Firefox 67.0.1 now prevents websites and advertisers from following you

Last year, Mozilla introduced a new feature called Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP), which aims to improve privacy and avoid tracking web activity by attacking cookies.

Cookies, usually stored on the user's device in the form of small text files, allow website developers to store user data to facilitate navigation and enable certain functions.

With its ETP function, Mozilla blocks third-party cookies, that is, cookies placed on the user's computer by the server of a domain independent of the site visited.

These cookies are generally used by advertisers to offer targeted advertising thanks to the advertising profile.

Privacy problems, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal on Facebook, justify the development of such functions.

Of course, controlling browser cookies does not solve everything, but it can help solve part of the privacy problem by preventing companies from tracking it more easily from one website to another.

About the new version of Firefox 67.0.1

With the arrival of the new version of Firefox 67.0.1, the ETP function will now be enabled by default in all new installations to make it difficult for the users of the browser to track more than a thousand companies when they browse the Internet.

This feature will be enabled by default for new users who install and download Firefox for the first time, enhanced tracking protection is automatically enabled as part of the browser's "Standard" configuration and blocks "third-party tracking cookies."

While for existing users, improved protection against default tracking will be implemented in the coming months. But if you can not wait, you can activate it manually.

Since you can still disable this function or simply disable the blocking of a specific site, as this may cause some sites not to work properly.

Although you can also choose different levels of blocking. Mozilla allows users to choose between different standard, strict and customized options to control their level of online tracking.

Facebook Container is updated

In addition to enabling enhanced tracking protection by default, Mozilla has updated other privacy features.

This is the case of Facebook Container. Launched at the end of March 2018 in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, this is a Firefox extension that aims to make it much harder for Facebook to follow you when you're not on your site.

This tool, as the name implies, isolates Facebook from the rest of its web browsing activity, which should prevent the social network from following the user to any part of the web.

Facebook Container is an implementation of the technology of tabs or contextual containers in which Mozilla has been working for several years and whose production was made earlier than expected in response to the growing demand for tools that would help to better adjust the parameters of Confidentiality and security.

The tabs of the container allow browsing under different identities with a reduced risk of tracking, by eliminating the exchange of user personal data between tabs of different "contexts".

With the arrival of this latest Mozilla update to the Firefox 67.0.1 web browser, Facebook Container, which has had more than two million downloads since its launch, prevents Facebook from following you on other sites with integrated Facebook functions, such as "Share" buttons. "I like" that they are implemented in millions of websites.

For example, when you are on a news site and read an article, you often see the "Like" and "Share" buttons on Facebook. The Facebook container will block these buttons and all connections to the Facebook servers, so that the social network can not track your visits to these sites. This blocking makes it much more difficult for Facebook to create user profiles.