European digital rights group NOYB (None Of Your Enterprise) has filed a privateness grievance with the Austrian knowledge safety watchdog (DSB) in opposition to Mozilla, alleging the corporate makes use of a Firefox privateness function (enabled with out consent) to trace customers’ on-line conduct.
The function, referred to as “Privacy-Preserving Attribution” (PPA) and collectively developed with Meta (previously Fb), was introduced in February 2022 and was mechanically enabled in Firefox model 128, launched in July.
NOYB’s complaint claims that, regardless of its identify, Mozilla makes use of the function to trace Firefox consumer conduct throughout web sites.
“Opposite to its reassuring identify, this know-how permits Firefox to trace consumer behaviour on web sites. In essence, the browser is now controlling the monitoring, relatively than particular person web sites,” the privacy advocate group said.
“Whereas this is likely to be an enchancment in comparison with much more invasive cookie monitoring, the corporate by no means requested its customers in the event that they needed to allow it. As an alternative, Mozilla determined to show it on by default as soon as individuals put in a latest software program replace.”
In accordance with NOYB, PPA allows Firefox to retailer knowledge on customers’ advert interactions and bundle that info for advertisers. Mozilla claims this method enhances privateness by measuring advert efficiency with out particular person web sites accumulating private knowledge.
Nonetheless, NOYB says that a part of the monitoring is completed in Firefox, interfering with consumer rights beneath the EU’s Normal Knowledge Safety Regulation (GDPR).
“Mozilla has simply purchased into the narrative that the promoting business has a proper to trace customers by turning Firefox into an advert measurement software,” Felix Mikolasch, knowledge safety lawyer at NOYB, added.
“Whereas Mozilla could have had good intentions, it is vitally unlikely that ‘privateness preserving attribution’ will exchange cookies and different monitoring instruments. It’s only a new, extra technique of monitoring customers.”
In a July support document, Mozilla described PPA as a “non-invasive various to cross-site monitoring,” designed to assist advertisers assess the effectiveness of their advertisements with out sharing info on customers’ on-line conduct.
Mozilla additionally insists that PPA would not share searching info with third events, together with the corporate itself, and that advertisers solely obtain aggregated knowledge about advert efficiency.
“PPA doesn’t contain web sites monitoring you. As an alternative, your browser is in management. This implies robust privateness safeguards, together with the choice to not take part,” Mozilla says.
“PPA doesn’t contain sending details about your searching actions to anybody. This contains Mozilla and our DAP companion (ISRG). Advertisers solely obtain mixture info that solutions fundamental questions in regards to the effectiveness of their promoting.”
Firefox customers can disable the PPA function by opening the net browser’s Privateness & Safety settings and unchecking the choice labeled “Permit web sites to carry out privacy-preserving advert measurement.”
“There is not any query we must always have performed extra to have interaction outdoors voices in our efforts to enhance promoting on-line, and we’re going to repair that going ahead,” a Mozilla spokesperson informed BleepingComputer on Wednesday.
“Whereas the preliminary code for PPA was included in Firefox 128, it has not been activated and no end-user knowledge has been recorded or despatched.
“The present iteration of PPA is designed to be a restricted check solely on the Mozilla Developer Community web site. We proceed to consider PPA is a vital step towards enhancing privateness on the web and look ahead to working with NOYB and others to clear up confusion about our strategy.”
Replace September 25, 15:13 EDT: Added assertion from Mozilla.
