Online privacy is quickly becoming more and more important as currently the methods of gathering personally-identifiable data are more than ever before. Browser tracking is one such method through which websites and web services can obtain private telemetry data regarding the user’s online activities and Internet habits. Though most of the time this wouldn’t really affect one’s regular life, telemetry data collection is still considered to be a violation of one’s privacy (and rightfully so). Therefore, different software have been coming up with new ways to make their customers’ virtual life more secure and less exposed to data collection by third parties. One good example of this is the Mozilla Firefox browser – though there are many other browser programs out there that offer greater privacy, Firefox is still a good option for anyone who wants the functionality of a versatile and all-around browser while still having their personal space protected.
Firefox Tracking Protection
As we already mentioned, many sites and online services try to obtain information related to your browsing habits and what you do online. This data is normally used for advertising purposes as this sort of information is highly valued by advertising distributors as it allows them to create targeted ads. Still though, having a browser that can protect you from unwanted collection of such information is always a good thing and Firefox is one of the browsers capable of doing it. The Privacy Protection feature blocks most trackers that try to keep tabs on your online activity which improves your overall privacy when on the Internet. While this feature isn’t flawless and doesn’t stop all forms of privacy intrusion, it is still good to have it in your arsenal.
Firefox 57
The Tracking Protection feature for Mozilla Firefox isn’t anything new – it has been around for about three years as it was added to the program back in 2014. However, up until Firefox 57 – the upcoming update for the browser, the feature was only enabled by default for the Incognito Mode browsing. Although it was still technically possible to enable it for regular browsing, most users didn’t know about that option as the feature didn’t have a corresponding UI (User Interface) setting. With the release of the next version of the browser, Firefox 57, this is going to change as there will be three separate options for the Tracking Protection feature within the browser’s settings. The first one is labeled Always which will keep the Tracking Protection enabled for the whole browser, the second one is Only in private windows (Incognito Mode) and the third one is Never, meaning that the feature would be disabled if the user chooses that.
How to enable it
Before Firefox 57, the user would need to execute several different tasks before they could enable the Tracking Protection for regular browsing and most customers didn’t know how to do it as it was certainly not intuitive and there wasn’t an actual button to do it from the settings menu. However, not all this will be made much easier when 57 gets released, all you’d have to do to enable the option is go to about:preferences#privacy (type it in the URL bar) and select the Always button to have the protection enabled at all times.