this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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Mozilla is NOT SELLING your DATA, but they are collecting it and sharing it with select partners in order to "stay comercially viable".
They're not claiming a right to sell data right now, but they have removed the promise to not sell data.
That promise is a canary statement. When the canary dies it's an indication of something, usually that it's time to stop using the product/service.
More specifically, they aren't claiming the right to sell data however they want. However, they do have to follow all legal requests, and they can bill for this provision. If a government compells them to sell they have to oblige.
Right, that's the claim I saw from the Foundation over the weekend (yesterday?) - "selling data" is SUCH a nebulous legal concept that's different in many jurisdictions that it's borderline impossible to keep that language anymore.
...I'm not sure how completely I buy that, but I can see where they're coming from. I hope that the Mozilla Foundation will clarify what data is being harvested and sold to whom, but I've studied enough history to know that transparency fading isn't a good sign.
Yeah I mean I feel like they're just being overly cautious here (as lawyers often are) when in fact there is no real precedent to support that position. The law perhaps could be interpreted to stretch the definition of sale broadly, but in practice it isn't right now.
Frankly, I find it offensive that businesses would choose to pass that minute risk onto the customer by weakening consumer rights.
In an aggregated and anonymized manner
Nobody believes that.
I would replace that "aggregated and anonymized" with an and/or, as that is consistent with the language in Mozilla's privacy policy. The distinction is fairly important because de-anonymizing user data is a practice of its own and exactly what it sounds like.
Now, is the data which Mozilla "shares with" (sells to) its partners anonymized reliably enough that the identity of the person it relates to can never be rediscovered? Granting Mozilla the benefit of the doubt, if it is sufficiently anonymous today, could future developments lead to de-anonymization of that data at a later date? This could include leaks, cyber-attacks directed at Mozilla, AI-assisted statistical analysis of bulk data, etc.
Phew, what a relief, that puts my concerns about powerful actors abusing that aggregated data fully to rest!
Just like Google