Privacy Guides

Firefox maker Mozilla deleted a promise to never sell its users' personal data and is trying to assure worried users that its approach to privacy hasn't fundamentally changed. Until recently, a Firefox FAQ promised that the browser maker never has and never will sell its users' personal data. An archived version from January 30 says:

Does Firefox sell your personal data?

Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That's a promise.

That promise is removed from the current version. There's also a notable change in a data privacy FAQ that used to say, "Mozilla doesn't sell data about you, and we don't buy data about you."

The data privacy FAQ now explains that Mozilla is no longer making blanket promises about not selling data because some legal jurisdictions define "sale" in a very broad way:

Mozilla doesn't sell data about you (in the way that most people think about "selling data"), and we don't buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of "sale of data" is extremely broad in some places, we've had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

Mozilla didn't say which legal jurisdictions have these broad definitions.

Hot off the back of its recent leadership rejig, Mozilla has announced users of Firefox will soon be subject to a ‘Terms of Use’ policy — a first for the iconic open source web browser.

This official Terms of Use will, Mozilla argues, offer users ‘more transparency’ over their ‘rights and permissions’ as they use Firefox to browse the information superhighway — as well well as Mozilla’s “rights” to help them do it, as this excerpt makes clear:

You give Mozilla all rights necessary to operate Firefox, including processing data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice, as well as acting on your behalf to help you navigate the internet.

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.

Also about to go into effect is an updated privacy notice (aka privacy policy). This adds a crop of cushy caveats to cover the company’s planned AI chatbot integrations, cloud-based service features, and more ads and sponsored content on Firefox New Tab page.

Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker says her company will withdraw from countries that force messaging providers to allow law enforcement officials to access encrypted user data, as Sweden continues to mull such plans.

She made the claims in an interview with Swedish media SVT Nyheter which reported the government could legislate for a so-called E2EE backdoor as soon as March 2026. It could bring all E2EE messenger apps like Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage, and others into scope.

Whittaker said there is no such thing as a backdoor for E2EE "that only the good guys can access," however.

"Either it's a vulnerability that lets everyone in, or we continue to uphold strong, robust encryption and ensure the right to privacy for everyone. It either works for everyone or it's broken for everyone, and our response is the same: We would leave the market before we would comply with something that would catastrophically undermine our ability to provide private communications."

Sweden launched an investigation into its data retention and access laws in 2021, which was finalized and published in May 2023, led by Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer.

Strömmer said it was vital that law enforcement and intelligence agencies were able to access encrypted messaging content to scupper serious crime – the main argument made by the UK in pursuing its long-term ambition to break E2EE.

The inquiry made several proposals to amend existing legislation, including the recommendation that encrypted messaging must store chat data for up to two years and make it available to law enforcement officials upon request.

It would essentially mirror the existing obligation for telecoms companies to provide call and SMS data to law enforcement, as is standard across many parts of the developed world, but extend it to encrypted communications providers.

Hello everyone!

I was wondering what solutions people have for Calendar syncing that are not Proton / Tuta.

Specifically, I was wondering what E2EE options are available that are ideally cross-platform as well.

The main reason why I ask is I am frankly frustrated with how both Tuta and Proton rely on their own apps, and don't necessarily integrate well with all operating systems. Especially with Proton's growing suite of apps, it feels like they are in some ways creating their own walled garden. While it is at this time a better privacy option than the conventional options, it is still a situation that feels like a vendor lock-in situation.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, including those that require a self-hosted server :)

Proton: “We’re consolidating our social media presence due to limited resources and no longer posting on Mastodon. Follow us on Reddit for the latest updates”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/39305551

I recently transferred one of my domains over to Combell (a registrar based in Belgium), and they gave me an email inbox under my domain as part of the package. However, I’m wondering if it’s trustworthy.

If it isn’t, I can set the registrar to redirect mail to the Posteo alias I currently use for the site. However, it would be convenient to be able to use this inbox.

I would, of course, be using PGP encryption when possible (although in practice this is infrequent).

Any thoughts?

It's worth noting that this list may not be entirely current, and you may want to conduct further research to get the most accurate and up-to-date information.