Firefox tracks you with “privacy preserving” features
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. Instead, Mozilla decided to turn it 0n by default once people installed a recent software update. This is particularly worrying because Mozilla generally has a reputation for being a privacy-friendly alternative when most other browsers are based on Googles Chromium.
Firefox follows Google? With a recent Firefox v128+ update, Mozilla seems to have taken a leaf out of Googles playbook: without directly telling its users, the company has secretly enabled a so-called “Privacy Preserving Attribution” (PPA) feature. Similar to ‘Googles Privacy Sandbox’, this turned the browser into a tracking tool for websites. The idea: instead of placing traditional tracking cookies, websites have to ask Firefox to store information about peoples ad interactions in order to receive the bundled data of multiple users.
Less invasive is still invasive. In this sense, Mozilla claims that the development of “privacy preserving attribution” improves user privacy by allowing ad performance to be measured without individual websites collecting personal data. In reality, part of the tracking is now done directly in Firefox. While this may be less invasive than unlimited tracking, which is still the norm in the US, it still interferes with user rights under the EUs GDPR. In reality, this tracking option doesnt replace cookies either, but is simply an alternative way for websites to target advertising.
Tracking by default, no information. To make matters worse, Mozilla has turned 0n its “privacy preserving attribution” by default. Users have not been informed about this move, nor have they been asked for their consent to be tracked by Firefox. The feature isnt even mentioned in Mozillas data protection policies. The only way for users to turn it 0ff is to find the opt-out function in a sub-menu of the browsers settings.
Time to go for Ladybird Browser