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> Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

But if the data was fully stripped of potentially identifying information, then it should not count as "personal information" under the California Consumer Privacy Act, therefore it should not trigger the "sale of personal information" requirement, regardless of how it's transmitted or what kind of compensation is involved.

The CCPA defines "personal information" as follows:

> “Personal information” means information that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household.

(It also includes a list of examples [1], but the examples are conditional on the same "linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household" requirement.)

So, which is it? Is the data deidentified or is it not?

Is Mozilla just trying to reduce risk in case someone argues their deidentification isn't good enough? If so, I'd call that a cowardly move.

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...




How about don't send ANYONE's personal information, anonymized or not, to anyone including themselves? I think that's what people want. But that will never happen because you can't make money from it.


Nor should you make money from data transfer.

Tax this, and give the tax back as reverse income tax to individuals.


How will Sync or their VPN operate, for example?


This is about Mozilla's Terms of Use for Firefox, not Firefox Sync and Mozilla VPN. Those services need their own Terms of Use that doesn't apply to using Firefox without using those add-on services.


I dunno, if legal recommends wording for your TOS you should probably listen to them.


Then comes the question: would it also obviously expand their domain of allowable actions to trespass on their users?

Since that is a resounding "yes" and they also have the extremely obvious finance incentive to do so...


Legal is there to advise you. Sometimes what legal tells you is not in the best interests of your company. A good legal team will work with you to identify when maximal risk-averseness is not the right strategy.


A normal legal team (as opposed to a good one) will always recommend whatever is virtually guaranteed not to come back to bite them.


Yes, so you claim you can do whatever you want with everything you can get your hands on and then social media blows up because it's batshit insane, but don't worry because you're _legally in the clear_.

You're acting like they didn't have the 2nd option of just not selling the data so the current wording is accurate...


On the other hand, if legal recommends that they reword their TOS, their users also should probably listen to them.




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