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.

Update

Thank you all for taking the time to share your questions and reactions. We’ve been listening and made some updates to address areas of concern. I’ve started a new discussion topic covering what’s changed in the Terms of Use based on your feedback, and clearing up a few points of confusion.

[saphkey]

Someone told me that the default Google search engine is somehow proxied through Mozilla (or at least was at some point).
Mozilla then anonymizes that, before being sent to Google. Makes sense for search suggestions for example.

Mozilla gets paid by google to have Google as default seach engine, so in a pedantic way they were already selling your data. (although you can of course choose to just use a different search engine).

Regardless of that being selling data or not. Truth is it means that you did for part of your searching go through Mozilla. If you
1. used the default Google search engine
2. have search suggestions enabled

[rdavidatwell]

But again, if you needed a license to perform searches, Google would force you to agree to one before you searched on their homepage. They do not. DuckDuckGo would force you to agree to one before you searched on their homepage. They also do not. In fact, no search engine that I'm aware of requires a license before performing a search.

In addition, performing a search is no different than fetching a webpage. Firefox does not proxy your searches before sending them to Google. And if you don't need to agree to a license before searching on Google.com in a browser tab, you don't need to do so before searching through the browser API.

[MattBCool]

This update hopefully address your concerns and is helpful. We are continuing to monitor and listen to the concerns of the community here and we welcome more discussion.

[Ten]

Are you kidding?

> We changed our language because some jurisdictions define “sell” more broadly than most people would usually understand that word.

> 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.”

How the hell is that "more broad than most people would usually understand that word"?

[rdavidatwell]

Incidentally, @AshleyT , I know you're just doing your job. We're mad at the company, not at you in particular. But please stop giving us the company line. This is bad, bad, bad; and pretending like these are minor disagreements that can just be explained and clarified away is missing the entire point we're making. We know what Mozilla means (or at least, what they want us to understand) by the policy. We have no issues with the platitudes. We have all the concern in the world about the policy itself.

[JamesHill]

Mozilla has no right to in any way use or store the things the new policy mentions, nor do they need to. you are lying out of your ass.

edit: to be clear, I am referring to the company and not the employee specifically.

[SirWolf]

The new CEO should be just fired, she's been doing nothing but destroying Firefox from the start.

[Natureshadow]

> Regarding our position around licensing, we need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use the words you type into Firefox to perform your searches, for example.

Quite clearly NOT.

Firefox is a program running locally on my computer. I type things into search engines using it. If at any point here my search query even comes close to a Mozilla server, that is a serious bug in itself.

[alienghic]

Please allow people donating to the mozilla foundation to elect representatives to the board of directors so we can vote to decide if it's possible to fund raise to keep firefox instead of turning to advertising.

[pva]

I agree. Probably foundation needs a fork. Because I do not donate for this **bleep**.

[Anonymous]

Ashley,

Thank you for writing.   I want to be clear what I’m saying here really isn’t about you, it’s about the text of the Terms of Use.  Such policies are written by lawyers, and my own experience dealing has taught me to be skeptical of anything a lawyer says or writes if they are not actually working -for me-.  I apologize for the fact that I will be addressing the language of the Terms of Use and other policies from that perspective.

You wrote:

Regarding our position around licensing, we need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible.

I notice you are using the word “license” and not saying “Terms of Use”. Firefox already had a license, and I agreed to it at the time I previously installed it. That is separate from the Terms of Use, and as @rdavidatwell wrote earlier “Terms of Use and Privacy Policy documents are for web services, not for browsers”. The fundamental reason I am upset is because it looks like Firefox is transitioning from being a piece of software to a “service” which has “Terms of Use”.  That means now those terms can change at any time even if I’m not installing a new copy or version of that software.

Then there is the “Privacy Policy”. I pulled up the old version in archive.org, and there are definitely big changes which appear to authorize data to be collected and used for advertising purposes. As @jkaelin  points out above, it looks like a very important promise that “we don’t sell your personal data” is also being removed from the code. That seems like a big deal.

Regarding your second bullet:

With respect to AI, our goal with Firefox is to build a browser that meets all the needs of a modern internet user while protecting your privacy and your rights online.

