There’s no denying the fact that data collection on the web is one of the fundamental ways how our Internet actually works. But then comes the practice of unchecked data collection, which brings along tons of negative impacts like performance impact and data breaches.
It seems that Mozilla is planning to block all kinds of web trackers by default in the upcoming releases. This might be a massive blow to the advertisers in the regions where Firefox enjoys a more significant market share.
In an official blog post, Mozilla has outlined the plans to roll out a series of privacy-focused features.
The first feature will be rolled out in Firefox Nightly builds to block trackers that increase the page loading time. It’ll be first shipped using a field study in September. Mozilla further plans to implement it by default in Firefox 63 — if the test results turn out to be encouraging.
To remove cross-site tracking, Mozilla plans to block storage access from 3rd-party trackers and strip cookies as well. Firefox 65 might get this second important security feature; it’s already available for testing in Nightly builds.
The third major change aims to fix the general malicious techniques being used on the web. You might have read about shady practices like traffic fingerprinting, in-browser crypto mining, etc.
In case you’re willing to try out these features, you can do so by installing Firefox Nightly build and find the new features under the “Content Blocking” section in the privacy settings.
