Firefox’s New Terms of Use and Privacy Notice ⇥ mjtsai.com
While I am on the subject of Mozilla, the organization added a terms of use document for Firefox and revised its privacy obligations. It went badly.
Jan Schaumann on Mastodon:
Wait, what? By using #Firefox, I now grant Mozilla “a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use” any data I “upload or input”? That seems, uhm, rather broad. Wtf.
Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica:
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. […]
This is the same thing Adobe did. It’s not great to put the key information in what is essentially a FAQ that doesn’t seem as legally binding as a ToS. And the clarification says that they can only use the data as described in the Privacy Notice, while the actual Terms of Service say that that Mozilla gets “all rights necessary” including using it as described in the Privacy Notice. So it seems like the Privacy Notice cannot constrain their behavior, but they want us to think it does.
Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:
After fielding user backlash over its new Terms of Use last week, Firefox browser maker Mozilla has rewritten its policy to address issues around the overly broad language it had previously used. Critics said the terms implied Mozilla was asking users for the rights to whatever data they input into the browser or upload, which some worried would be then sold to advertisers or AI companies.
I find Mozilla’s explanations for these changes sufficient, but I also understand why users were worried. The document said what it said. I do not see Mozilla saying these interpretations were legally incorrect. Like Tsai, I also thought first of Adobe’s terms of use update — another entry in a long list of spooky boilerplate permissive language in a contract.