My need in the current “high threat environment” is a browser with no AI and zero telemetry so that I can have the maximum amount of privacy and security I can achieve. You acknowledge that there are AI features that are on by default. And while you state that this can be disabled, in fact I was unaware of the “alt-text” AI specifically until you pointed it out. I can therefore conclude based on Mozilla’s direction and what you are saying is that other AI features which are “on by default” will be added in the future, and that I might not even know about them or that I would need to turn them off. (that’s not even getting into whether turning the feature off really achieves what I need: not just to hide features but to ensure they are not there at all).

In your third bullet you wrote:

Our Acceptable Use policy has been in effect for some time now. These broad principles govern what we think is appropriate behavior on the specific user platforms we manage, like Mozconnect and our support platforms, not your browsing behavior.

But the language of the FireFox “Terms of Use” state:

Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations.

This is specifically stating that FireFox, not MozConnect, must comply with the Acceptable Use Policy.  If the intent was what you stated, then that language in the Terms of Use is simply wrong.

Unfortunately all that matters in the end is the language of the terms of service, not anything you might say or promise here. 

Additionally this new policy was rolled out to be effective immediately rather than say 30 days from now.  People didn’t really have time to evaluate or ask questions about it before it went into effect. That by itself is a problem.  We must now assume Mozilla could change the Terms of Use with zero notice and people will only see it long after changes go into effect. 

I hope Mozilla will consider changing their direction.

[fraggedy_andy]

Now we're getting mixed messages from Mozilla. The ToU says that we "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." But don't say how long you have those rights for. However your privacy says you don't have rights to our data.

WHICH ONE IS IT? You haven't clarified anything. If anything, it's worse!

[KelsonV]

"we need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible."

No, you don't. You never have before, and you don't need it now. Anything that doesn't go through your servers, you don't need a license for. And anything that doesn't *need* to go through your servers shouldn't be going through them in the first place.

[pva]

AsheleyT, please, leave mozilla foundation. Don't destroy project that was build by so many talented people!

The clarifications you gave are not improving situation. This should stay in firefox, otherwise it's not Firefox any more:

"Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox produ...

If you don't understand this, how could you lead this project?

[DMConstantino]

Thank you for taking the time to engage, but unfortunately, I can't consider that the reply is in any way convincing, or really addressing the issues with valid arguments.

• regarding licensing: you're showing a fundamental misunderstanding between a product, and service; a web browser and a search engine; and how copyright actually works.
  • Firefox is a web browser, a product, when I use Firefox, I'm using a browser.
    Mozilla manufactured the browser, and in some cases it distributed it to the users, and that's it. When Firefox users are using the web browser, Mozilla isn't doing anything on their behalf. It's the user that is directly doing. Just like when I get a hammer, the hammer manufacturer is not hammering the nails on behalf of the those that swing the hammer towards the nails, Mozilla isn't doing anything when we use Firefox, it's the user, those who have Firefox installed on their computer, who are doing something, Mozilla isn't doing something, and certainly not something on their behalf.
  • Firefox is a web browser, it's not a search engine, when we use Firefox to search, or request something on the web, we're using Firefox, Mozilla is not involved, because Mozilla doesn't even have a search engine, so you're argument for the need for Mozilla to have a license for doing searches, is totally invalid, and anyone who has a basic grasp on how the web works, knows this. It's insulting that you use such an obviously fake argument, on a highly technical crowd.
  • Any web search engine query isn't even a type of creative work protected by copyright, I do know that this is a bold statement, but I'm pretty sure no judge would ever classify it as such, even if they could in theory be a class of protected works, the almost entirety of them are not because most of them don't have enough originality to be. Furthermore, it's also certain that any copy that is technically required, and exclusively kept temporarily, for the single reason of satisfying the technical needs of facilitating the communication of a work, don't require any licensing. This is how the Internet and any data, and telecommunication network is legally allowed to exist.
  • Another point, no other Open Source browser has ever had such condition for usage, and even Firefox existed many, many years, without the need for such requirement, proving that it's clear to all that not necessary, and it's therefore abusive.
• In respect with AI, if you're building AI, based on confidential, private data from users, which might even include very sensitive data, without their explicit and informed consent, you're breaking all the principles that Mozilla has ever said it stands for.
• The acceptable use policy has all the problems people have pointed out, you're not addressing any of our concerns in your reply. They make Firefox not being Free Software and Open Source Software, and some of them are illegal, and they are certainly not smart, or aligned with Mozilla stated values, and in some cases not being illegal, they are certainly abusive (like the one about sexual and violent content).
  • The acceptable use policy is being presented as a policy that applies to the Firefox Web Browser, not only the Mozilla online/web services. Your statement contradicts what is actually written on the documents.
    This is what is actually written on the "Firefox terms of use" (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/#you-are-responsible-for-the-consequences-of...) there about that:
    This means that it's about the browser, and at least not only about the "web based information services" as you (Mozilla) call them on the "about:rights#webservices" page that ships with Firefox.
  • Furthermore, even if those terms would not apply to the browser, but only to the "web based information services", they would still be awful because they mean that:
    • it can't be used to send unsolicited messages, which means I can't message initiate a contact my family or friends, if I'm a journalist I can't initiate a contact to get a new source, if I'm researcher I can't use it to do communicate to request research information from people I've never contacted and got authorization before (and can't use this service to request such authorization), and many other reasonable uses.
    • I can't store and synchronize bookmarks and tabs for any purpose that in any way can be considered of sexual or violent nature, including for researching, if they are considered art, are for education, are part of journalistic work, etc...
    • They are useless, as it's not a contract that creates the obligation to follow the law,
    • They are certainly not aligned with Mozilla stated values (my previous premises and arguments, as well as others on this thread prove it).

