The loud statement cast doubt on the reputation of the well-known company.
The Austrian human rights group NOYB (None Of Your Business), founded by activist Max Schrems, filed a complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority against Mozilla. The organization accuses the developers of the Firefox browser of tracking user behavior on sites without their consent.
The essence of NOYB's claims is that Mozilla has included the Privacy Preserving Attribution (PPA) feature in the browser, which the group believes turns Firefox into a tool for tracking users without directly notifying them. Although this technology is designed to reduce the invasiveness of advertising, it still violates users' privacy rights under EU law, according to NOYB.
Mozilla said the limited PPA testing is part of an effort to find technical alternatives to aggressive advertising. The company claims that the new methods prevent the identification of an individual or the tracking of activity by both Mozilla itself and other parties. However, NOYB believes that enabling the feature by default is a violation, and users should be able to choose whether they want to participate in such experiments.
"It's sad that an organization like Mozilla believes that users are not able to make their own decisions," said Felix Mikolaj, a data protection lawyer at NOYB. He added that the feature should be disabled by default so that users can decide for themselves whether to participate in its testing.
NOYB requires Mozilla to notify users of its data processing activities, switch to an opt-in system, and delete all illegally processed data of millions of users.
Earlier, in June, NOYB filed a complaint against Alphabet, accusing it of tracking users of the Chrome browser. In total, the human rights organization has filed hundreds of complaints against big tech companies, some of which have resulted in significant fines for them.
Source
The Austrian human rights group NOYB (None Of Your Business), founded by activist Max Schrems, filed a complaint with the Austrian Data Protection Authority against Mozilla. The organization accuses the developers of the Firefox browser of tracking user behavior on sites without their consent.
The essence of NOYB's claims is that Mozilla has included the Privacy Preserving Attribution (PPA) feature in the browser, which the group believes turns Firefox into a tool for tracking users without directly notifying them. Although this technology is designed to reduce the invasiveness of advertising, it still violates users' privacy rights under EU law, according to NOYB.
Mozilla said the limited PPA testing is part of an effort to find technical alternatives to aggressive advertising. The company claims that the new methods prevent the identification of an individual or the tracking of activity by both Mozilla itself and other parties. However, NOYB believes that enabling the feature by default is a violation, and users should be able to choose whether they want to participate in such experiments.
"It's sad that an organization like Mozilla believes that users are not able to make their own decisions," said Felix Mikolaj, a data protection lawyer at NOYB. He added that the feature should be disabled by default so that users can decide for themselves whether to participate in its testing.
NOYB requires Mozilla to notify users of its data processing activities, switch to an opt-in system, and delete all illegally processed data of millions of users.
Earlier, in June, NOYB filed a complaint against Alphabet, accusing it of tracking users of the Chrome browser. In total, the human rights organization has filed hundreds of complaints against big tech companies, some of which have resulted in significant fines for them.
Source
