Firefox faces backlash over default ad tracking feature in new update

Mozilla did a poor job of informing users about the introduction of the "Privacy-Preserving Attribution" feature.

The new feature aims to measure the popularity of ads and the "discoverability" of the products they present. It also informs advertisers if someone clicked on the ad, engaged with the offer, or made a purchase. The information provided by Firefox allows advertisers to continue their marketing analysis, which is significantly limited by the browser's default features and often-used extensions like uBlock Origin and NoScript.

The transmitted data is stripped of characteristics that would allow the identification of the user, which, according to Mozilla, remains in line with the organization's Manifesto, which strongly emphasizes privacy. Mozilla hopes that the privacy-preserving attribution (PPA) feature will form the basis for future W3C standards and become a widespread practice.

However, for many users, the new feature was poorly communicated, and its default activation, given the weak announcement, raised suspicions about Mozilla's intentions. Firefox needs to make money, which is complicated when one of its main features makes it difficult for others to earn money.

On Reddit, accusations of a conspiracy began to appear, which Mozilla CTO Bobby Holley personally commented on. Besides emphasizing Firefox's privacy guidelines, Holley noted that asking users to activate a feature that is difficult to explain would be confusing. Therefore, the PPA will remain enabled. Currently, only Firefox uses it.

Users who do not trust the PPA technology and prefer to disable it can do so in Settings under the Privacy & Security section and the advanced preferences editor. The "Allow sites to measure ads with privacy protection" feature is currently the only switch in the dedicated "Ad preferences on sites" section. Firefox is likely outdated if the option is not present in the settings.

The option in the advanced preferences editor is called "dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled". To disable PPA, set it to "false." Additional switches controlling PPA operation are experimental flags controlled by the variable "dom.origin-trials.private-attribution.state". These experiments are disabled when their state is set to 0.

Mozilla's idea of informing advertisers without breaking promises regarding privacy seems appropriate, but the communication undoubtedly failed. Even today's documentation is outdated compared to the actual state. Time will tell if PPA will catch on. However, as long as there is a chance, this feature will remain enabled by default in Firefox.