74 2 - 15 October 2019 Do you agree? Let us know [email protected]
allowed users to block the tracking
cookies that advertisers drop onyour
system as you move from site to site.
These cookies are used to keep tabs on
whether you’re looking up holidays in
the Maldives or br owsing for a new
VW Golf, so they can target their ads
at you accordingl y. This is why, when
you’re re ading an article on the
Guardian website,
you see an advert
pop up for the
printer you looked
at last week on
Amazon.
In Firefox 63,
this feat ure was optional – switched on
only if you knew where to look. In the
latest releas e, 69, it’s enabled by
default. Every ti me you visi t a site with
tracking cookies on it, you’ll see a little
shield glow purple in the address bar.
Click that shieldand you’ll see the
inevitably long list of tr acking cookies
that have been scuppered. Firefox 1,
Ads United 0.If you needed a compelling reason to ditch
Google Chrome, here it is, says Barry Collins
Page 404
It’s not the only way in which Firefox
has started sidingwith the user. Another
recent update silenced those obnoxious
autoplaying video ads, meaning your
speakers don’t get blas ted by a barrage
of jinglesthat are runningin the
background.
Firefox is also beginningto implement
a highly controversial, but long overdue,
privacy
feat ure
called
DNS-over-
HTTPS.
DNSis the
web’s ‘phone
book’ that tu rns web addresses (such as
‘bbc.co.uk’) into the IP addresses (such
as ‘151.101.128.81’) where the websites
are found. By default, your browser will
normally use your broadband provider’s
DNSservers, which are unencrypted
and vulnerable to attack, potentially
allowing hackers to redirect you to
rogue websites even when you’ve typed
in the correct address.
DNS-over-HTTPS – already an option
you can turn on in Firefox – encrypts
that data , which means even your own
broadband provider doesn’ t know
which sites you’re visi ting. That’s bad
news for their content filters, which rely
entirely on DNS. But once again, it’s
goodnews for those of us who value
our privacy.
Will Google introduce these anti-
tracking feat ures in Chrome? It’s highly
unlikely because it’s Google and its
advertisers who are responsible for
placing many of th ese tracking cookies
in the first place. Much of th e company’s
enormous ad revenue depends on them.
Firefox wants to protect your privacy,
Google wants to sell it to the highest
bidder. If that’s not a reason to switch
browsers, I don’t know what is.Firefoxwants to protect
your privacy, Googlewants to
sell it to the highest bidderF
iref ox was arguably the biggest
victim of Google Chrome’s surge
to browser dominance. At the
start of this decade, Firefox had
about a third of the browser market and
Chromewas practically nowhere. Today,
Chrome has a market share of around
70% and Firefox’s share has slumpedto
just below double figures. But battered
and bruised, it may be aboutto land
a sucker punch.
Quietly and determin edly, Firefox
has been ramping up its privacy tools.
To be clear, Firefox-maker Mozilla has
alwaysbeen one of th e good guys –
an organisation with a keen sense of
right and wrong. But with the public
growing incr easingl y concernedat the
amount of datathat online firms are
secr etly stas hing , Firefox is making it
easier than ever to throw the advertisers
off the scent and it may have found the
Kryptonite to weaken Chrome’s
strangle hold on the browser market.
In Firefox 63, releas ed last October,
the company introduced a feat ure thatIllust
ra
tion
:Andr
ew
To
rr
ens
Has Firefox found
Chrome’s Kryptonite?