Improving the Firefox Privacy Notice

2 months ago 1 second ago

Back in 2014, we reorganized our privacy policies to make them simple, clear, and usable. That effort was based on simplifying the then 14-page privacy policy around a framework that retained some detail but helped users find information more quickly. We did this because of our Data Privacy Principles that offer us guardrails as we develop our products and services.

Today I’m happy to announce another revision of our Firefox Privacy Notice, which follows our initial announcement on the topic.  We continue to build our products focusing on user control and fulfilling our “no surprises” rule when it comes to privacy.  We believe that in context notices with the user experience in mind make notices more understandable and actionable for users. Our updated notice includes:

• A layered design to show what we collect, why we collect it, where you can learn more, and what your choices are.
• Language that is more specific and transparent when describing the types of data.  We have used the same terms as our internal teams, including: “technical” data, “interaction” data, “webpage” data and “location” data.
• A more holistic explanation of how a feature interacts with data.  For example, we previously had a separate privacy notice for cloud features like Sync.  This technical distinction was confusing, so we removed that separate privacy notice and have made it a part of the new Firefox Privacy Notice where context is more understandable.
• On desktop platforms that support it, we have begun adding the ability to link the user directly into the appropriate user preferences so they can easily and quickly access privacy controls.

We’ve also changed our Firefox onboarding experience so that the Privacy Notice now displays on the second tab of a newly installed browser.

Take a look and tell us if we met the standards we set by going to Governance mailing list.

We hope all of this offers a more meaningful opportunity for users to learn about how we design privacy into Firefox, and make choices about the data they wish to share.

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