Firefox 69 Arrives with Enhanced Tracking Protection on by Default
- Paul Thurrott
- Sep 03, 2019
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Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 69, the latest version of its flagship browser for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.
Today, Firefox on desktop and Android will—by default—empower and protect all our users by blocking third-party tracking cookies and cryptominers,” Mozilla’s Marissa Wood announced. “This milestone marks a major step in our multi-year effort to bring stronger, usable privacy protections to everyone using Firefox.”
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As you may recall, Firefox began enabling Enhanced Tracking Protection for new users and new installs of the browser back in June. With today’s release of Firefox 69, that protection is enabled by default for everyone.
“Currently over 20 percent of Firefox users have Enhanced Tracking Protection on,” Wood explains. “With today’s release, we expect to provide protection for 100% of our users by default. Enhanced Tracking Protection works behind-the-scenes to keep a company from forming a profile of you based on their tracking of your browsing behavior across websites — often without your knowledge or consent. Those profiles and the information they contain may then be sold and used for purposes you never knew or intended. Enhanced Tracking Protection helps to mitigate this threat and puts you back in control of your online experience.”
Other new features and changes in Firefox 69 include enhancements to Block Autoplay that give users the option to block any video that automatically starts playing (and not just those that automatically play with sound), a new New Tab page experience (U.S./en-US only), support for more passwordless experiences on the web using Windows Hello (Windows 10 version 1903 or newer), support for WebRTC conferencing services with mixed video from different clients, performance and UI improvements (Windows 10 only), battery life and download UI improvements (macOS only), and an ARM64 version of JIT for improved JavaScript performance.
Existing users will receive the Firefox 69 update automatically, and new users can find the free download at the Mozilla website.