[pva]

BTW, do I understand correctly that pornhub blocked by these so called "new rights"?

[DMConstantino]

I wouldn't call it blocked,because I wouldn't describe this legal instrument as a block, but it's certainly against the rules, but maybe so are so pictures from some museums, some movies on Netflix/Disney/Amazon Prime/other streaming services, even newscasts on Youtube with images from war, or from crimes.

The degree of lack of though that go into this policy is appalling.

[DMConstantino]

And it's not even about pictures, any depiction, or representation of those types of content are affected, and all types of things are affected, not only art, information/journalism and research, so is education (sexual education, anti-bullying, etc...), all sorts of campains to prevent risks and abuses, etc...

[BenCos18]

with all due respect that is a lot of junk 

you do not need such a vague update for that anyway...

[pg_78]

---

Regarding our position around licensing, we need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use the words you type into Firefox to perform your searches, for example.

It feels like you're being put in the uncomfortable position of an intermediary here and having to deliver the "party line".

Would it be possible to arrange a Q&A session between the community and the actual lawyers who literally wrote the verbiage here? That could be clarifying for both sides.

[Kuroichi_Neko]

You mentioned "Acceptable Use Policy" within same blog post, if it's an actual legal document, why it's not accessible within "Legal" page? That "Acceptable Use Policy" page is only accessible within "Firefox Terms of Use" page. And thus that's indicates, that something is amiss in my view.

As for AI - If you do implement that feature, it's better be OFF by default. Not everyone need that and if someone actually want to use it, they need to opt-in in order to use. Simple as that.

[nouckey]

if any of us wanted that or didn't care, wouldn't we be on chrome right now ?? the only reason firefox still exists is the goodwill and word of mouth of a very devoted but small userbase, that is completely turning against you, everyone who did not alert Mozilla about this very obvious fact is incompetent, and everyone who did not listen should be fired.

[Coleisforrobot]

No, your Acceptable Use policy has never been in effect on Firefox. You (Mozilla) have only just made the conscious decision to put it in the Firefox ToU. You (AshleyT, the representative of Mozilla and not the individual person) are knowingly lying.

Also, a clarification on a blog doesn't change the words in the ToU. You (Mozilla) should clarify this in there.

[flake_]

> We knew this would have a lot of interest and so we’ve waited to dive into the conversation because we see some themes emerging that I’ll respond to broadly here.

We don't have "interest" - we've been using FF for decades(!) and now wake up to the climax of en**bleep**tification and "Nope. Never have, never will." being removed.

And because you knew this would turn into a dumpster fire you ... waited and watched? If you need to "explain" why "LEGALLY" everything is totally LEGAL ...

I just rage-quitted this sinking ship but I couldn't resist to comment on how someone has tagged the post as "lied" xD - love it!

[mention]

If you don't answer these simple questions then you (Mozilla) are not acting in good faith:

What are your future plans for monetisation of this data?
Why are you removing the 'We don't sell your data' in April?

