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

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

94 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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] 115 points 1 week ago (16 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] 1 points 6 days ago

I find it kind of funny that your shared link url contain tracking parameters.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I think a big part of the problem is that they didn't show anyone a notification or an onboarding dialog or whatever about this feature, when it got introduced.

Firefox is still the superior browser in my opinion.

or the least bad, as I have been thinking about it lately

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think a big part of the problem is that they didn't show anyone a notification or an onboarding dialog or whatever about this feature, when it got introduced.

Right. Not only didn't they notify anybody, but they took to Reddit to defend the decision not to notify anybody:

we consider modal consent dialogs to be a user-hostile distraction from better defaults, and do not believe such an experience would have been an improvement here.

Which is strange, because Mozilla has no problem with popups in general.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Librewolf

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Nah. Turning that feature on by default already set in stone for me their willingness to test the waters. If you don't think auto-enabling anti-privacy features is a problem I don't know what to tell you. It may be "small" right now, but just wait and see what else they will try to sneak in.

Use Librewolf and Mull instead.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

is this something I need to do every single update?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

The answer will always from now on be 'yes', for every annoying privacy invading toggle you have to change, it is in the best interest of the software creators to force you to do it in the way that benefits them most.

Our opinions are no longer as important as their ability to harvest our data.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

This is just the beginnings of the enshittification of FF. There are others out there, Ladybird for example, deserves our attention being built completely from scratch engine and all. Though it's not slated to become fully usable until 2026 because, they're building the engine from scratch lol

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

All the naysayers in these comments read like shills

Amusing people of what you are guilty of. Sounds familiar...

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Pest vs Cholera situation here...
Firefox should do an opt-in and they usually open new page with major updates with a pretty whats new changelog.
Just make it a headline topic ffs.

Regarding it's just clicking this one textbox:
Remember: Businesses also use Firefox. If you want to protect even a shred of your co-workers or clients you need to set up a fuck-load of tools to mass-disable this one little checkbox.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If it's added as already opted in, I assume they pop something up to make it clear what's been added and enabled, and how it affects the user's privacy, with a link to the settings to change it if desired?

If so, that's not too bad, no.

If they added it and didn't make it clear, or worse yet didn't call attention to it at all, that would piss me off.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Hope this results in Firefox changing it to be opt in and not result in Firefox going the way of the dodo - We can't have Chromium be the only option, and without somebody developing base Firefox, the forks are going to die off

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

There's always the Ladybird browser and an independent open source browser engine called Servo that's under The Linux Foundation

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago

It isn't about indvidual privacy. It's about not further empowering the wealthy and the entities that serve them. I'm disappointed with Mozilla, but this seems to have become par for the course

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (3 children)

As a user, 'privacy preserving attribution' is unappealing for a few reasons.

It seems it would overwhelmingly benefit a type of website that I think is toxic for the internet as a whole - AI generated pages SEO'd to the gills that are designed exclusively as advertisement delivery instruments.
It's a tool that quantitatively aids in the refinement of clickbait, which I believe is an unethical abuse of human psychology.
Those issues notwithstanding, it's unrealistic to assume that PPA will make the kind of difference that Mozilla thinks it might. I believe it's naive to imagine that any advertiser would prefer PPA to the more invasive industry standard methods of tracking. It would be nice if that wasn't the case, but, I don't see how PPA would be preferable for advertisers, who want more data, not less.

As a user, having more of my online activity available and distributed doesn't help or benefit me in any way.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Please stop taking the dark path, firefox...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

There are no ethical companies, only ones that are currently more profitable to operate as if they were.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Hmm, interesting. I would expect NOYB to not just file complaints for no reason, but my understanding of PPA is that things get aggregated, which would make it irrelevant for the GDPR. Either I'm missunderstanding something, or NOYB or Mozilla is...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

100% agree, anonymized data is pretty much irrelevant to the GDPR. An exception would be if it can be de-anonymized with reasonable means.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

User-unique gets collected, and then the user-unique data sent to a remote server.

Only on the remote server will this data be aggregated, or so Mozilla says.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Arkenfox user.js, or derivative broswers like Librewolf on the desktop and Mull on android are there for a reason. Firefox default settings are not the safer, although it has all the knobs to make it a much better experience.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I see these comments are nothing but good discussion!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (15 children)

Turning the feature on by default is bad, but I don't think that legal complaints are the way to go as well as the aggressive tone of NOYB. Firefox is the only browser developed and maintained professionally which has the potential of offering some privacy on the web. Given the importance of web browsers volunteer work just won't cut it with the amount of features and security concerns that a browser needs.

NOYB would've done much better by talking to Mozilla directly and advocating for them to do the right thing going for a legal complaint as the final nuclear option. If the was the case, then good that there's a complaint, but the article does not indicate the any of this happened.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

NOYB has the right to send a complaint if it think a company infringe upon right to privacy. Mozilla isn't entitled to special treatment or special notice before filling a complaint.

Mozilla should have expected this. They claim to defend users privacy so they should understand why consent for data collection is important. Also there was public outcry and criticism of opt-out, and yet they haven't backed down.

If Mozilla resolve these issues, NOYB could ask for the complaint to be dropped. I hope they do resolve this, and do drop the complaint.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (6 children)

NOYB would’ve done much better by talking to Mozilla directly and advocating for them to do the right thing going for a legal complaint as the final nuclear option. I

It has been already vastly demonstrated by Mozilla, that going to them and talking to them about how they shouldn't do shitty things doesn't work.