Mozilla recently removed every version of uBlock Origin Lite from their add-on store except for the oldest version.
Mozilla says a manual review flagged these issues:
Consent, specifically Nonexistent: For add-ons that collect or transmit user data, the user must be informed…
Your add-on contains minified, concatenated or otherwise machine-generated code. You need to provide the original sources…
uBlock Origin’s developer gorhill refutes this with linked evidence.
Contrary to what these emails suggest, the source code files highlighted in the email:
- Have nothing to do with data collection, there is no such thing anywhere in uBOL
- There is no minified code in uBOL, and certainly none in the supposed faulty files
Even for people who did not prefer this add-on, the removal could have a chilling effect on uBlock Origin itself.
Incidentally, all the files reported as having issues are exactly the same files being used in uBO for years, and have been used in uBOL as well for over a year with no modification. Given this, it’s worrisome what could happen to uBO in the future.
And gorhill notes uBO Lite had a purpose on Firefox, especially on mobile devices:
[T]here were people who preferred the Lite approach of uBOL, which was designed from the ground up to be an efficient suspendable extension, thus a good match for Firefox for Android.
New releases of uBO Lite do not have a Firefox extension; the last version of this coincides with gorhill’s message. The Firefox addon page for uBO Lite is also gone.
You don’t understand it? It’s pretty clear that in California, they can’t get away with claiming they don’t sell your data, but in Nevada they can. They also clearly seem upset that they must declare that they sell your data, putting “sale” in scare quotes quite often.
Pretending Mozilla FakeSpot and Mozilla Firefox have no common denominator is wrong. They are both operated by Mozilla, and they both allegedly conform to Mozilla’s ethical principles. And if FakeSpot can clearly sell data, then that’s evidence that there is root at the rot of the corporation.
Surely you know better than to take the most charitable interpretation of carefully constructed legal speak.
And surely you know better than to assume Firefox’s own privacy policy is null and void because the privacy policy for a different, distinct product offered by the same company has some different terms in it? Regardless of what FakeSpot’s actual policy ends up being (I’m withholding judgement until they reply to my email), I can’t see it as anything other than disingenuous to imply that their policy in some way affects Firefox’s policy. Firefox does not sell user data, period.
I’m going with Mozilla on this one.
Mozilla Corp purchased FakeSpot over a year ago. FakeSpot changed the privacy policy right before the buyout, in order to explicitly give Mozilla the rights to the private data they had acquired over the years.
By buying FakeSpot, they objectively bought “data about you” for any “you” who was using FakeSpot. So we know it’s untrue when they say they don’t buy data. And if that part isn’t true, I’m not sure why you would take stock in the part right next to it.
And if it turns out Mozilla is making an “oopsie” on this privacy policy, (and in the a FakeSpot one that goes to great lengths to describe the data Mozilla purchased), it loops back pretty significantly to the “oopsie” they made with uBlock Origin Lite.