What are the financial forecasts for this?
Who is making the decisions about this?
Why can't you be open and honest?

Every browser and internet company says they care about your data. You say things are clear from your documentation but not to me and I have PhD level education and have been using 'Firefox' since NCSA Mosaic. 

A simple statement in your documentation stating clearly all of the ways that you intend to get revenue and ballpark figure of how much this will raise. 

It is absolutely not necessary to sell (or otherwise) monetise user data to develop a browser. 

Why can't people just be clear about things?

Does making money come under providing users with a better service legal cover?

[X27]

How is this a good thing?

So when I write story's images and videos I upload via the browser it is supposed to be between my computer and the website and no middle man, this seems no better privacy for us user's

I really don't want to change browser's but if Mozilla is going this route then the future of Firefox and your company is beyond recovery at this point

be better Mozilla

[SirWolf]

I'm beyond angry, and it's staggering that you underestimated our reaction to this so badly. You've gone too far. Shame on you.

[SirWolf]

A bit of reminder from old times:

"Net neutrality, also known as network neutrality, is the principle that all internet traffic should be treated equally by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). This means that ISPs should not discriminate or charge differently based on the user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. The concept is designed to ensure a free and open internet, where users can access all legal content and services without interference or preference from ISPs."

Now compare that to what Firefox is doing right now.

[tom25519]

Yes, Mozilla shouldn't involve useless thing like politics, just focus on technology like Firefox and VPN, etc and privacy and freedom of Internet. 

[mattl_]

Mozilla doesn’t need to build any AI things. 

All Mozilla needs to do is: make a web browser that is standards compliant and does not adopt any of the nonsense that for-profit companies are doing to try and destroy the web. 

Mozilla doesn’t need to run a VPN service, data broker service or anything else. 

I just want my money to donate to the development of the browser. 

No AI stuff. No cryptocurrency donations. No proprietary plugins. No DRM. 

Firefox shouldn’t even have a EULA. Mozilla should be collecting ZERO information from the browser that they cannot collect from httpd logs. 

Anything beyond Firefox browsing the web and Thunderbird sending/receiving email/usenet messages should nothing for Mozilla to worry about. 

[merewin]

Mozilla should just go ahead and dissolve at this point. Betraying every single thing the Mozilla has stood for, for the past decade or more, over some ridiculous, planet destroying, thieving AI fad. Every single person who works for Mozilla is a failure, and should be ashamed of themselves.

[Thomasns]

I have been a loyal Firefox user since 1. There's been some disappointing decisions before but this one is over the line. I'm out and taking my VPN sub elsewhere. 

[simpaticoder]

Regarding your new terms of service and in particular this paragraph:

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.

I've been a strong proponent of Firefox for many years, since it came out around 2005, and have consistently suggested it to users as an alternative to Chrome (and Safari, where possible). I cannot continue to do so in good conscience given these terms. Nor can I continue using Firefox myself under these terms.

You are asserting ownership of all information I input through Firefox. Do you undrstand what this means in an age where we all interact with *everything* through the browser? Can you imagine if Microsoft or Apple asserted the same rights for their operating systems? As it stands, with this clause you give yourselves carte blanche to everything I say, do, or make and use your browser to send it to various sites. You give yourselves unrestricted access to my passwords, accounts, and interactions with those accounts with banks, medical providers, customers, friends, and more.

As of today, I am switching to Chromium (or a reasonable fork). Whether or not you reconsider this clause, the damage has been done to at least one user's trust, and I will not be coming back. I'm not sure what your intention was, but I also don't care: you should know better than to alienate your users, who are, as a class, more privacy- and rights-focused than average and yet you managed to poke us ALL right in the eye with this misstep.

To echo Dune's "may your knife chip and shatter", let me say: May your funding dry up and wither along with your already paultry market-share. I see now that your critics were right, that Mozilla existed merely as a fig leaf for Google's browser monopoly. Given the current political climate, it seems likely to me that Google will not need that fig leaf much longer, which leaves you, your legal teams, your leadership, and your engineers, looking for a job. Which perhaps explains this move, which gives Google a fig-leaf of another sort - they can now say, "Hey, look, WE aren't the bad guys, they are." Or, if you succeed in normalizing this outrageous power grab, they can grab the same power, too.

