Firefox to Block Online Tracking by Default
Doctors spend a lot of time figuring out the differences between a patient's symptoms and their actual problem. A fever needs to be treated, sure, but it's also just the body's way of indicating the presence of an underlying issue. Mozilla announced today that it wants upcoming releases of Firefox to address the real issue many people have with browsing the web--hidden trackers built into pretty much every website--instead of just relieving the symptoms.
The most obvious symptom of internet tracking is the weirdly personal and oddly persistent advertisement. Sometimes it seems like the same ad, which just happens to relate to something you were discussing with a friend not that long ago, is appearing on every single website. That's because so many websites use tracking with the express intent of showing more relevant ads.
Tracking also makes it take longer for web pages to load. Not everyone who uses some form of ad-blocker does so because they want to protect their privacy; some just want to make browsing the web faster. In today's announcement, Mozilla cited a study by Ghostery showing that 55.4 percent of the time it takes to load a web page was spent loading third-party trackers. Note, however, that Ghostery's business relies on blocking trackers.
Those are just two obvious symptoms. According to Mozilla, "many of the harms of unchecked data collection are completely opaque to users and experts alike, only to be revealed piecemeal by major data breaches. In the near future, Firefox will—by default—protect users by blocking tracking while also offering a clear set of controls to give our users more choice over what information they share with sites."
The company's going to release a series of features to Firefox meant to help address the problem of internet tracking. The first will automatically block trackers that slow down page load times, with a shield study in September leading to a full release in Firefox 63 if all goes well. The second will prevent cross-site tracking. It's already available in Firefox Nightly, will be tested in September and is meant to debut with Firefox 65.
The final new feature is devoted to "mitigating harmful practices," including "fingerprinting" users based on the devices they use to make it easier to monitor their activity on multiple websites. It also includes the increasingly common practice of deploying cryptocurrency mining scripts, or cryptojacking, to mine cryptocurrencies like Ethereum without visitors' knowledge or consent. There's no timeline for this feature's debut.
All of these updates should help Firefox users feel better about browsing the web. Mozilla said it can't totally cure the problem, but it can at least make sure people are protected by default and that website operators ask permission to track people instead of just doing it automatically. As companies like Google face increasing scrutiny for their monitoring practices, Dr. Firefox is here to treat as many problems as it can.
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Nathaniel Mott is a freelance news and features writer for Tom's Hardware US, covering breaking news, security, and the silliest aspects of the tech industry.
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Math Geek i hope it is as thorough as it sounds like they intend. be a shame to start out well and then bow to the almighty dollar. sucked that ad-block plus took the money and started allowing a lot of what was once blocked to load again.Reply
hopefully firefox goes full on nuclear and stops as much as they possibly can. -
jimmysmitty Reply21281986 said:i hope it is as thorough as it sounds like they intend. be a shame to start out well and then bow to the almighty dollar. sucked that ad-block plus took the money and started allowing a lot of what was once blocked to load again.
hopefully firefox goes full on nuclear and stops as much as they possibly can.
I would be amazed if Mozilla takes money but to be fair I have seen a lot of freeware apps that used to be made to help the consumer turn around and put their hands in the cookie jar.
That said, when they do eventually something comes along to replace it. When Super Anti Spyware went all crazy Spyware Search and Destroy came along. Now that AdBlock has taken the kool-aide uBlock Origin and Ghostery have stepped up to the plate. I do feel for them though. Its hard to dedicate time to a free application. -
mkzcd3 Sounds good but I just removed Firefox from my 2 PCs due to frequent browser hijack attempts. I will not try Firefox again.Reply -
Math Geek Reply21283556 said:Sounds good but I just removed Firefox from my 2 PCs due to frequent browser hijack attempts. I will not try Firefox again.
so you went somewhere sketchy and FF saved you from infection and in response you abandon what saved you??? hhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm sounds about right.....:sarcastic: -
Assmar malwarebytes has a new ad/pop up blocker that I've been using in tandem with ublock. Firefox about to give me another layer of protection, one of the many reasons why I've stayed with them as my main browser over the years.Reply -
CerianK That is good news.Reply
Mainstream deployment of crypto-mining-blocking is overdue. Luckily, Add-ons have been available, but the average person would not know that they need to install it.
Hopefully, they will take enough time to test all of this before it hits the release channel... I had to install and use the 32-bit version on 2 different older PCs to mitigate launch and lockup issues with some of the early Quantum 64-bit versions.
One of them is back on 64-bit successfully. But I haven't had time to upgrade and test the other one, which is running on 11yo Dual Xeon CPU motherboard (4C8T in 2007!) and 7yo GTX560 GPU. Single-thread rating sucks, but can play back most 4K videos at ~30FPS. It would be too sad to throw that old beast in the trash.