Mozilla which announced new security efforts in June is now rolling out the features for all Firefox users on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Partnering with Disconnect, Firefox will empower and protect all third-party tracking cookies and crypto-miners from accessing users' hardware. With Firefox 69 (rolled out on September 3, 2019), these options will be enabled by default. "Enhanced Tracking Protection works behind-the-scenes to keep a company from forming a profile of you based on their tracking of your browsing behaviour across websites, often without your knowledge or consent," says Mozilla.
If further said, "Those profiles and the information they contain may then be sold and used for purposes you never knew or intended." For users who want to know about who has attempted to track their online interactions, Firefox keeps a list of blocked cookies and crypto-miners. This view also allows users to turn off blocking trackers for specific sites. While most internet browsers are familiar with cookies, crypto-miners are a more recent scourge. Crypto-miners can commandeer the computer of a user, siphoning off its processing power to mine cryptocurrency for the benefit of another person, reduce the life of a battery, and affecting performance.
Firefox will also block fingerprinting scripts, which captures the specs of a device when being connected to a website. This profile is used to track that device across the web. Firefox 69 comes has additional improvements such as the ability to block all auto-play videos. Windows users will also get to see improvements in performance, as Firefox will better instruct Windows to priorities the tasks users, meaning more processor time spent on the tasks that a user is actively working on rather than background processes. Meanwhile, macOS users will also be benefitted from Firefox switching back more frequently to the low-powered GPU more on dual-GPU models like the MacBook Pro, which will save battery life.
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