Firefox 87 Adds Stronger User Privacy Protections
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
Firefox 87 Adds Stronger User Privacy Protections:
Mozilla today announced the release of Firefox 87 in the stable channel fitted with a new intelligent tracker blocking mechanism.
Called SmartBlock, the feature works in Firefox Private Browsing and Strict Mode and is meant to improve users' browsing experience through fixing pages that Mozilla's tracking protections break.
[...] "To reduce this breakage, Firefox 87 is now introducing a new privacy feature we are calling SmartBlock. SmartBlock intelligently fixes up web pages that are broken by our tracking protections, without compromising user privacy," Mozilla announced.
To improve user experience, SmartBlock provides local stand-ins for the third-party tracking scripts that are blocked. Designed to "behave just enough like the original ones," these scripts ensure that websites load and that their functionality is intact.
With the SmartBlock stand-ins bundled with Firefox, no third-party tracking content is loaded, thus fully preventing potential tracking attempts. SmartBlock automatically replaces specific common scripts that are classified as trackers on the Disconnect Tracking Protection List.
The new browser release also brings along a stricter, more privacy-focused Referrer Policy, where the browser, by default, "will trim path and query string information from referrer headers to prevent sites from accidentally leaking sensitive user data."
[...] Firefox 87 sets the default Referrer Policy to 'strict-origin-when-cross-origin', meaning that user sensitive information that is accessible in the URL will always be trimmed, for all "navigational requests, redirected requests, and subresource (image, style, script) requests." The new policy will be enforced automatically upon updating to Firefox 87.
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