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Android is now warning of Firefox sharing data (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Found this notification this morning on my pixel 6.

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[–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is not at all a pot kettle situation, there is no reason to warn about Firefox.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    There is: default search results on FF have always legally been sold to Google, the public didn't know since there were no terms of service or mention by FF whenever they uploaded the android version on the playstore that their users data would be collected and some be sold. Position is one of the data that may be sold as it could be used by Google to dermine which localised version of the search result is the best one to serve

    And it's not going to be Google in the future: it could be Bing, startpage, ecosia, qwant etc... As long as someone pays, then the results are sold and there needs to be a warning to users.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    the public didn’t know

    That's not true, for many years Firefox was basically financed by Google for being the default search engine, because Google didn't want Microsoft to monopolize Internet Browsers. Everybody who had the slightest interest knew that.

    But that's completely irrelevant, it's a very marginal source of revenue today, and Firefox does not sell user info to Google. So it's on Google to warn about using Google search.
    The only reason for the change in Firefox privacy terms was for clarification. For instance any information given to Firefox, does not grant Firefox ownership of it. (opposite of for instance Facebook)
    That's a guarantee of user protection, not the opposite. Firefox has a very limited scope of "using" user data, like for instance storing links with Firefox, so they work across multiple devices.
    There is no "harvesting" of user behavior or information.

    https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/03/mozilla-rewrites-firefoxs-terms-of-use-after-user-backlash/

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