Experimental Firefox version offers standard blocking option for trackers
Mozilla has built into a Nightly of Firefox an option that can block a large number of domains on which trackers operate. This mainly concerns trackers that do not respect the do-not-track setting. Mozilla is also looking at the possibilities for Tor integration.
The anti-tracking option must first be manually activated by the user via the about:config settings. Then blocking can be turned on via the privacy options in Firefox. There the user can also indicate whether the do-not-track header should be actively sent with http requests.
Mozilla uses the blocklist of Disconnect, a privacy add-on that blocks numerous trackers, as a basis. In particular, Mozilla would like to block tracker domains that do not adhere to the do-not-track setting. According to the browser builder, blocking such trackers leads to an average of 20 percent faster loading web pages. Mozilla does warn that an activated blocking option can cause problems with add-ons such as NoScript, Ghostery, Disconnect and AdBlock Plus.
The new privacy option is part of the new Polaris program. Mozilla works together with, among others, the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Tor Project. Polaris’s objective is to improve online privacy. With the Tor Project, Mozilla will look at whether activating the Tor network in Firefox could be simplified. Currently, most internet users use the specialized Tor Browser for this, which, incidentally, is already based on Firefox code. Mozilla will be able to offer the integration of Tor in private browsing mode, among other things. Mozilla also indicates that it will set up a number of its own Tor-middle relays to anonymize internet traffic.
In another step in its privacy offensive, Mozilla has also included a “forget button” in version 33.1. This can drag the user to the Firefox toolbar, after which the browser starts a new browser session after a set period of time after clearing the history, tabs and cookies. Furthermore, Firefox has added the privacy-friendly search engine DuckDuckGo to the standard available search engines.