Vienna-based advocacy group NOYB on Wednesday stated it has filed a grievance with the Austrian knowledge safety authority in opposition to Mozilla, accusing the Firefox browser maker of monitoring consumer behaviour on web sites with out consent.
NOYB (None Of Your Enterprise), the digital rights group based by privateness activist Max Schrems, stated Mozilla has enabled a so-called “privateness preserving attribution” function that turned the browser right into a monitoring software for web sites with out straight telling its customers.
Mozilla had defended the function, saying it wished to assist web sites perceive how their adverts carry out with out amassing knowledge about particular person individuals. By providing what it known as a non-invasive different to cross-site monitoring, it hoped to considerably scale back amassing particular person info.
Whereas this can be much less invasive than limitless monitoring, it nonetheless interferes with consumer rights below the EU’s privateness legal guidelines, NOYB stated, including that Firefox has turned on the function by default.
“It’s a disgrace that an organisation like Mozilla believes that customers are too dumb to say sure or no,” stated Felix Mikolasch, knowledge safety lawyer at NOYB. “Customers ought to give you the option to choose and the function ought to have been turned off by default.”
Open-source Firefox was as soon as a high browser selection amongst customers because of its privateness options however now lags market chief Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s Edge with a low single-digit market share.
Lots of of complaints
NOYB needs Mozilla to tell customers about its data-processing actions, change to an opt-in system and delete all unlawfully processed knowledge of tens of millions of affected customers.
NOYB, which in June filed a grievance in opposition to Google for allegedly monitoring customers of its Chrome browser, had additionally filed a whole lot of complaints in opposition to large tech firms, some resulting in large fines. — Supantha Mukherjee, (c) 2024 Reuters
