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.

4 points

doesn’t sound good

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-15 points
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“B… but Mozilla fights for privacy and the free internet!!!11!!11!!”

Well deserved

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4 points

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.

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-2 points

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.

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15 points

Right, but what other browser are you going to use?

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-4 points
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Deleted by creator
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1 point

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

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4 points
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Big “what are you going to do, vote republican?” energy here.

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1 point

🙄

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14 points

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.

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0 points

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?

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-1 points

Turning the feature on by default is bad, but

Nope, no further. Downvoted and blocked.

Don’t you fucking try and justify this.

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9 points

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.

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1 point

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.

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2 points

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.

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2 points

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.

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-23 points

Hopefully this makes some of the Firefox shills finally realize it’s time to change our recommendations.

I’ve heard so much shit lately about Firefox, it has become a sinking ship and I’m eager to see who picks up the shards and runs with it.

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17 points

Hopefully this makes some of the Firefox shills finally realize it’s time to change our recommendations.

There’s still nothing better, you just have to be careful to block all their moneymaking bullshit attempts like save-your-shit-into-our-pocket and virginity-preserving assfucking. I use Fennec on android, though.

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8 points

There are forks, like libre wolf (desktop) and mull (Android) that don’t ship with some of the bullshit, Firefox ships.

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5 points

Yeah, and using those is pretty good, but they don’t really do anything you can’t do just by changing settings in Firefox, and if Firefox doesn’t have any users those die right along with it.

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5 points
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LibreWolf is better, includes ublock and no tracking by default.

There are good chromium based browsers too, I’m not aware of Vivaldi having any major controversies or shady business decisions in recent years, it has a built in adblock thats independent of chromium’s upstream.

If you disqualify every browser due to its upstream having issues then you should probably revert to using CURL or something convoluted like what richard stallman does. Every browser that exists today is a fork of some browser that previously was good but started to suck.

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3 points

I don’t think chromium should ever be encouraged. That is the one browser family trying and mostly succeeding at swallowing up the Internet. Google already has way too much power over the Internet, and it will only get worse if people don’t start leaving their ecosystem

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3 points

The problem is that Librewolf’s continued existence depends on Firefox continuing to exist. And while I like Vivaldi (but not its closed-sourceness), if all browsers end up being Chromium-based, Google still has an effective monopoly on web standards.

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1 point

Ladybird is a completely new open source browser with it’s own from scratch engine, so that’s one that hasn’t been forked from any other browser

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0 points
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Deleted by creator
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43 points

And what else should be recommended?

The choice is basically between Firefox or skinned Chromium.

Do you really want to experience first-hand just why Internet Explorer was this hated?
Here’s a hint: de facto monopoly on browser market that allowed them to control the web standards back then and their ideas were not good.

it has become a sinking ship and I’m eager to see who picks up the shards and runs with it.

I don’t think you have any idea how much work it takes to create a new browser.

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-12 points

I think there’s kind of a 3rd choice, WebKit.

Chrome was great, till it wasn’t. IE always was bad. Edge is chromium.

Firefox has stayed closer to “don’t be evil” than many companies. Is say far more than the other options.

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7 points

I think there’s kind of a 3rd choice, WebKit.

That’s where Chromium came from originally, so not really 3rd.

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12 points

WebKit is really only available on Apple devices in any meaningful way.

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2 points

Labybird is a completely new upcoming open source browser, complete with its own from scratch engine

Theres also Servo an open source engine led by the Linux Foundation

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3 points

Ah yes, let’s recommend the browser that is “targeting a first Alpha release for early adopters in 2026.”

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3 points

You’re talking about the wrong thing. The Mozilla Foundation is and has been acting a fool in recent years. Firefox, the open source program, is doing mostly OK. Obviously the two are closely connected, but they’re definitely not the same thing, and this matters when discussing policy.

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-28 points
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Removed by mod
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21 points

Show 'em, that’ll teach these nasty fanboys! Reads like writing that got you a big dopamine rush.

I agree, commenting “Use Firefox!!!1!11” on every post remotely related to (other) browsers doesn’t help anybody, just like commenting “Use Linux!!!1!11” on every post about a vulnerability in Windows doesn’t contribute anything meaningful at all.

Look, I also disagree with what Mozilla is doing here and yes, they 100% deserve the flak they are getting for it. But - like most things in life - it’s not black and white. Firefox could still be less intrusive to your privacy than Chrome (I’m not saying it necessarily is, but it could be that way). A different example: your mail provider could track every time you login to your account, or it could analyze and track the content of every email you receive. One is clearly worse than the other, right?

Which browser(s) do you recommend/use?

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1 point
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The fair comparison here shouldn’t be Chrome here, but Vivaldi or better yet, Brave. Which of the both are less evil? Firing a cancer employee or donating to prevent same-sex marriage?

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