Firefox Will Soon Block Cookies And Web Trackers By Default

For years, Mozilla has let users stop advert trackers from collecting your data, but, soon, Firefox will block these Ads by default. The browser will also give you more control over the data you share with websites.

In an official blog post, Mozilla has outlined the plans to roll out a series of privacy-focused features. The first feature will be rolled out In Firefox 65 version, a build to block trackers that increase the page loading time. It’ll be first shipped using a field study in September. Mozilla further plans to implement it by default in Firefox 63 — if the test results turn out to be encouraging.

“Anyone who isn’t an expert on the internet would be hard-pressed to explain how tracking on the internet actually works,” an announcement posted to Mozilla’s blog. “Some of the negative effects of unchecked tracking are easy to notice, namely eerily-specific targeted advertising and a loss of performance on the web. However, many of the harms of unchecked data collection are completely opaque to users and experts alike, only to be revealed piecemeal by major data breaches.”

To remove cross-site tracking, Mozilla plans to block storage access from 3rd-party trackers and strip cookies as well. Firefox 65 might get this second important security feature; it’s already available for testing in Nightly builds—In addition to this, future versions of Firefox will also cut down on harmful data collection or crypto mining practices by websites. With Firefox 63 version, the company will also block slow-loading trackers by default to help improve overall web performance.

However, this isn’t the first time Mozilla has pushed back against the web advertising industry. In 2004, the company blocked pop-up ads in the very first public Firefox. And, Over the years, Mozilla has implemented features designed to promote consumer privacy and cut down on practices it sees as harmful to the open web, most notably earlier this year, the company blocked notifications pop-up on the website.

In case you’re willing to try out these features, you can do so by installing Firefox Nightly build and find the new features under the “Content Blocking” section in the privacy settings