Mozilla is “taking a leaf out of Google’s playbook”

Mozilla, known for its “privacy-focused” browser, Firefox, has quietly rolled out a new feature that allows the browser to track users' behavior as they search the web, sparking a new complaint.

After Firefox released version 128, users discovered that the browser had snuck in a new experimental feature called “Privacy-Preserving Attribution” (PPA).

According to Mozilla's support page, the idea behind PPA is “to help sites understand how their ads perform without collecting data about individual people."

While PPA doesn’t seem to collect individual data, it still collects user data in larger groups and aggregates it to show trends.

Firefox is known as a privacy-centered browser, so users were left furious, as was the European digital rights group ‘None of Your Business’ (noyb).

Noyb has since filed a complaint against Mozilla, claiming that the privacy feature supposedly interferes with user rights under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which safeguards the personal data of European citizens.

While Firefox backs the move, noyb suggests that through PPA, Firefox is able to track users' behavior.

Noyb argues that this form of tracking doesn’t replace cookies, yet it is an added way for websites to target users.

Furthermore, noyb is concerned regarding Mozilla’s decision to activate the feature and turn it on by default once users have installed version 128 of Firefox.

According to noyb, users weren’t informed of the change and have not been asked for their consent to be tracked by the browser.

“The feature isn’t even mentioned in Mozilla’s data protection policies,” noyb states.

The non-profit even went as far as to say that Mozilla is taking a “leaf out of Google’s playbook,” as, similar to Google’s Privacy Sandbox, PPA will turn Firefox into a tracking tool for websites and advertisers.

Before noyb’s complaint, users were already outraged by the new feature, but despite the backlash, Firefox still defended its decision to the bitter end.

Firefox Chief technology officer (CTO) Bobby Holley even took to Reddit to dispel concerns surrounding the PPA feature and what this might mean for Firefox and users.

Holley admitted that “in retrospect, we should have communicated more on this one.” The CTO said that Mozilla wishes to combat the “massive web of surveillance” occurring on the internet.

Rather than the current model of the internet, where advertisers gather extensive personal data, Mozilla is working to create a system to meet the bar of accomplishing advertisers' goals while protecting user privacy.

Holley also explained the technical details behind PPA and slipped in a way to deactivate the feature.

“There is a toggle to turn it off because some people object to advertising irrespective of the privacy properties, and we support people configuring their browser however they choose,” Holley said.

Despite this ethos, noyb has asked the Austrian data protection authority (DSB) to investigate Mozilla’s actions. It demands that the company inform users and noyb about its data processing activities, switch PPA to an opt-in system, and delete the “unlawfully processed data” collected while PPA has been active.