The European digital rights group None Of Your Business (NOYB) has filed a complaint against Mozilla for allegedly tracking Firefox users’ online behaviour using a Firefox privacy feature.
NOYB filed a privacy complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority, Datenschutzbehörde (DSB). The privacy feature of Firefox browser, ” Privacy-Preserving Attribution” (PPA), was collectively developed with Meta and announced in February 2022. In Firefox version 128, released in July 2024, the feature was automatically enabled.
The complaint claims that the PPA allows Mozilla to track website user behaviour. The feature allows the browser to control the tracking instead of individual websites. “While this might be an improvement compared to even more invasive cookie tracking, the company never asked its users if they wanted to enable it,” said NOYB.
Instead of asking to enable a new feature, Firefox browsers enable it by default once the software update is installed. The privacy technology lets Firefox browser store data on user ad interactions, which could be bundled and sent to advertisers, similar to Google’s Privacy Sandbox, which is said to be “an effective and privacy-enhancing advertising solution.”
Mozilla claims that PPA improves privacy by evaluating ad performance without websites collecting personal data separately. However, as part of the tracking happens in the browser itself, it interferes with user rights under the EU General Data Protection Regulation.
“Users should be able to make a choice and the feature should have been turned off by default,” said Felix Mikolasch, a data protection lawyer at NOYB. A Mozilla developer attempted to justify PPA, being turned on by default, by implying that users are unable to make informed decisions. The feature itself is less invasive as compared to unlimited tracking which remains to be a norm in US.
In a July support document, the company described the feature as a non-invasive alternative to cross-site tracking and insisted that browsing information is not shared with third parties, including the company, and only aggregated data about ad performance is sent to advertisers. Users of Firefox browser can disable the feature by going to the Privacy and Security settings and unchecking the “Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement” option.
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