Mozilla is going to collect a lot more data from Firefox users

I guess my praise for Mozilla’s and Firefox’ continued support for Manifest v2 had to be balanced out by Mozilla doing something stupid. Mozilla just published Terms of Use for Firefox for the first time, as well as an updated Privacy Notice, that come into effect immediately and include some questionable terms.

The Terms of Use state:

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.
↫ Firefox’ new Terms of Use

That’s incredibly broad, and it could easily be argued that this gives Mozilla the right to use whatever you post or upload online through Firefox, which is clearly insane. However, it might also just be standard, regular, wholly unenforceable legalese, but the fact it’s in the Firefox Terms of Use now that you have to accept is disconcerting. Does this mean that if an artist uses Firefox to upload a new song they made, Mozilla now has a license to use that song in whatever way they deem fit? You’d hope not, but that does seem what the terms are stating here.

Moving on to the new Privacy Notice, and it seems Mozilla intends to collect more data in more situations. For instance, Mozilla is going to collect things such as “Unique identifiers” and “Browsing data” to “Market [their] services”, consent for which Mozilla will only ask for in jurisdictions where such consent is required, and it’s opt-out, not opt-in. I would hazard a guess that even in places where strict privacy regulations are in place, the wording of such consent will probably be obtuse, and the opt-out checkbox hidden somewhere deep in settings.

Mozilla also intends to collect “all data types” to “comply with applicable laws, and identify and prevent harmful, unauthorized or illegal activity”. Considering how fast, I don’t know, being trans or women’s health care is criminalised in the US, “illegal activity” can cover a lot of damn things once you have totalitarians like Musk and Trump in power. An organisation like Mozilla shouldn’t be collecting any data types, let alone all of them, and especially not in places where such data types can lead to real harm to innocent people.

The backlash to the new Terms of Use and updated Privacy Notice is already growing, and it further cements my worries that Mozilla is intending to invest more and more into becoming an advertising company first, browser maker second. The kinds of data they’re going to collect now from Firefox users are exactly the kinds of data that are incredibly useful to advertisers, and it doesn’t take a genius to see where this is going.