Firefox 63 Introduces Enhanced Tracking Protection

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Paul Thurrott in Cloud with 16 Comments

Mozilla today released Firefox 63 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and iOS, offering a new Enhanced Tracking Protection feature, plus Search Shortcuts, Dark theme support, and more.

With today’s release, we’re making progress against ‘removing cross-site tracking’ with what we’re calling Enhanced Tracking Protection,” Mozilla’s Nick Nguyen explains. “To ensure we balance these new preferences with the experiences our users want and expect, we’re rolling things out off-by-default and starting with third-party cookies.”

Enhanced Tracking Protection is designed to effectively block the most common form of cross-site tracking, Mozilla says, meaning cookies and storage access from third-party trackers. You can also disable this feature on a site-by-site basis if you see weird behavior on sites you trust.

Additionally, Firefox 63 includes Search Shortcuts, in the US only, which adds Amazon and Google to the New Tab page. For Windows 10 users, Firefox 63 now supports the Dark theme. And on iOS, Firefox 63 lets you access Siri Shortcuts, so you can do things like open a new tab with your voice.

Firefox 63 for Windows, Mac, Linux is available from the Firefox website. You can download Firefox for iOS from the Apple App Store.

 

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Comments (16)

16 responses to “Firefox 63 Introduces Enhanced Tracking Protection”

  1. skane2600

    I don't know that much about Firefox, but what I would like to see on a browser is the option to turn off all "Do you want to leave the site" messages or similar tricks. IMO, requesting to close a tab should be an absolute command that can't be overridden by JavaScript on the page.

    4 years ago
    0

    • idontknow

      In reply to skane2600:

      I think Edge has implemented this in a good way. If you get more than one message from the same website you have the option to block all subsequent messages.

      The message you're referring to is actually helpful in most cases. For example if you have started to fill out a form and then hit backspace to delete some text, but accidentally have moved the focus away from the textbox then you might lose your work. Facebook has implemented this.

      4 years ago
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      • skane2600

        In reply to idontknow:

        If you're closing a tab, you're obviously not in the middle of writing something. And you don't want to block all multiple messages from a site unless they are triggered by attempting to close the tab. Nor do you want to be asked about multiple legit messages.


        Facebook's interface is pretty much a mess. Try to go directly to a comment you've made on a post. All you can do is go to the post you commented on and scroll down hoping that you comment isn't buried under "view more comments".

        4 years ago
        0

  2. martinusv2

    It's getting better and better.

    4 years ago
    0

  3. SherlockHolmes

    I still dont get it why somebody chooses Chrome over Firefox. Name one single thing Chrome is better as Firefox? Paul? ;-)

    4 years ago
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  4. jmwoods301

    Since using uBlock Origin, I rely less on imbedded browser protections.



    4 years ago
    0

  5. epguy40

    By the way Paul, another feature of Firefox 63 is that starting with this version it will auto update to newer versions without user input as the "Never check for updates" option has been removed in Firefox 63.


    To block Firefox browser updates in Firefox 63 and greater, read this Softpedia news article-

    news.softpedia.com/news/how-to-block-updates-in-mozilla-firefox-63-523409.shtml

    4 years ago
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  6. marbo100

    The config setting media.autoplay.enabled in the config, when set to false, no longer stops web video from playing automatically in the new version. After some searching I found that the new way to stop autoplay videos from playing is to set the media.autoplay.default setting to 1. Thanks for not setting your videos here to autoplay in the first place.

    4 years ago
    0

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