Firefox's upcoming "cookie-less" tracking comes under fire by Austrian privacy watchdog
Mozilla introduced the Privacy-Preserving Attribution API with Firefox 128, stating that it would measure ad performance without employing third-party servers to track what Firefox users were doing
Facepalm: Mozilla recently introduced a controversial technology designed to help advertisers while preserving users' privacy. However, a European privacy watchdog says that while it's "less invasive" than tracking cookies, it is still tracking without consent. It has asked regulators to open a GDRP investigation.
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Mozilla introduced the Privacy-Preserving Attribution API with Firefox 128, stating that it would measure ad "performance" without employing third-party servers to track what Firefox users were doing online. The European Center for Digital Rights, also known as Noyb (none of your business), has now filed a complaint against the US company, lamenting that the new API is just switching control of the tracking process to the browser instead of eliminating it.
Nyob claims that Firefox is tracking users now instead of individual websites. Privacy-conscious users could consider this an improvement over traditional behavioral profiling with invasive cookies. However, Mozilla doesn't ask users for permission and enables the feature by default. The opt-out feature is similar to Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative, which promised to kill third-party cookies using browser-based tracking but failed.
While PPA is considered a less invasive tracking alternative in the US, Nyob stated, it still violates Europe's General Data Protection Regulation.
"Mozilla has just bought into the narrative that the advertising industry has a right to track users by turning Firefox into an ad measurement tool," said Nyob data protection lawyer Felix Mikolasch.
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