Mozilla is introducing new privacy-focused features and tweaks with its latest Firefox release (67.0.1). Enhanced Tracking Protection, which blocks third-party tracking cookies, is now the default setting for new installations. Current Firefox users who don’t have blocking switched on can do so in the Privacy & Security portion of the options menu.
For those who want to see which companies we block, you can click on the shield icon, go to the Content Blocking section, then Cookies. It should read Blocking Tracking Cookies. Then, click on the arrow on the right hand side, and you’ll see the companies listed as third party cookies and trackers that Firefox has blocked. If you want to turn off blocking for a specific site, click on the Turn off Blocking for this Site button.
Mozilla has also announced a new version of its Facebook Container extension. Facebook tracks users and builds a profile of them with the help of embedded Share and Like buttons, but this extension blocks them, severing the connections.
For example, when you are on a news site and reading an article, you often see Facebook Like and Share buttons. Our Facebook Container will block these buttons and all connections to Facebook’s servers, so that Facebook isn’t able to track your visits to these sites. This blocking makes it much harder for Facebook to build shadow profiles of non-Facebook users. You will know the blocking is in effect when you see the Facebook Container purple fence badge.
Last but not least are updates to Firefox Lockwise and Firefox Monitor. Lockwise, Mozilla’s solution for managing passwords, now includes a desktop extension in addition to its Android and iOS apps. Monitor, which notifies users if their email addresses have been part of a data breach, now has a central dashboard for managing multiple accounts.
