Mozilla sued by NOYB for violating Privacy

Mozilla has been came into a controversial limelight for breaching the GDPR by enabling a privacy tracking tool.

The European Center for Digital Rights (NOYB) accused Mozilla of turning its Firefox browser into a tracking tool through the introduction of a privacy feature known as Privacy Preserving Attribution (PPA).

Mozilla included the PPA feature in its Firefox update version 128.0 with an intention to help advertisers understand ad effectiveness without allowing individual websites to collect personal user data. Instead, Firefox itself aggregates ad interaction data on behalf of users before passing this information to advertisers. Mozilla presents this as a balanced solution that maintains user privacy while meeting advertising needs.

NOYB claims that PPA, which is enabled by default, without prior notification effectively turns Firefox into a tool that enables tracking by moving the data collection from websites to the browser itself. This PPA feature violates users’ rights under the European Union’s GDPR, as it involves data processing without obtaining explicit user consent.

Mozilla has long been recognized as a privacy-focused company, particularly as other popular browsers have been criticized for invasive data collection practices. However, this controversy keeps the org reputation into question. PPA, while potentially less invasive compared to third-party cookies, nonetheless involves tracking that most users are unaware of, which has led NOYB to demand regulatory scrutiny.