1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Firefox just gave you a great reason to ditch Chrome for good

By

Mozilla Firefox has just made changes to its browser, making an existing feature available by default to all users. The tool is called Total Cookie Protection, and thanks to it, Firefox now calls itself “the most private and secure major browser available across Windows, Mac, and Linux.”

Whether Firefox is really the best browser remains to be seen, but Total Cookie Protection certainly kicks things up a notch where privacy is concerned. Will it be enough to help Firefox pull ahead of the competition?

Mozilla Firefox / Meghan Newell

Firefox’s Total Cookie Protection tool is not exactly a new feature. It was first introduced in 2021, but it was never on by default — you had to toggle it on manually in order for it to work. Alternatively, using Firefox in privacy mode enabled the feature as well. As a result, many users may have been unaware of its existence, but now Firefox has rolled it out to all users of the browsers, making sure it’s always on without needing to tweak the settings.

Recommended Videos

The illustration above does an excellent job of portraying what it is that Firefox’s new pride and joy delivers to the users. Total Cookie Protection locks the browser cookies only to the site that created them as opposed to letting them follow you around the web.

Cookies are often used as a means of preparing targeted ads across many websites. This is why, as an example, if you’re shopping for clothes online, you’ll then see ads from the retailer you just browsed. Those ads will follow you to completely unrelated corners of the internet, reminding you of that one time you looked at that one website. With Firefox’s new tool, this could be largely reduced.

Firefox described the way the tool works in a very approachable way. Total Cookie Protection essentially creates a separate “jar” for each website’s cookies. Without the feature, your browser cookies all sit in one big shared jar that every website can peek into and gather information about your browsing habits. Firefox makes it so that each website can only learn about what you’re doing within the boundaries of its own pages. The cookies remain safely locked, and each site can draw from its own jar, but it has no access to any of the other jars.

As Mozilla said in its blog post, “It’s an alarming reality — the possibility that your every move online is being watched, tracked, and shared. […] No other websites can reach into the cookie jars that don’t belong to them and find out what the other websites’ cookies know about you — giving you freedom from invasive ads and reducing the amount of information companies gather about you.”

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Total Cookie Protection still lets third-party cookies provide accurate analytics, which is something that websites certainly need, if only to provide the kind of content that the users want to see. However, it should eliminate the possibility of those cookies tracking your activity from all around the web.

Mozilla Firefox has emphasized privacy and security for quite some time, rolling out Enhanced Tracking Protection for all users in 2019. Despite the security provided by the browser, it still lags behind its competition. According to Statcounter, Google Chrome is the absolute king of the browsers, with a 64.95% market share as of May 2022. This is followed by Safari with 19%, Microsoft Edge with 3.99%, and finally, Firefox with 3.26%, marking a drop from the previous year.

Beating Google Chrome might be near-impossible for Firefox, but Total Cookie Protection should certainly help it draw in some new users. If you’re tired of seeing invasive ads all around the web, download the latest version of Firefox and give it a try.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Monica J. White
Computing Writer
Monica is a UK-based freelance writer and self-proclaimed geek. A firm believer in the "PC building is just like expensive…
Google may have just fixed Chrome’s most annoying problem

While Google Chrome is one of the best web browsers, over the years it has gained a reputation for being something of a resource hog, gobbling up your PC’s memory like it’s going out of style. That can be a problem if you’re running other resource-heavy tasks and don’t want things to slow down. Now, Chrome has been updated with two new features that cut down on memory usage and extend your laptop’s battery life, according to Google. The changes are set to roll out today with the latest release of Chrome on desktop (version m108).The first new feature, dubbed Memory Saver, is designed to reduce the amount of memory Chrome’s tabs use. It does this by freeing up memory from inactive tabs, and putting them to sleep so they can’t monopolize your system’s resources. When you need to access the tabs again, they will be reloaded and become active. The goal of Energy Saver, meanwhile, is fairly self-explanatory -- helping your laptop battery last longer -- but it does so in a somewhat interesting way. When your battery drops to 20%, Chrome will try to prolong your battery life by “limiting background activity and visual effects for websites with animations and videos.”Presumably, this means Chrome will limit the kind of flashy effects that have made a comeback in web design in recent years. Google says that when these new features launch, users will still be able to customize them to their liking. You can disable either Memory Saver or Energy Saver (or both), and mark certain websites as exempt in Chrome’s settings. The changes could turn out to be important. While Chrome has managed to become the dominant Windows web browser and one of the best browsers for Mac, it has been plagued by poor memory management for years. If Memory Saver and Energy Saver are able to help ameliorate that -- and make your battery last longer too -- then Google might have gone some way to fixing Chrome’s biggest problem. Both Memory Saver and Energy Saver will be launched globally over the next few weeks. The features are coming to Chrome on Windows, macOS, and ChromeOS.

Read more
The latest Firefox release redesigns its private browsing feature
A symbol of the Mozilla Firefox logo.

Mozilla is releasing its latest version of the Firefox browser as of Tuesday with a focus on privacy, accessibility, and customization, according to the brand.

The new release will include a number of features, but one notable highlight is the introduction of a shortcut button for Private Browsing mode that you can pin to your desktop. This is a feature intended for easy access to the feature that is typically found within the triple bar icon at the upper right corner of the browser or when right-clicking the Firefox icon on the Windows taskbar with a mouse or trackpad. While it might not be extremely tedious, this feature takes out some extra steps for those who wish to take advantage.

Read more
Microsoft just gave you a great way to fight Windows brute-force attacks

As ransomware attacks continue to surge, Microsoft has taken a major step toward closing off one of the common methods of gaining unauthorized access to Windows computers. Known as brute-force attacks, repeated attempts are made at guessing the login password on one or more computers in a network.

Microsoft announced today that account lockout is available for local administrators in the latest cumulative update for Windows. This will automatically enable account lockout for new machines set up on Windows 11, version 22H2, as well as any new machine that gets the October 11, 2022 Windows cumulative update.

Read more