Shame on you, Mozilla. This bridge is burned and I don't think it can be rebuilt.

[Grugspro]

The new terms are vague and unacceptable, state clearly how and where the data is transferred to. I use Firefox to get away from data scrapers, and your removal of the promise to not sell my data in the Firefox FAQ is seen disapprovingly.

[FredJupiter]

"upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information"

Such sloppy wording is extremely risky. The expression obviously includes also my binary data including what I upload on behalf of my employer, i.e. his and other's confidential data. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE.

[i430VX]

As a longtime (admittedly not nearly as long of a time as some people here, however) Firefox user, I am very disappointed to see this change and lack of sufficient clarification and segmentation on the changes.

This said, I am frequently willing to play devil's advocate. As much of a shame as it is, maybe there is a valid argument for having AI/whatever services available in the browser to attract/retain a specific segment of users. Some of these services, being well, services, could feasibly need a terms of use attached to them for whatever reasons. And I do understand that Mozilla has not had a particularly good financial situation in quite some time, so the need to make money is there. I get that. But don't enshrine it into the policies that supporting Mozilla financially or in other ways with our data is a requirement to use the browser.

When there's a significant and very passionate installed user base of technical people who are using the product for privacy-oriented reasons, ambiguity and overzealousness with the privacy permissions / rights / licenses Mozilla grants themselves is not going to do this user base any favours. Even if it is NOT the intention at all for Mozilla to be construing that EVERYTHING happening by users in the Firefox browser has a license granted to Mozilla for their use, can be data-mined for profit, whatever... the current wording appears (IANAL) to be readily interpretable as such. If this intention really, truly, is not the case, then it is essential to properly reword the terms thoroughly to say exactly what is meant and exactly where, when, & how it applies, if this happens by default or is an opt-in thing. The premise (as can be interpreted presently) that a universal and unforgiving license deal is needed to use what is essentially a fancy tool and NOT (at its core, anyway) a service is just nuts.

As an example think of, say, a digital camera. This is usually completely (or virtually completely) a product... a tool. It may have auxiliary services, maybe cloud sync or automatic photo editing, whatever, I don't know. Feasibly these aspects could need terms of use to avoid liability on the company's part. Or whatever their goal is. But I think it is very likely you will not find a camera itself with terms of use, or one that grants the manufacturer rights to do as they please with any and all photos taken with the camera. Again... maybe this isn't Mozilla's intention, but plain and simple, it's how it's been laid out, and this is likely not going to be acceptable to a very large number of people.

I feel as if anything that would fall under the realm of being able to be used/sold by Mozilla should be opt in only and very clearly present the conditions of it on opt in. Heck, even make it easy to opt in. Add it on the first run screen that exists in the browser for new installations and/or major upgrades. It is just a certainty however that to a lot of people having such features or services exist on the platform at all will already make them uncomfortable.

I miss the days of "classic" Firefox for sure, but I still think it's a good browser. In fact I think its considerably better now than it was a few years ago. I try my best to promote the Firefox and other FOSS that I like - it would be a shame to see Firefox succumb to disconnection from the user base such as numerous other projects over time. Especially in this case when there's (IMO) no serious non-chromium options out there. I think a lot of people would argue that the death already happened some time ago, but I am hopeful that there is still a chance to recover.

[pg_78]

---

@i430VX wrote:

As an example think of, say, a digital camera. This is usually completely (or virtually completely) a product... a tool. It may have auxiliary services, maybe cloud sync or automatic photo editing, whatever, I don't know. Feasibly these aspects could need terms of use to avoid liability on the company's part. Or whatever their goal is. But I think it is very likely you will not find a camera itself with terms of use, or one that grants the manufacturer rights to do as they please with any and all photos taken with the camera.

---

Excellent analogy.

[zackc]

You guys just deleted the promise you made about never selling our 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"

[milet]

They had their fingers crossed behind back when they said.

But seriously: there is this new corporate trend of twisting meaning of words. Eg. "lifelong license" means now "12 months", "you purchase" means "you are granted temporary license" and so on. So this is Mozilla's "never": never, until we decide we can sell you like slaves.

[AshleyT]

Thank you for raising the concern and let me clarify. 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).