Mozilla introduced its first Terms of Use for Firefox this week, but the company has already had to post an update to address criticisms of language that appeared to give Mozilla overly broad ownership over user data.
Specifically, some users took issue with this line in the terms, as reported by TechCrunch: “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.”
In response, Mozilla added this update to its blog post. “We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible,” Mozilla says. “Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example.
The company adds that “it does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.” (In the Privacy Notice, Mozilla spells out how it uses your data for things like the core functionality of Firefox and its features, as well as how to adjust what data you provide.)
To TechCrunch, Mozilla shared its reasoning over some of the language in the terms:
Mozilla also further clarified why it used certain terms, saying that the term “nonexclusive” was used to indicate that Mozilla doesn’t want an exclusive license to user data, because users should be able to do other things with that data, too.
“Royalty-free” was used because Firefox is free and neither Mozilla nor the user should owe each other money in exchange for handling the data in order to provide the browser. And “worldwide” was used because Firefox is available worldwide and provides access to the global internet.
Mozilla spokesperson Kenya Friend-Daniel also told TechCrunch that “these changes are not driven by a desire by Mozilla to use people’s data for AI or sell it to advertisers. As it says in the Terms of Use, we ask for permission from the user to use their data to operate Firefox ‘as you indicate with your use of Firefox.’ This means that our ability to use data is still limited by what we disclose in the Privacy Notice.”
In its original blog post, Mozilla said that “some optional Firefox features or services may require us to collect additional data to make them work, and when they do, your privacy remains our priority.” The company added that “we intend to be clear about what data we collect and how we use it.”
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