Noyb: ‘Mozilla is turning Firefox into a measurement tool for the advertising industry’

Digital rights group Noyb has filed a complaint against Mozilla for activating a so-called privacy feature in Firefox without the users’ permission.

Mozilla recently updated its web browser with a new piece of technology called ‘Privacy Preserving Attribution’. This feature limits online tracking of users, because the browser controls the tracking rather than individual websites.

Simply put, instead of placing traditional tracking cookies, websites have to ask Firefox to store user data.

Noyb admits this is less invasive compared to Google’s unlimited data collection practices in Chrome, but it’s still invasive. Mozilla’s ‘Privacy Preserving Attribution’ feature doesn’t replace cookies, but offers an alternative way for websites to target advertising.

“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. While Mozilla may have had good intentions, it is very unlikely that 'privacy-preserving attribution' will replace cookies and other tracking tools. It is just a new, additional means of tracking users,” says Felix Mikolasch, data protection lawyer at Noyb.

To make things worse, Mozilla enables its newest privacy feature by default. Users haven’t been informed about this, nor have they been offered an option to agree or disagree. On top of that, the feature isn’t even mentioned in Mozilla’s data protection policies. How are users able to make an informed decision?

“It’s a shame that an organization 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,” Mikolasch adds.

Because Mozilla’s newest privacy feature affects millions of European users, Noyb has filed a complaint with the Datenschutzbehörde (DSB). The privacy organization wants the Austrian data protection authority (DPA) to investigate Mozilla’s practices and see if these don’t violate any rules dictated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Furthermore, Noyb wants the DSB to tell Mozilla they should properly inform users about its data processing activities and add an opt-in system.

Lastly, Noyb wants Mozilla to delete all unlawfully processed data.

Bobby Holley, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Mozilla, apologizes on Reddit for not being more open and upfront about Privacy Preserving Attribution. “It’s clear in retrospect that we should have communicated more on this one,” he says.

“Digital advertising is not going away, but the surveillance parts could actually go away if we get it right. A truly private attribution mechanism would make it viable for businesses to stop tracking people and enable browsers and regulators to clamp down much more aggressively on those that continue to do so,” Holley adds.