Mozilla does sell users' data. That's how the sponsored links and stories work
> Occasionally, sponsors may pay Mozilla to specifically boost the score of their site during frecency ranking. In these cases, the shortcut is based on your history, but shown in the sponsored section. This still happens entirely on your device; your copy of Firefox has a list of participating sites, which receive a higher score during local ranking. [1]
While the ranking happens on device, a smart sponsor will glean information from end users that click through because those links almost certainly track where the users come from. This is selling users' private data to advertisers.
And with firefox vpn, I'm sorry but that's a MITM. If you aren't paying a VPN provider, they are collecting and selling your data.
This is how every advert tracker works. They transparently and slowly gather data based on how you browse the internet. Just because firefox makes some efforts to slow it down, doesn't mean they aren't still participating in the market of selling user data.
