The Mozilla Foundation is enhancing the privacy of its Firefox browser, known for its privacy protection, with the new feature to restrict cookies.
The design change, called “Total Cookie Protection”, aims to provide enhanced protection against online tracking by limiting the ability of websites to read cookies generated by third-party services.
According to a blog post from Mozilla, access to any particular cookie is restricted via the website that placed the cookie in the user’s browser.
As a result, cookies generated by a website or service will not be readable by other websites visited by the user.
Mozilla’s post describes the new feature in terms of a separate set of cookies for each website. This prevents trackers from linking user behavior across multiple sites.
The post says: No other websites can access cookies that don’t belong to them and see what other websites’ cookies know about you.
“This approach strikes a balance between eliminating the worst privacy features of third-party cookies – the ability to track you – and allowing these cookies to fulfill less invasive use cases – providing accurate analytics.”
Firefox enhances privacy
The cookie protection feature is part of Mozilla’s ongoing privacy-focused development strategy. This strategy saw Firefox continue to support the most sophisticated form of ad blocking, unlike Google Chrome.
Regarding cookies, Google announced in 2020 that it will phase out cookies within two years. But later postponed the target date to 2023.
Mozilla described the need for improved cookie protection. She cited various examples of tracking abuse, including Facebook’s digital tracking of student loan applicants.
Mozilla’s chief security officer said it wanted to give users control over data and defend against misuse.
The new cookie protection feature is now available in the latest version of Firefox for PC. Mozilla is working on a different schedule to roll out the feature to the mobile version. But the technology is available in the privacy-focused Focus version of Firefox via Android.
