The latest version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, out now for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, now blocks third-party tracking cookies and cryptominers by default.
First enabled for new users in June, Enhanced Tracking Protection blocks known third-party tracking cookies based on tracking prevention lists maintained by Disconnect. On sites where it is activated, you’ll see a shield icon in the address bar.
You can even click the shield icon to view which companies Mozilla is blocking. Simply navigate to the Content Blocking section, then Cookies and click the arrow beside Blocking Tracking Cookies to see a list of companies being blocked.
At present, Mozilla said over 20 percent of Firefox users have the feature enabled but that figure should climb sharply with Firefox 69.
The new Firefox also blocks cryptominers by default. These malicious programs essentially steal your hardware’s processing power to generate cryptocurrency for someone else. This results in sluggish performance, unnecessary wear and tear on your hardware and increased electric bills.
This really only scratches the surface as Firefox 69 also introduces the Block Autoplay feature to block any video that starts autoplaying, not just those with sound. There’s also a “New Tab” page experience, support for the Web Authentication HmacSecret extension via Windows Hello and for macOS users, improved battery life and download UI.
Here’s the full Firefox 69 for desktop changelog:
• Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) rolls out stronger privacy protections. The default standard setting for this feature now blocks third-party tracking cookies and cryptominers. The optional strict setting blocks fingerprinters as well as the items blocked in the standard setting.
• The Block Autoplay feature is enhanced to give users the option to block any video that automatically starts playing, not just those that automatically play with sound.
• For our users in the US or using the en-US browser, we are shipping a new “New Tab” page experience that connects you to the best of Pocket’s content.
• Support for the Web Authentication HmacSecret extension via Windows Hello now comes with this release, for versions of Windows 10 May 2019 or newer, enabling more passwordless experiences on the web.
• Support for receiving multiple video codecs with this release makes it easier for WebRTC conferencing services to mix video from different clients.
• For our users on Windows 10, you’ll see performance and UI improvements. Firefox will give Windows hints to appropriately set content process priority levels, meaning more processor time spent on the tasks you’re actively working on, and less processor time spent on things in the background (with the exception of video and audio playback). For our existing Windows 10 users, you can easily find and launch Firefox from a shortcut on the Win10 taskbar.
• For our users on macOS, battery life and download UI are both improved. macOS users on dual-graphics-card machines (like MacBook Pro) will switch back to the low-power GPU more aggressively, saving battery life. Finder on macOS now displays download progress for files being downloaded.
• JIT support comes to ARM64 for improved performance of our JavaScript Optimizing JIT compiler.
• Various security fixes
• As previously announced in the Plugin Roadmap for Firefox, the “Always Activate” option for Flash plugin content has been removed. Firefox will now always ask for user permission before activating Flash content on a website.
• With the deprecation of Adobe Flash Player, there is no longer a need to identify users on 32-bit version of the Firefox browser on 64-bit version operating systems reducing user agent fingerprinting factors providing greater level of privacy to our users as well as improving the experience of downloading other apps.
• Firefox no longer loads userChrome.css or userContent.css by default improving start-up performance. Users who wish to customize Firefox by using these files can set the toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets preference to true to restore this ability.
• For Enterprise system administrators that manage macOS computers, we begin shipping a Mozilla signed PKG installer to simplify your deployments.
• For our mobile web developers, we have migrated remote debugging from the old WebIDE into a re-designed about:debugging, making debugging GeckoView on remote devices via USB rock solid.
• The new event listener breakpoint feature allows developers to pause on a host of different event types, whether it be related to animations, DOM, media, mouse, touch, worker, and many other event types.
• Firefox Developer Tools now offers an audit for the presence of text alternatives for non-text content, the a11y panel checks toolbar has been augmented to better help developers adhere to WCAG Guideline 1.1.
Mozilla releases new Firefox versions every six to eight weeks, and Firefox 70 is currently slated for mid-October.
