Complaint filed against Mozilla Firefox for PPA 'default-tracking' as most users are 'dumb'

NOYB, short for None Of Your Business, has filed a complaint against Mozilla over a new Privacy Preserving Attribution (PPA) feature that was recently released by the company. For those who may not be familiar with it, NOYB is based in Austria and has in the past filed complaints against the likes of Microsoft and X, among others.

PPA is similar to Google Chrome's Privacy Sandbox and is meant to provide a privacy-friendly alternative to third-party cookies with minimal footprint via anonymous reporting. And it also has the option to opt in and opt-out which means all is good for the consumers.

However, NOYB has noted in its complaint that the feature has been enabled by default since Firefox version 128 where it was first introduced.

NOYB writes:

Today, noyb filed a complaint against Mozilla for quietly enabling a supposed “privacy feature” (called Privacy Preserving Attribution) in its Firefox browser. Contrary to its reassuring name, this technology allows Firefox to track user behaviour on websites. In essence, the browser is now controlling the tracking, rather than individual websites. While this might be an improvement compared to even more invasive cookie tracking, the company never asked its users if they wanted to enable it.

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With a recent Firefox update, Mozilla seems to have taken a leaf out of Google’s playbook: without directly telling its users, the company has secretly enabled a so-called “Privacy Preserving Attribution” (PPA) feature. Similar to Google’s (failed) Privacy Sandbox, this turned the browser into a tracking tool for websites.

In the press release, NOYB has also highlighted how Firefox's Bas Schouten, the Tech Lead with the Mozilla Performance team, had argued in favour of setting the option of PPA to on as default suggesting that it would be quite difficult to explain to non-tech savvy users the benefits and drawbacks of PPA.

Schouten had said:

Opt-in is only meaningful if users can make an informed decision. I think explaining a system like PPA would be a difficult task. And most users complain a lot about these types of interruption.

In my opinion an easily discoverable opt-out option + blog posts and such were the right decision.

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After all most of its users have no idea how it works . Or an electric kettle, for that matter.

There are numerous blog posts explaining the idea, going as far back as 2021 as well as explainers. All of which show up for me if I do any search query with Mozilla and in google.

To Firefox's credit, opting out of PPA is indeed not too difficult. If you wish to do so, you can:

1. In the Menu bar at the top of the screen, click Firefox and then select Preferences or Settings, depending on your macOS version.Click the menu button and select Settings.
2. In the Privacy & Security panel, find the Website Advertising Preferences section.
3. Uncheck the box labeled Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement.

You can view the full NOYB press release regarding the complaint here on its official website.