Mozilla has announced a series of measures to address the harmful effects of adtracking. To this end, the company today announced its new Firefox Web Browser Privacy Policy. It also contains a lot of information about the new tracking policy of the browser.
This is a Wiki document in which the company explains how it ensures that cross-site tracking of user activities via cookies does not work. It can also be read that the browser blocks cookies that track users with unintentional identification techniques such as browser fingerprinting.
Standard blocking
Mozilla’s measures against tracking were first announced last August. The explicit intention of the browser maker was to increase the privacy of users. In this way, the company was able to launch Firefox on the market in a different way, as the browser for privacy. The first of these measures was rolled out last October with version 63 and now, for the first time, people are really explaining how the company views privacy.
The company explains which online tracking practices, according to Mozilla, should be blocked by default by web browsers as a policy measure. These practices are potentially harmful to users and are not easy for users to understand or control. For this reason, the company blocks standard cookies that allow third parties to build profiles of users by tracking them across multiple sites and platforms.
The future
The intention is to block future URL-based tracking as well. This concerns websites where the URL also has an identifier. Other unintentional identification techniques such as browser fingerprinting may also be blocked. This is the identification of a user on the basis of browser features, the device or the network from which the user is surfing.
Also supercookies seem to be in the sights of Mozilla. These are techniques that place trackers in parts of the browser that are not emptied when a user deletes the browsing data. This is about more than just protecting users – we want to give them a voice, said Firefox Vice President Nick Nguyen about the developments. Some websites still want user data in exchange for content, but now they will have to ask for it. That’s a positive change for people who had no idea about the value exchange they’re part of.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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