Firefox 72 blocks fingerprinting scripts by default, rethinks notification pop-ups

Enlarge / Mozilla's office in San Francisco. (credit: Getty Images | Iuliia Serova)

Mozilla has released Firefox 72, an update that, like many recent browser updates, focuses on privacy features-specifically, ways to deal with fingerprinting and a new way of managing websites' requests to send you notifications.

Mozilla made it possible to block website notifications altogether in a previous update to Firefox, but this update offers this new, ostensibly more manageable variation as well. Instead of showing these requests as a pop-up that interrupts your experience, it will now show a speech bubble in the address bar that you can use to opt-in to the notifications-similar to how some modern browsers handle other kinds of pop-up attempts.

The other major feature of Firefox 72 is a further expansion of the browser's Enhanced Tracking Protection feature. The browser now blocks fingerprinting scripts by default for all users. Mozilla introduced Enhanced Tracking Protection a few versions ago and recently made it on by default. We went over some of the other aspects of Enhanced Tracking Protection in a previous report.

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