Firefox has just announced that it will block web trackers by default, along with sharing some additional, upcoming changes, and mentioning that it will let users have complete control over what they share with websites. Firefox says that “many of the harms of unchecked data collection are completely opaque to users and experts alike”, which is one of the main reasons the company has decided to block tracking by default, in order to protect you from possibly harmful tracking.
The company has said that over the next few much, such changes will be implemented in its browser, and even though Firefox did not specify if it means desktop only, or all platforms, it’s probably the latter, which includes Android, of course. The company has said that it plans to change three things specifically. The first change that the company listed is an improved page load performance. Firefox says that tracking slows down the web, and that it impacts users on slower networks considerably more than those of you who have a really fast Internet connection. The company said that it already included a feature that blocks trackers that slow down page loads in Firefox Nightly, and if that test proves to be successful, such feature will be included by default in Firefox 63.
The second change that Firefox mentioned, is that it will remove cross-site tracking. Firefox says that users are tracked no matter where they go on the web, and most web browsers actually fail in delivering the level of privacy that users deserve. In order to amend that, the company says that it will strip cookies and block storage access from third-party tracking content, which is also a feature that is already available in Firefox Nightly, and the company aims to push this to Firefox 64 in the future. The last change Firefox listed is… mitigating harmful practices. Firefox says that some website will continue to want data in exchange for content, but they’ll have to ask for it after this gets implemented, as users will get full control on what they want to share.