying to order abortion medication online. 

What do not want a vague warm fuzzy but legally meaningless statement that you "value our privacy".  What we want is a GUARANTEE that you won't share or sell our data.   Mozilla previously promised me that your product had "no shady privacy notices or advertiser backdoors".   But if I am reading the privacy policy correctly, data collected by FireFox might be used to serve up ads to us.  I was previously promised by Mozilla that there would be no sneaky back doors for advertisers.  So are you asking permission for this, or forgiveness?

Thank you

[Davo]

Google deprecated Manifest 2 (yesterday, for a lot of people), crippling uBlock Origin and similar extensions, giving Firefox its first real chance in years to reclaim users interested in privacy and ad blocking. So as its first official act Mozilla decides to go business-school bureaucratic and give itself our data for training an AI (or whatever money-making purpose they feel like this week). Of all the boneheaded mistakes Mozilla has been guilty of in the past decade or so, all the slap-in-the-face insults visited upon users, this has to be right at the top. Unbelievable. Mozilla account cancelled. I'm done.

[fraggedy_andy]

---

You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet. 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.

How long do you hold those rights to our data? Is it the length of a search? 90 days? Indefinitely? This is written in a way that feels vague, threatening to personal privacy, and in a way that obfuscates all of the details I would want to know to comfortably use Firefox.

Firefox is proving again to be terrible at messaging. All this seems to have done is to spook your community. I've read the statement, I've read other comments on the statement, and each person seems to have a different interpretation. And this feels like it came out of nowhere. Was this discussed in some blog post before it was released? How many of your users do you think actually read those? 

It feels like Mozilla keeps making the same mistakes over and over, making changes without doing more public outreach to build user trust in the changes. How are we supposed to trust you or that you have our best interests?

[KelsonV]

Mozilla and/or Firefox has no good reason to ask for a license for user content except when interacting with Mozilla sites or services, and even then it should be clear that's what we're doing.

You want a license to display my reply to this forum post? Sure! That makes sense!

You want a license to something I wrote in an email while logged into webmail though Firefox? That looks like it would be covered by the current wording, and that's NOT ACCEPTABLE.

If, as your blog post claims, you intend to put users' privacy first, fix your terms of service so they actually *do*.

Using Firefox with a third-party site or service should *never* give Mozilla a license to that activity or content. And using a Mozilla service should only grant a license for uses the user would *expect* -- not potential hidden reuse sometime down the line.

[reconbot]

If you’re not going to use the stuff I put into the primary application on my computer that I use to communicate with everyone in my life, to create art, write stories, and share photos and video, then why are you taking a license to use it however you want? Just in case?

[indutny]

Licensing your information to a company should be an individual user's choice, period. Blanket and implicit (because most users won't read or hear about ToS) abandonment of user information rights towards any corporation is not just unacceptable, but immoral. In the unfortunate age of LLMs we already see our own data being abused against us and used to empower all encompassing Surveillance Economy. Firefox's primary public image is of a company fighting for Privacy and against Browser monopoly. By destroying user's trust in both, you are destroying the only viable alternative to Chromium based browsers. Is that really in the best interests of your users?

Additionally, Terms of Service imply the right to refuse the service to a user, and in fact there is a Termination section describing that: "Mozilla can suspend or end anyone’s access to Firefox at any time for any reason". As a backbone of free web, why would you choose to deny access to not just browser, but websites and other service that the user access with them and might not be able to access otherwise (e.g. if they have their password stored and managed by Firefox)?

[Maupertuis]

I hoped exiting of Mitchell Baker would drive some sense home to the C-suite, and maybe, just maybe they'd re-think about the position that they've been taking for the past decade. But I also know that I have higher chance of encountering a unicorn than Mozilla fixing, or at the very least, not going further down this path. 

Why do you need a ToS? I'm just using your browser. Clearly state that it's for your other online services(including Mozilla account), and not the browser. Don't do legal jargon.

There are lots of other things that are of much higher priority, this is not one of them.