Mozilla bellyache up Firefox’salready impressive arsenalof privacy - maintain tech on Tuesday with the addition of a new tool in its flagship web browser : Total Cookie Protection . As the name suggests , the feature prognosticate to put the lid on any creepy cookies or third - political party tracking tech that might want to track your conduct from site to site .
Before we get into the specifics of Firefox ’s former feature , it ’s worth quickly recapitulate some ofthe basicsof how cookie in reality mould . Broadly speak , the tiny schoolbook strings we call “ cookies ” all have the same finish in judgement : identifying your unparalleled web browser session on your unequaled computer , and storing that data away for later on . Depending onthe flavorof cookie involved , that store datum could be used for one of two things : either track your demeanor on that particular website ( first - political party cookies ) or tracking and accumulate your demeanor across multiple dissimilar sites ( third - party cookies ) .
explain the fashion these third - party cookies stalk you across the web is a bit complicated ( though Mozilla detailed the okay points of third - political party tracking inthis web log ) . In a nutshell , the reason that these cooky seem to persist on and on ( and on ) is because just about every land site you could name doubtlessly has some turn of these third - company cookie tuck into its margins — and sometimes , that routine isin the thousands . If you happen to visit two web site that using the same bit of third - company code , there ’s nothing stopping the companionship behind that third - party computer code from sync that data for their own stalk - atomic number 39 purposes .
Graphic: Mozilla
The way this fresh Firefox feature circumvents all that is actually pretty clever : maintain a separate “ cookie jar ” for each individual site . Again , Mozilla helpfully outlinedthe nitty - grittyof how this works on its own blog , and promises — in short — that these jars will keep sneaky third party from meshing cookie data from multiple sites behind the scenes .
This Total Cookie Protection tech is a verbatim follow - up toanother security updatethat roll out toward the death of January , when Mozilla announced that Firefox would now insulate its cache and mesh connection data on a website - by - web site basis . Mozilla pointed out at the time that these sorts of information fund could be abused to essentially make a unexampled kind of cookie ( literally called a “ supercookie ” ) , that is much harder to throw off off .
This all vocalize all great on newspaper , butas we ’ve pointed outbefore , Firefox ’s claims are n’t always air-tight . That go for its promise about Total Cookie Protection , too .
For neophyte , Mozilla mentions that the lineament
makes a limited exclusion for ill-tempered - site cookies when they are involve for non - tracking use , such as those used by popular third - party login providers .
And that it
does not currently restrict third - party entrepot access for resourcefulness that are not classified as tail resourcefulness .
While the post does n’t turn over into the details of what these exceptions face like , this technical docon Mozilla ’s developer blog tender a few hint .
First , it ’s deserving notice that Firefox ’s definition of what a “ tracker ” in reality is might bemore narrowthan you ’d think . Because there’sliterally thousandsof players in the ever - growing adtech ecosystem , and because the list of trackers that Firefox uses ( which you could see for yourselfhere ) is relatively short by comparing , inevitably , folks using Firefox might see a cookie or two that slips under Firefox ’s radar — and tracks them across the World Wide Web — strictly because that cookie did n’t fall within Firefox ’s definition of what a “ cookie ” might be .
And once these trackers fall by the roadside , they ’re free to access their cookies and other site memory board , and using those identifier to cut across substance abuser across multiple sites — at least for now . Per Mozilla ’s dev blog , the caller “ may choose to apply extra restriction to third - party memory board admission in the futurity , ” even for widgets that are n’t inevitably relegate as “ tracker ” under Mozilla ’s rigid definition .
Aside from this mirky definition , there ’s also the fact that Firefox givescertain third - party toolsunfettered access code across multiple sites as a means to “ foreclose website break . ” The biggest culprit here , as Mozilla pointed out , aresingle sign - on ( SSO ) services , aka the button that let you log onto a situation using your Facebook or Google story . Not for nothing , but considering how these two fellowship have kind of alackluster reputationon the privacy front , I ’d rather not give them — or their login widgets — a innocent pass .
But we are kick in Firefox credit rating . No web internet browser is perfect . Even if Mozilla ’s pass a bit short of its privacy promises , at least it ’s notGoogle Chrome .
FirefoxFree softwareHackingHTTP cookieInternet privacyMozillasoftware
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