Mozilla Firefox And Apple Safari Preventing Google And Facebook From Tracking Users

Google, Facebook and other companies are tracking users to know, their habit and pretty much everything they do online.

With online companies' business empire, no users can practically escape their data collecting strategies that vast through their sites, apps and products. A test conducted by Apple, found that some popular websites are embedded with as many as 70 trackers.

Many of those trackers are from either Google or Facebook.

While they do this to enhance user experience, the primary use is to target them with better ads. After all, those online businesses thrive with ads.

For those who care about their data privacy, on users behalf, Apple and Mozilla want to fight back.

In an escalating privacy arms race, Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox browsers want to prevent those companies from using cookie data to store user credentials and preferences. The browsers have added updated privacy protections to thwart those web trackers.

Mozilla Firefox - Apple Safari

For starter, Firefox has an anti-tracking feature that tries to distinguish tracking cookies from useful ones. Otherwise, users are required to turn the feature on, or simply use Firefox's private browsing mode, which is aggressive in eliminating cookies, including useful ones.

For personal computers, Firefox has an optional add-on, called Facebook Container. This add-on segregate users' Facebook activity from everything else.

This acts like a walled garden which prevents Facebook from accessing its data cookie as users surf elsewhere on the web.

As for Apple, the approach is more significant because it focuses on a technique developed by tracking companies to override users’ attempts to delete their cookies. And unlike Firefox, Safari makes these protections are on by default.

Safari can automatically distinguish cookies that are useful from ones that are there just to track users, just like Firefox. The Cupertino-based company noted that cookies can appear in unexpected places, such as sites that embed "Like" and "share" buttons, for example.

With the update, those cookies can be blocked until users click on one of those buttons, in which will fire up a notification, asking for permission to allow the tracking to happen. If users decline, engagement on the "Like" button won't register.

Through "fingerprinting," a company can identify users through their computer’s characteristics, such as browser type and fonts installed. This cookie profile can then be tied to users' old profile. With the update, Safari can limit the details those cookie send. Unfortunately for Firefox, none of its tools address fingerprinting.

Read: Cookies, Browser Fingerprinting, And How You Can Delay The Death Of Online Privacy

Cookie - Fingerprinting
Trackers use cookies and fingerprinting method to monitor users' browsing behavior

Cookies and trackers unleashed by web companies, are meant to keep track of users and who they are as they move from website to website on the internet. By tracking their users, companies can build digital profile of users, understanding their habit, preferences, political views, brands and products they like, hobbies and much more.

The amount of information web companies gather can be scary, and this is why privacy concerned people are doing what they can to avoid being tracked, going as far as using alternative search engines, like DuckDuckGo, or using Tor and VPN to access the internet.

Firefox and Safari want to help these users. But with these attempts, both still can't entirely stop those web trackers from tracking users.

For example, they won't block trackers when users are using Google or Facebook. The blocking methods aren't much of a use when users are using apps on their mobile devices either, unless if those apps happen to be embedded inside Safari, in Apple's case.

Better than nothing, these imperfect protections are better than no protection at all.

Apple and Mozilla are able to push the boundaries on privacy because neither of them depends on advertising. Google and Facebook on the other hand make most of their money from selling ads. These blocking attempts can hurt Google, and also hurt websites that rely on showing ads to get revenue.

While the tools from Firefox and Safari don't block ads. But without cookies, the ads can't show personalized ads. As a result, those websites might get paid a lot less.

Published: 
17/09/2018