STOCKHOLM, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Vienna-based advocacy group NOYB on Wednesday said it has filed a complaint with the Austrian data protection authority against Mozilla accusing the Firefox browser maker of tracking user behaviour on websites without consent.
NOYB (None Of Your Business), the digital rights group founded by privacy activist Max Schrems, said Mozilla has enabled a so-called “privacy preserving attribution” feature that turned the browser into a tracking tool for websites without directly telling its users.
Mozilla had defended the feature, saying it wanted to help websites understand how their ads perform without collecting data about individual people. By offering what it called a non-invasive alternative to cross-site tracking, it hoped to significantly reduce collecting individual information.
NOYB has the right to send a complaint if it think a company infringe upon right to privacy. Mozilla isn’t entitled to special treatment or special notice before filling a complaint.
Mozilla should have expected this. They claim to defend users privacy so they should understand why consent for data collection is important. Also there was public outcry and criticism of opt-out, and yet they haven’t backed down.
If Mozilla resolve these issues, NOYB could ask for the complaint to be dropped. I hope they do resolve this, and do drop the complaint.