A tech columnist with The Washington Post is urging everyone to switch to Firefox after discovering that Chrome accepts a ton of tracking cookies. Being that Google’s main business is ads, that isn’t much of a surprise, but the number of cookies collected in a single week may to surprising to users.
My tests of Chrome vs. Firefox unearthed a personal data caper of absurd proportions. In a week of Web surfing on my desktop, I discovered 11,189 requests for tracker “cookies” that Chrome would have ushered right onto my computer but were automatically blocked by Firefox. These little files are the hooks that data firms, including Google itself, use to follow what websites you visit so they can build profiles of your interests, income and personality.
The author admits that Firefox isn’t a perfect alternative, but Mozilla has definitely been working hard to give users their privacy back. The company has proven that with options such as Enhanced Tracking Protection, which block cookies and storage access from third-party trackers.