Critics said the new terms implied Mozilla was asking users for the rights to whatever data they input or upload through Firefox.

  • ahal@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    17 hours ago
    1. There are in fact a ton of services that browsers interface with on behalf of a user. Always have been. For example, Firefox uses the Google Safe Browsing service to protect against phishing. They use location services to fulfill the Geolocation API. They call DNS servers to find the website you want, etc, etc.

    2. Applications do have terms, they’re called EULA’s. It’s the same idea. Also nothing new, I’ve been clicking through that shit since the year 2000.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      ·
      15 hours ago

      There are in fact a ton of services that browsers interface with on behalf of a user. Always have been. For example, Firefox uses the Google Safe Browsing service to protect against phishing. They use location services to fulfill the Geolocation API. They call DNS servers to find the website you want, etc, etc.

      Firefox doesn’t need a TOU to access those. Those aren’t owned or operated by Mozilla. And there hasn’t been anything that has been added to Mozilla which would require such a change over the non-terms the application was provided under for twenty years.

      Applications do have terms, they’re called EULA’s. It’s the same idea. Also nothing new, I’ve been clicking through that shit since the year 2000.

      Yes, and Firefox had one until 2014. They then replaced it with the MPL2.0, “a free software license, which gives you the right to run the program for any purpose, to study how it works, to give copies to your friends and to modify it to meet your needs better. There is no separate End User License Agreement (EULA).”

      So clearly not required.

      • BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        11 hours ago

        The article goes into the first point though.

        Using those services on your behalf is, potentially (in a legal sense) use of your data. By providing some information to a third party, even if Firefox itself doesn’t itself use it. This may come from the fact that you don’t directly agree to terms with the third parties when you start using the browser, with safe browsing for example. So Firefox is in a sense using/sharing private information. And in the changing legal landscape this usage may fall under modern privacy laws, such as the one mentioned in the article.

        I agree the old wording was bad, but I do see the reasoning behind the new one.

        • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 hour ago

          If that’s all this is, then it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to provide a list of all the third parties they transmit data to and why; they could divide it out by “on by default” and “off by default,” and include the data that’s sent to them and how it’s anonymized or aggregated. That would be the easiest possible way to quell the concerns of users, but they’re still being cagey about all of that.