Thought this was interesting and worth knowing about
Wasn’t sure if there were better places to post this, feel free to cross-post if you know other fitting communities :)
Thank you for posting it by the way. This is both good, and important news
Cross posted to !opensource@programming.dev, and looks like someone already shared it on !thunderbird@lemmy.world
Thunderbird May Disclose Information To: Mozilla Affiliates: Thunderbird is a project of MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation and an affiliate of Mozilla Corporation, and as such, shares some of the same infrastructure. This means that, from time to time, your data (e.g., crash reports, and technical and interaction data) may be** disclosed to Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation**. If so, it will be maintained in accordance with the commitments we make in this Privacy Notice.
DNS servers, Standard Autoconfiguration URIs, and Mozilla’s Configuration Database: To simplify the email set-up process, Thunderbird tries to determine the correct settings for your account by contacting Mozilla’s configuration database as well as external servers. These include DNS servers and standard autoconfiguration URIs. During this process, your email domain may be sent to Mozilla’s configuration database, and your email address may be disclosed to your network administrators.
Amazon Web Services: Thunderbird uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host its servers and as a content delivery network. Your device’s IP address is collected as part of AWS’s server logs.
Email address providers (Desktop Only Legacy): Prior to version 128, Thunderbird partnered with Gandi.net and Mailfence to allow you to create a new email address through Thunderbird. If you choose to use this feature, your email address search terms are sent to Gandi.net and Mailfence to return available addresses. In addition, your country location is also shared to provide the correct prices. You can learn more about Gandi.net’s and Mailfence’s data practices by reading their privacy notices.
Always good to read TOS and PP of an service.
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I am trying Floorp as of yesterday. I like Zen Browser, but their github contributers list makes it look like it’s mostly the effort of one person and that always gives me pause until somethings been around a while. Floorp seemed more spread out so I decided to try it despite its silly name.
I’m interested in how ladybird shapes up.
Worth noting that you may have DRM issues on some forks with video content. I don’t think you will on Linux, and someone clear this if you can, but I think the alternate used can’t do 4k video? I’m not a big web media consumer so idk. Has something to do with Widevine I think.
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Mozilla’s new TOU only covers pre built Firefox executables, not the source code.
Librewolf and Waterfox are good forks that would not be bound to the TOU.
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Do you see installing a .dmg file (or installing through homebrew) on macOS as a workaround, or what do you mean? I’m not sure I have ever installed a single app from their store, so maybe it’s just that such a “workaround” feels normal to me, but scary to others?
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The Walled Garden is actually the problem, then.
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Librewolf is a fork of Firefox.
From their site:
LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM.
In the future, Ladybird or a browser built on top of Servo might be alternatives, but both projects are pretty far from being usable right now.
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On iOS your option is Safari and that’s what you’ve been using, even if the icon says Firefox or Chrome or Brave. It’s against Apple store TOS to have a web browser with an engine in it - they all have to be skins for Safari (Webkit). Different “iOS Browsers” will offer features on top of the Safari that actually does the browsing though, like account sync or built-in ad filtering.
The only platforms out there that are more hostile to open source software than iOS are like, game consoles.
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Who is the moron at Mozilla that thought it would be a good idea to sell user information, and how much does he make a year?
$6M, but if you look at the California law that spurred this change, the Privacy Policy that hasn’t changed since July 2024, and the revised ToS, this looks mostly like a really, really, really stupid communication error.
It’s one of those cases where legally, “sell” includes things that most people wouldn’t consider a sale in normal parlance, but Mozilla has to comply with the overbroad legal definition; meanwhile, they don’t appear to be fundamentally changing anything about how they’re operating.
ETA: I’m still moving to LibreWolf (and maybe Ladybird later on). I’m not a lawyer, and expecting people like me to parse legal definitions of commonly understood words is just asinine.
The thing is, I don’t want Mozilla to be “really this shouldn’t be called selling” my info either. This was my call to jump ship to a fork that doesn’t give any data to Mozilla in the first place by adopting a downstream fork.
I probably already wasn’t giving Mozilla any data to “not sell” in the first place, since I’ve got telemetry disabled and used about:config to strip out all of their non-browsing functions. But why trust a “probably” that also inevitably needs more attention when they roll in some AI assistant nonsense I don’t want (or whatever) when I can just find a fork of their FOSS product that’s run by people that don’t want my data in the first place?
where legally, “sell” includes things that most people wouldn’t consider a sale
Allowing access for valuable consideration is pretty cut and dry. What is the legislation defining beyond that?
To quote this wiki that did a very good job of breaking down this clusterfuck:
The CCPA defines “selling data” as:
“Sell,” “selling,” “sale,” or “sold,” means selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information by the business to a third party for monetary or other valuable consideration.
The sticking point is that last “other valuable consideration.” The question that people should be asking is: “valuable to whom and in what capacity?” Value does not need to be for financial gain; knowledge is valuable to a contractor building a building, for example.
But I recommend reading that wiki breakdown or just watch this video. It’s a mess that can’t be untangled in a simple Lemmy comment.
I don’t want Mozilla to be handling my personal data in any way. Anonymized usage statistics? I could be convinced to relinquish that. But that’s it.
No one uses Thunderbird anymore anyways, which doesn’t matter as the ToS changes to Firefox are a nothing burger and won’t dissuade millions of people using it daily despite what the neck beards on Lemmy would have you believe.
