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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.

  • dr-robot@fedia.io
    1915·
    2 months ago

    Turning the feature on by default is bad, but I don’t think that legal complaints are the way to go as well as the aggressive tone of NOYB. Firefox is the only browser developed and maintained professionally which has the potential of offering some privacy on the web. Given the importance of web browsers volunteer work just won’t cut it with the amount of features and security concerns that a browser needs.

    NOYB would’ve done much better by talking to Mozilla directly and advocating for them to do the right thing going for a legal complaint as the final nuclear option. If the was the case, then good that there’s a complaint, but the article does not indicate the any of this happened.

    • Hirom@beehaw.org
      141·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
        54·
        2 months ago

        there is this approach where if the neighbor is loud, you first try to speak with them, and if they don’t care then you go to the police. have you heard of it?

    • Venia Silente@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      2 months ago

      NOYB would’ve done much better by talking to Mozilla directly and advocating for them to do the right thing going for a legal complaint as the final nuclear option. I

      It has been already vastly demonstrated by Mozilla, that going to them and talking to them about how they shouldn’t do shitty things doesn’t work.

      If it takes legal action to even try and save the browser, I’m all for it.

      • dr-robot@fedia.io
        21·
        2 months ago

        Okay, but what if after all this legal action Mozilla decides that it’s no longer worth serving the privacy conscious crowd? Which browser will you use then?

        Things only happen in a desirable direction if there is dialogue. Linus made the decision about making Linux GPL but he is against aggressive enforcement. He thinks it’s much smarter to go and slowly convince the offending parties that it’s in their benefit.

        • Venia Silente@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          Okay, but what if after all this legal action Mozilla decides that it’s no longer worth serving the privacy conscious crowd? Which browser will you use then?

          Firefox.

          Just because the execs decide to stop serving the software, doesn’t mean the copies (and source code!) already out in the wild will automagickally stop functioning. You’ll still be able to visit websites the day after, the month after, the year after… And there’s still the devs, since they’re not the execs.

          By the time there’s issues, there’ll still be the forks. Someone will have already step up to fork and keep the work on their own, too; the name just weighs enough that someone will want to be “the next Firefox” (not “the next Mozilla”). Or even better, the devs (obvs not the execs) will have jumped ship into any one of the various alternative projects such as ladybird, or might even have started a new project from scratch, hopefully intending for it to be a leaner and better browsr.

            • Venia Silente@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              No hope, no cope. Just a basic understanding on how the HTTP infrastructure and time dilation work.

          • dr-robot@fedia.io
            22·
            2 months ago

            Sorry, but I don’t believe that’s realistic. Devs need to be paid. To be paid they need execs. Donations might sustain a small project, but not a web browser. Linux is developed primarily by devs employed by the big corporations. It would never survive on donations and volunteer labour. Same for Firefox. A browser is too complicated to be run as a GitHub project.

            • Venia Silente@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              2 months ago

              You can have one or two execs, as a treat; but certainly they don’t need to be paid crazy figures like what has been the case with Mozilla as of late. It’s not like they’re that important, in particular for the kind of project something like Firefox is (which could do with eg.: coop governance).

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
      2·
      2 months ago

      Now now. If Mozilla is breaking the law here, of course someone would report them for it. There’s no need to shoot the messenger when everything was predictable.

    • zecg@lemmy.world
      1418·
      2 months ago

      talking to Mozilla directly and advocating for them to do the right thing going for a legal complaint as the final nuclear option

      Fuck that, they know what they’re doing and they know what the right thing is. Mozilla is the enemy for some time now, Firefox’s development is basically held hostage by a shitty corporation and a toothless foundation.

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
          55·
          2 months ago

          So what, are we giving Mozilla a free pass to do anything now? Is the new bar “not quite as shitty as Google”?

          • dr-robot@fedia.io
            1·
            2 months ago

            Absolutely not and is not what I said. Just that due to lack of alternatives it’s not really beneficial for privacy enthousiasts to make the only browser with privacy features dislike the community it’s working for. If NOYB has the resources for a legal complaint, it has the resources to lead this dialogue.

            • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
              3·
              2 months ago

              Why do you assume they haven’t warned Mozilla in advance?

              Also, Mozilla was fully aware that what they were doing is in breach of GDPR. I find it extremely hard to believe that the makers of Firefox are not fully familiarized with it by now.

              Last but not least Mozilla is doing this for financial gain. It’s selling pur data to advertisers. Why should we excuse it? It’s a very hostile act.

              If Mozilla has hit rock bottom and has been reduced to selling our data to survive then that’s that. We’ll find another way and another FOSS browser. Accepting it is not an option.