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Mozilla hit with privacy complaint over Firefox user tracking (www.reuters.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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STOCKHOLM, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Vienna-based advocacy group NOYB on Wednesday said it has filed a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority against Mozilla accusing the Firefox browser maker of tracking user behaviour on websites without consent.

NOYB (None Of Your Business), the digital rights group founded by privacy activist Max Schrems, said Mozilla has enabled a so-called “privacy preserving attribution” feature that turned the browser into a tracking tool for websites without directly telling its users.

Mozilla had defended the feature, saying it wanted to help websites understand how their ads perform without collecting data about individual people. By offering what it called a non-invasive alternative to cross-site tracking, it hoped to significantly reduce collecting individual information.

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 month ago (41 children)

All the naysayers in these comments read like shills and if they aren't, they really should read how the tracking in question works. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution?as=u&utm_source=inproduct

While it was kinda lame for Mozilla to add it with it already opted-in the way they did, they were still completely open about how it works from the start with a link right next to the feature in settings (the same link pasted above) and it's far less invasive than the other mainstream browsers.

It can be turned off too, easily. It requires unchecking a checkbox. No jumping through 10 different menus trying to figure out how to turn it off, like a certain other browser does with its monstrous tracking and data collection machine.

With ublock origin it's also moot, since ublock origin blocks all the ads anyways.

Call me a fanboy if you want, I wont care. Firefox is still the superior browser in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

While it was kinda lame for Mozilla to add it with it already opted-in the way they did

That's really the rub here. Reading the technical explainer on the project, it's a pretty good idea. The problem is that they came down on the side of "more data" versus respecting their users:

Having this enabled for more people ensures that there are more people contributing to aggregates, which in turn improves utility. Having this on by default both demands stronger privacy protections — primarily smaller epsilon values and more noise — but it also enables those stronger protections, because there are more people participating. In effect, people are hiding in a larger crowd.

In short, they pulled a "trust us, bro" and turned an experimental tracking system on by default. They fully deserve to be taken to task over this.

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