There are plenty of browsers to choose from, but two of the most popular, when it comes to privacy at least, are headed down radically divergent paths. Whereas Google appears keen on crippling Chrome users’ efforts to block tracker-driven ads , Mozilla on Tuesday moved to block such trackers by default, with the aim of preventing companies like Google from developing profiles of users that feed behaviorally-targeted ads. “We believe that in order to truly protect people, we need to establish a new standard that puts people’s privacy first,” said David Camp, senior vice president of Firefox. That new standard, as Camp put it, includes turning on Firefox’s new “enhanced” tracking protection on by default for new users. According to the company, this will block all third-party tracking cookies identified by the ad-block platform Disconnect. These include trackers built for advertising, analytics, cryptomining, fingerprinting, session replay, and social interaction. (The list itself is open source .) Disconnect’s list is highly curated, as the company is fairly responsive to user feedback. “Most of our list of unblocked trackers is based on user feedback and complaints that we have received about experience with the products,” says the company’s website. Whether you’re […]
Firefox Deploys a Slew of New Privacy Features, Taking Aim at Facebook and Invasive Online Trackers

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