Vienna-based advocacy group NOYB said on Wednesday it had filed a complaint with Austria’s data protection authority against Mozilla, accusing the Firefox browser maker of tracking users’ behavior on websites without consent.
NOYB (None Of Your Business), a digital rights group founded by privacy activist Max Schrems, said Mozilla enabled a so-called privacy-preserving attribution (PPA) feature that turned the browser into a website tracker without direct notification user.
“Mozilla’s limited PPA test is part of our efforts to improve invasive advertising practices by providing technical alternatives,” a spokesperson told Reuters. “These techniques prevent any party, including Mozilla, from identifying individuals or their browsing activity.”
While this may be less invasive than unlimited tracking, it still interferes with users’ rights under EU privacy laws, NOYB said, adding that Firefox turned on the feature by default.
“It’s a shame that an organization like Mozilla believes that users are too stupid to say yes or no,” said Felix Mikolasch, data protection lawyer at NOYB. “Users should be able to make a choice, and the feature should have been turned off by default.”
Open-source Firefox was once the browser of choice among users for its privacy features, but it now lags behind market leader Google Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s Edge with low single-digit market share.
NOYB wants Mozilla to inform users of its data processing activities, switch to an opt-in system and delete all illegally processed data of the millions of affected users.
NOYB, which filed a lawsuit against Alphabet in June for allegedly tracking users of its Chrome browser, has also filed hundreds of lawsuits against major tech companies, some of which have resulted in large fines.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and was automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
