Short Bytes: In order to make your web browsing experience a lot better, Mozilla is integrating some key privacy features of TOR browser into its Firefox web browser. These features will go live with the final Firefox 50 release and make it a better Google Chrome alternative.
TOR software suite is often regarded as one of the most useful privacy tools that one can use to fight the constant and prying surveillance of governments and attackers. With the help of its multiple encryption layers, one is able to hide his/her identity and browse the web safely.
In a step that will bring along massive security features to the Firefox web browser, Mozilla has partnered with the TOR Project. Mozilla is likely to encapsulate these new TOR-inspired features into a new Firefox 50 version. For those who don’t know, TOR browser is based on Firefox Extended Release.
With the final release of Firefox 50, users will be able to enjoy web browsing on a hardened web browser. It’s worth noting that Firefox has already implemented a number of TOR features in Firefox 50 pre-release versions.
As reported by Ghacks, the three main settings that have already landed in pre-release builds of Firefox 50 are:
- Enumeration of mimeTypes and plugins
- Returning 0 for screen.orientation.angle and landscape-primary for screen.orientation.type when apps and websites ask for these information
- Removing the “open with” option in download dialog
As the mainstream internet using audience doesn’t need all the TOR-specific features, Mozilla will let them choose the privacy options accordingly. On the other hand, some features that Mozilla considers necessary for safe browsing will be deeply encapsulated into the browser.
Out of these features, Mozilla especially stresses upon the traffic fingerprinting that is used to reveal the true identity of a user. This feature is already rolled out in Firefox Nightly builds and one can make the appropriate changes in its about:config page.
Apart from these privacy-related changes, Mozilla has been making continuous improvements to its open source web browser. As one of the biggest changes to ever come to Firefox, Mozilla recently announced the multi-process feature called Electrolysis.
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