858349 - Please replace snippets copy in the Firefox privacy policy with this new copy

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(www.mozilla.org :: Pages & Content, defect)

Description

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

We have new copy for the Firefox privacy policy, which is necessary to explain the geolocation that happens when someone opens about:home.

New copy first, original copy to be replaced second.

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New copy:
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<strong>Snippets </strong>Firefox's default home page (<about:home>) loads small bits of information that we think will be useful to you. We call these "snippets". You can see them right below the search bar.

Once per day, Firefox gets new snippets from Mozilla. Whenever you see a snippet, that snippet makes a request to Mozilla, so that we can count how often snippets are viewed.  This request to Mozilla sends the name of the snippet and is securely transmitted over HTTPS. Aside from this and standard log data collected as a part of any web request, snippets in Firefox does not send other information to Mozilla.

To help display relevant snippets, your Firefox browser sends Mozilla a monthly request to look up your location at a country level using your IP address. We then send that country level information back to your Firefox browser, where it's stored locally. Your Firefox browser (not our web servers) will then pick snippets to show you based on the locally stored country information.

Aside from providing you with the snippets service, we use the information from these requests to estimate what fraction of Firefox users click on each snippet (broken down into general categories like Firefox version and geographic area). We will not use any of the information in this request to attempt to identify you or your web browsing activity on other websites, and we aggregate the info we receive into these general categories as soon as is practical.



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Old text to replace:
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<strong>Snippets </strong>Firefox's default home page (<about:home>) loads snippets of info that we think will be useful to you. You can see them right below the search bar. Once per day, Firefox gets new snippets from Mozilla. Whenever you see a snippet, that snippet makes a request to Mozilla, so that we can count how often snippets are viewed.

This request to Mozilla only sends the name of the snippet and is securely transmitted over HTTPS. We only use the information from these requests to estimate what fraction of Firefox users click on each snippet, and we break down this info into general categories like Firefox version and geographic area. We will not use any of the information in this request to attempt to identify you or your activity anywhere else online, and we aggregate the info we receive into these general categories as soon as is practical.

Comment 1

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

:bensternthal has updated this particular policy before and says, in IRC:

[15:18:17] <@bensternthal>	 i think the only thing funky here is to make sure to update the Last Updated date, archive the old version.. and have jishnu take a gander on stage before pushing live

Comment 2

[Osmose [:osmose, :mkelly]]

The changes are up on dev at https://www-dev.allizom.org/en-US/legal/privacy/firefox.html.

I found one possible mistake: In the new copy, it uses the sentence "Aside from this and standard log data collected as a part of any web request, snippets in Firefox does not send other information to Mozilla.". Is that "does" supposed to be a "do" since snippets is plural?

Jishnu: Can you review the page above and let us know if it looks good to you? Especially the possible grammar error.

Comment 3

[Winston Bowden]

Hi Jishnu - 

Can you review?  We'd love to push this live Tuesday or Wednesday.

Comment 4

[Jishnu Menon :jishnu]

Looking good!

Couple things:

1. 

(In reply to Michael Kelly [:mkelly] from comment #2)

> I found one possible mistake: In the new copy, it uses the sentence "Aside
> from this and standard log data collected as a part of any web request,
> snippets in Firefox does not send other information to Mozilla.". Is that
> "does" supposed to be a "do" since snippets is plural?
> 
> Jishnu: Can you review the page above and let us know if it looks good to
> you? Especially the possible grammar error.

Yes - that's an error - please use "do". 

2. Please make sure to make the current privacy policy text (from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/legal/privacy/firefox.html today) available as a link "December 2012" at the bottom of the page for historical purposes.

After this, you can go ahead and push.

Thanks!
Jishnu

Comment 5

[Osmose [:osmose, :mkelly]]

Merged to stage in r115128 and to prod in r115129.