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A Mozilla spokesperson said the new feature only provides aggregate data and preserves privacy.
Vienna-based data privacy advocacy group NYOB has filed a complaint against Mozilla with the Austrian data protection authority (DSB) for “quietly enabling” a feature on its Firefox browser that NOYB says tracks user behaviour without consent.
In a statement released today (25 September), NYOB (None Of Your Business) said that while the feature is “less invasive than unlimited tracking”, it is “particularly worrying” given Mozilla’s reputation as a privacy-friendly browser.
The idea is that instead of using tradition cookies on websites, Firefox could store information about people’s ad interactions and websites would receive aggregate user data.
The advocacy group said that Firefox automatically turned this feature on with a recent software update. It said that this tracking feature affects millions of users in the EU who have legal protection against non-consensual ad tracking under the EU GDPR. According to Statista, nearly 6pc of the internet browser market share is held by Mozilla Firefox.
NYOB data protection lawyer Felix Mikolasch said, “It’s a shame that an organisation like Mozilla believes that users are too dumb to say yes or no. Users should be able to make a choice and the feature should have been turned off by default.”
Mozilla says on its website that this new prototype feature, called the Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA) will improve ad performance on Firefox without collecting data about individual people.
The browser-owner defended the PPA feature, claiming advertisers “only receive aggregate information” about “the effectiveness of their advertising”.
Mozilla claims that Firefox protects user privacy. “Mozilla takes privacy very seriously,” it says. “We’ll always tell you what personal information we’re collecting from you.”
Responding to SiliconRepublic.com, a spokesperson for Mozilla said: “Mozilla’s limited test of PPA is a part of our effort to improve invasive advertising practices by providing technical alternatives.
“Rather than collecting private information to determine when consumers have interacted with an ad, PPA is built on cryptographic techniques to enable aggregated attribution that preserves privacy. These techniques prevent any party, including Mozilla, from identifying individuals or their browsing activity.”
NYOB demands that Mozilla switch to an opt-in system, where the browser would ask for individual user consent before turning this feature on. It also asks the browser to delete any unlawfully processed data.
“Mozilla has just bought into the narrative that the advertising industry has a right to track users by turning Firefox into an ad measurement tool,” Mikolasch said. “While Mozilla may have had good intentions, it is very unlikely that [PPA] will replace cookies and other tracking tools. It is just a new, additional means of tracking users.”
Earlier this year, Mozilla acquired an adtech start-up Anonym to increase its focus on privacy in the online advertising space.
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