Firefox 128 Browser Gets Experimental API Privacy Preserving Attribution (PPA) — it is designed to ensure user privacy and help advertisers with targeted advertising. In reality, the innovation risks having the opposite effect.
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With the release of Firefox 128, PPA technology is enabled by default, which Mozilla hopes will set a new standard for targeted advertising on the Internet. The API will help website developers evaluate the effectiveness of advertising without collecting data about visitors to resources – this is an alternative to tracking user actions across multiple sites using cookies, which Firefox and some other non-Chrome browsers have been blocking for years.
The PPA model is based on impressions, which are stored in Firefox every time a user sees an ad banner on a site. The browser uses this data to create a report, and the site retrieves the information directly from Firefox. The data is encrypted, anonymized, and stored locally on the device. Advertisers receive reports on the effectiveness of their campaigns, and users are protected from unauthorized access to personal information.
A similar solution as an alternative to third-party cookies was previously proposed by Google — the Privacy Sandbox technology is also designed to track the effectiveness of advertising by creating an anonymous user profile in the browser, but human rights activists claim that it was created solely in the interests of the advertising business. PPA is currently working with a small number of sites in testing mode, and Mozilla hopes that the technology will become a web standard that will be used by other browsers and even, perhaps, Google. Human rights activists note that the PPA function should be disabled by default, not enabled in Firefox.
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