Mozilla Firefox now offers a new feature designed to fight trackers

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Mozilla has been building its reputation as the browser that protects its user’s privacy. Firefox 86 brings another anti-cookie measure that will further increase its credibility in that regard. The company’s newest feature is called Total Cookie Protection and will be part of its already established enhanced tracking protection mode. 

Billed as a “major privacy advance,” the total cookie protection (TCP) is designed to stop cross-site tracking. 

Cookie-based tracking, which is one of the most used methods for gathering data on users, is a big part of online advertisers’ commercial tracking. Thanks to that, advertising companies can build a detailed profile of you and bombard you with targeted ads. 

How does Total Cookie Protection work on Firefox?

With Firefox, Mozilla plans to battle cookie-based tracking by storing each website’s cookies in a separate container or a separate “cookie jar,” as the people at Mozilla like to call it. Therefore, every time a website wants to store a cookie in your browser, the cookie will be assigned to its “cookie jar” and won’t be shared with any other website. 

By combining the enhanced tracking protection with Total Cookie Protection, Mozilla significantly beefs up its privacy protection features.

Other browsers and privacy 

While Mozilla leads the browsers regarding the privacy protection game, other major web browsers have also tried to follow the company’s example. Apple’s Safari browser implemented its “Intelligent Tracking Prevention” that segregates cross-site scripting so that it can protect its users’ browsing history. 

Google Chrome also announced that it has plans to add support for third-party cookies. However, it seems that their “privacy sandbox” is still in the making, without any word on when it will be available. But even with the lack of privacy protection, Chrome remains the most popular web browser on the internet.

The new anti-tracking evasion method

While Mozilla went above and beyond to prevent cookie tracking, new worrisome trends have appeared and can potentially render their efforts useless. A group of privacy research advocates and researchers found that a sneaky tracking method could collect privacy data without using third-party cookies.

It is a relatively new technique originally used by a French newspaper website back in 2019. Since then, its popularity is continuously on the rise. So far, no web browser has introduced anything that can deal with this type of tracking.

Regardless, it’s good to see Mozilla taking user privacy seriously with its latest version of Firefox.

Have any thoughts on this? Do you use Firefox? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Deep Ballu