I haven’t kept up with all the news about this, so is there a definitive yes or no answer that Mozilla sells or even shares user information with partners such as Google? Google is paying Mozilla for something.
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/
If you use Google as your default search engine and you search, that obviously lands with Google. If you have type-suggestions enabled, typing input is sent to Google. (Also obvious, to me at least.)
Mozilla may also receive location-related keywords from your search (such as when you search for “Boston”) and share this with our partners to provide recommended and sponsored content. Where this occurs, Mozilla cannot associate the keyword search with an individual user once the search suggestion has been served and partners are never able to associate search suggestions with an individual user. You can remove this functionality at any time by turning off Sponsored Suggestions — more information on how to do this is available in the relevant Firefox Support page.
Turn off sponsored suggestions and locations you put in to search are not shared with sponsors/partners.
You may be able to opt into an enhanced search experience, which will result in Mozilla processing additional personal data, including your technical data, location and search data. Some of that information may be shared with our partners on a de-identified and/or aggregated basis. See our “Data and Firefox Suggest” blog post for more details.
Don’t opt in to enhanced search experience and they won’t share that with partners.
To serve relevant content and advertising on Firefox New Tab
You can opt out of having your data processed for personalization or advertising purposes by turning off “technical and interaction data” on Desktop and Mobile at any time.
Opt out of personalized advertising.
To provide AI Chatbots
If you set up to use an AI Chatbot third party service, what you type will be sent to them (obviously). Not to Mozilla either way.
To provide Review Checker, including serving sponsored content
Review Checker is a Firefox feature that helps you determine whether reviews are reliable when you shop online with sites like Amazon.com, BestBuy.com and Walmart.com. If you opt in to using Review Checker, Mozilla will process information about the website and the product identifier of the products you view using our privacy preserving technology called OHTTP.
Don’t opt in to Review Checker and they won’t share even in OHTTP form.
To market our services
Firefox also shares information with our marketing partners to measure and improve these campaigns; what information is specifically shared varies (depending on how you discovered Firefox and your operating system) but generally includes how you were referred to our download page and whether you actively use Firefox
From the support article:
If you arrive on the Firefox download page after clicking an ad on another website, you’ll have the option to share how you discovered Firefox with Mozilla’s marketing measurement partners.
Don’t approve sharing the data and it won’t be shared. (This is kinda outside of Firefox the software anyway. It’s about them measuring how users arrive at installing Firefox and their campaigns regarding that.)
If you install Firefox and disable sponsored content and choose a non-Google search engine, nothing is shared with Google or other partners outside of what you select and explicitly consent to/set up.
The relevant settings are under Settings -> Home (Sponsored shortcuts), Search, and Privacy & Security
thx for summarising all of this! I’ve recently installed librewolf and it’s been surprisingly painless, everything was in place already
Yesterday I searched for something using Firefox then seconds later I got a Google opinion reward notification asking me if I just searched for the thing I had just searched for. So probably yes
When you searched using Firefox what search engine did you use?
I always use duck duck go. Like maybe I could have been high as shit and made a mistake but my default is duck duck go. I was super confused when I got the notification.
Huh, that is really bizarre then, reminds me of the times where I’ll be chatting in discord about something and then get something related recommended in YT right after even though I can’t fathom how that would happen as the 2 aren’t connected in any way.
My assumption has always been that Google pays Mozilla for 2 things.
- to have them use Google as the default search engine, with this Mozilla doesn’t even have to send them your data because you as the user are effectively giving it straight to Google
- to keep Mozilla afloat so the US DOJ doesn’t claim they’re a monopoly because Firefox exists. Ofc that’s now happened anyway so we’ll see what happens.
I don’t believe Mozilla ever sold user information to Google but I of course could be wrong about that. I don’t have a definitive answer.
