According to the latest reports, Mozilla is planning to start collecting anonymous user data in order to understand better how people are using the Firefox browser.

As expected, many users are currently feeling “betrayed” by Mozilla with this move, as Firefox was presented as a privacy-oriented browser. We think that Mozilla needs to think twice when doing a move like this, as the company might get to the EU Data Privacy commissioners office, where it might get a major fine.

Mozilla protects itself by saying that this sort of data collection is necessary in order to make Firefox perform better than it currently is. The developing company wants to find some answers to questions such as:

• What are the top web sites that the users are visiting?
• What Flash web sites does the user encounter?
• Which web sites are using a lot of memory?

Since it will be using a “differential” privacy, Mozilla has mentioned that it will not be able to make conclusions about some individual users. That being said, the privacy of the users will be safe.

The company might be right, but if it does this move there will be many users bothered about it. These users will eventually start sending emails to the EU Data Privacy commissioners’ office or even stop using the browser.

We need to mention that Mozilla will also give you the possibility to disable the data collection by heading to the Firefox’s preferences menu. So, if you are really bothered about this change, don’t worry because you will be able to disable it without any problems.

Are you using Mozilla Firefox on your computer? Tell us your thoughts about this new feature that Mozilla wants to bring to its browser!