On Wednesday, Mozilla introduced legal updates to users of Firefox, and something feels off. I read, and re-read the new Terms of Use and while much of it reads like standard boilerplate from any tech company, there’s a new section that is unexpected:

On Wednesday, Mozilla introduced legal updates to users of Firefox, and something feels off. I read, and re-read the new Terms of Use and while much of it reads like standard boilerplate from any tech company, there’s a new section that is unexpected:

  • troed@fedia.io
    13·
    18 hours ago

    For one thing, most users don’t consider a web browser’s job to be “sending anything to someone’s service”

    What happens when you type something in the address bar? The days where that just told the browser to go to a URL are long gone.

    • vaguerant@fedia.io
      12·
      18 hours ago

      Certainly, but there’s a couple of problems with that line of thinking.

      Firstly, “When you upload or input information through Firefox” is far more broad than covering the specific things you type into the address bar. That language covers pretty everything you can possibly do in a web browser. Every link you click, every social media post, every file upload is information input through Firefox. Certainly, you can argue that Firefox is being exceedingly broad just in case they expand the types of information they collect about you, but the terms as written now already give them license to everything.

      Returning to the address bar, browsers traditionally send what you type into the address bar to a search engine, not to the author of the web browser (obviously discounting the situation where those are the same people, e.g. Microsoft with Edge & Bing and Alphabet with Chrome & Google). Mozilla doesn’t offer a search engine or any sort of live search facility. The things you type into the address bar are (optionally) sent to the search provider of your choosing, whether that’s Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo or Dogpile. What good reason is there for Mozilla to receive that information?

      • troed@fedia.io
        7·
        17 hours ago

        Legalese is always written broadly. As with absolutely everything that touches on IP the ones that yell the loudest are the ones that understand the subject the least.

        browsers traditionally send what you type into the address bar to a search engine, not to the author of the web browser

        The search bar doesn’t say that will happen, so what legal right does the makers of Firefox have to suddenly send what you type there to some other third party service? You know, that “input information through Firefox”.

        That’s what the license covers. You giving them that right. You don’t need to agree with this, but that’s how it’s done - legally.