For advertising: Firefox now collects user data by default

Contents

Firefox 128 is here - and is making headlines not with practical new features, but with a data protection controversy. Specifically, users are accusing the developer Mozilla of nothing less than deliberately deceiving its own users. This is because the new version of Firefox introduces a technology for anonymized measurement of advertising and its performance.

What may sound good on paper does not go down well with many users for several reasons: Firstly, Firefox automatically delivers the Privacy-Preserving Attribution (PPA) with the update to the new version, despite the "experimental" label. More serious, however, is the fact that Mozilla also activates the feature directly - users must therefore deactivate the PPA manually by opting out. Prerequisite: They are also aware of the PPA introduced behind the scenes.

This is precisely where blogger Jonah Aragon's criticism comes in: He believes that Mozilla knows full well that Firefox users would not want such a function. If the situation were different, the developers would have presented the PPA to the public beforehand and given the community time to test it beforehand. It is debatable to what extent this was done – at least Mozilla has had a support entry on what the PPA is for a month now.

Our users don't understand this

However, Bas Schouten, technical lead for Firefox performance, explains that it would have been difficult to explain a system like PPA. If users are not in a position to make an informed decision, an opt-in does not make sense. Users must therefore be protected from advertising tracking. In any case, new features would constantly be activated without being asked.

It is not surprising that such an attitude is not well received: Jonah Aragon accuses Mozilla of seeing itself as the shepherd of an uninformed mass. And according to the developers, they now have to be urged to make the right decision. Yet, Firefox users in particular are the kind of adult users who need to be listened to.

In fact, there is a strong suspicion that Mozilla wants to improve its own cash flow with the PPA. However, it is unclear how much money is involved. However, the developer behind the PPA is Anonymous, which Mozilla acquired a few weeks ago. Accordingly, the provider is the middleman between advertising and users.

Also technically questionable

But how does the PPA actually work? There is an aggregation server between the advertising provider and the users or their data, which anonymizes the information from the individual app browsers. Only then does it make the data available to the participating advertising customers.

This means that these providers can no longer draw conclusions about individual users. The process sounds simple and has an obvious weak point – which immediately draws criticism: Firstly, user data is now located on the aggregation server – which therefore leaves the user's own computer in any case.

For Mozilla, this server is not part of an advertising network – a view that many users are at least critical of. Aragon even goes so far as to accuse the Firefox developers of a trick: they have simply redefined the advertising network so that it does not belong to the advertising provider.

Data protection as an advertising label

There is also the question of how much Firefox users will actually trust a browser provider in future that advertises data protection but at the same time resorts to such measures. Because, as the critics are already realizing, only Mozilla's word protects the data collected - technically, according to Aragon, the system could easily be modified in future so that advertising providers would also have access to individual data.

And it was precisely these fears that critics expressed when Anonymous was purchased. However, observers could not imagine that Mozilla would now set up an (unnamed) advertising network through the back door. After all, the developer had recently suggested simply collecting less or no data to improve privacy. And now the opposite is happening.

To make matters worse, Firefox is the only major competitor to Google Chrome – other browsers are all based on Chromium. In any case, Mozilla's move does not make it any easier for users to make the right decisions for them and their data protection. Ladybird is currently gaining momentum as an independent hope, but is still a long way from being a reliable web browser.

(fo)