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Firefox Tracking Protection

iAmMoDBoX

By iAmMoDBoX
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iAmMoDBoX

iAmMoDBoX

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If you didn't know (I didn't until a few days ago), Firefox 33+ offers native tracking protection. It's flagged as experimental and is disabled by default. This is not to be confused with 'Tell sites I don't want to be tracked' in Options > Privacy; that one just sets a flag that sites can (and do) ignore. This one you need to enable in about:config - set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true. It relies on the same database used to block attack sites / web forgeries; at least one needs to be enabled in Options > Security. The sweetest part is that sites load faster with tracking protection enabled - up to 44% on tracking-heavy sites according to Mozilla benchmarks. The sad part is they're not actively working on this feature and have no plans to enable it by default anytime soon (I doubt they ever will). They're probably not very eager to come into conflict with Google, Facebook and other powers in behavioral advertising business.

What is Tracking?
Tracking is the collection of a person’s browsing data across multiple sites, usually via included content. Tracking domains attempt to uniquely identify a person through the use of cookies or other technologies such as fingerprinting.

What is Tracking Protection?
Tracking Protection allows you to take control of your privacy online. While Firefox has a Do Not Track feature that tells websites not to monitor your behavior, companies are not required to honor it. Firefox's Tracking Protection feature puts the control back in your hands by actively blocking domains and sites that are known to track users.
The initial blocklist used by Tracking Protection is based on Disconnect's blocklist.

How to turn on Tracking Protection


  • In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.
    • The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.
  • Search for privacy.trackingprotection.enabled.
  • Double-click privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to toggle its value to true.
  • This will turn on Tracking Protection. If you later want to turn it back off, repeat the above steps to toggle the preference back to false.

    How to use Tracking Protection
    Once Tracking Protection is activated, you will see a shield in your address bar whenever Firefox is blocking either tracking domains or mixed content.


    2015-01-27-11-49-50-b3cd09.png

    You may choose to disable Tracking Protection for a particular site by clicking on the shield icon and selecting "Disable protection for this site." Once Tracking Protection is disabled for a site, you will see a shield with a red strike-through. You may choose to re-enable Tracking Protection for the site by clicking the shield icon again and selecting "Enable protection".


    2015-01-27-11-50-45-2951a5.png

    To see which resources are being blocked, you can open the web console and look for messages under the Security tab.
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DARK BAWGS

DARK BAWGS

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If you didn't know (I didn't until a few days ago), Firefox 33+ offers native tracking protection. It's flagged as experimental and is disabled by default. This is not to be confused with 'Tell sites I don't want to be tracked' in Options > Privacy; that one just sets a flag that sites can (and do) ignore. This one you need to enable in about:config - set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true. It relies on the same database used to block attack sites / web forgeries; at least one needs to be enabled in Options > Security. The sweetest part is that sites load faster with tracking protection enabled - up to 44% on tracking-heavy sites according to Mozilla benchmarks. The sad part is they're not actively working on this feature and have no plans to enable it by default anytime soon (I doubt they ever will). They're probably not very eager to come into conflict with Google, Facebook and other powers in behavioral advertising business.

 

What is Tracking?

Tracking is the collection of a person’s browsing data across multiple sites, usually via included content. Tracking domains attempt to uniquely identify a person through the use of cookies or other technologies such as fingerprinting.

 

What is Tracking Protection?

Tracking Protection allows you to take control of your privacy online. While Firefox has a Do Not Track feature that tells websites not to monitor your behavior, companies are not required to honor it. Firefox's Tracking Protection feature puts the control back in your hands by actively blocking domains and sites that are known to track users.

The initial blocklist used by Tracking Protection is based on Disconnect's blocklist.

 

How to turn on Tracking Protection

  • In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.

    •  
    • The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.
  • Search for privacy.trackingprotection.enabled.
  • Double-click privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to toggle its value to true.
  • This will turn on Tracking Protection. If you later want to turn it back off, repeat the above steps to toggle the preference back to false.

     

    How to use Tracking Protection

    Once Tracking Protection is activated, you will see a shield in your address bar whenever Firefox is blocking either tracking domains or mixed content.

     

     

    2015-01-27-11-49-50-b3cd09.png

     

    You may choose to disable Tracking Protection for a particular site by clicking on the shield icon and selecting "Disable protection for this site." Once Tracking Protection is disabled for a site, you will see a shield with a red strike-through. You may choose to re-enable Tracking Protection for the site by clicking the shield icon again and selecting "Enable protection".

     

     

    2015-01-27-11-50-45-2951a5.png

     

    To see which resources are being blocked, you can open the web console and look for messages under the Security tab.

 

Great info but I can't find it on my iMac which uses Firefox - any suggestions?

Thanks,

Bawgs

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Akic

Akic

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FF tracking protection + ublock origin is a beast combo.  You won't believe how fast sites load up without the overhead of all that tracking crap.

 

For Chrome users you can also get ublock origin on that too..highly recommend it

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Akic

Akic

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Yes i did get ublock origin.

 

I have turned off the adblocking as they are in the adblock plus set up too.

 

Ublock origin does everything adblock plus does, much faster and with less system impact.  Try it with adblock plus disabled (and adblock plus popup blocker) let ublock handle everything..

 

I switched a couple of months ago from adblock plus and haven't looked back

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Zennon

Zennon

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Ublock origin does everything adblock plus does, much faster and with less system impact.  Try it with adblock plus disabled (and adblock plus popup blocker) let ublock handle everything..

 

I switched a couple of months ago from adblock plus and haven't looked back

I will try it later when I get home.

 

A sad day to leave Adblock I have been using it since 2004 and it has done me proud lol

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Akic

Akic

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I will try it later when I get home.

 

A sad day to leave Adblock I have been using it since 2004 and it has done me proud lol

 

lol, I felt the same way...it's like deserting an old friend, but ublock is the broadband to adblock's 56k dial-up

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Zennon

Zennon

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I have disabled adblock plus for now couldnt totaly get shot just yet.

 

I use sandboxie to run my browser in and to test malware etc, not sure how its going to update.

 

With adblock i would run an unsandboxed firefox then manualy update the filters, close then run the browser sandboxed.

 

The only way i could force a manual update with ublock was to perge then re download the filters, I will re test this tomorrow.

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Akic

Akic

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I have disabled adblock plus for now couldnt totaly get shot just yet.

 

I use sandboxie to run my browser in and to test malware etc, not sure how its going to update.

 

With adblock i would run an unsandboxed firefox then manualy update the filters, close then run the browser sandboxed.

 

The only way i could force a manual update with ublock was to perge then re download the filters, I will re test this tomorrow.

 

EDIT: after some testing It is a cpu hog much much higher than ABP :(

 

Not sure what you're seeing, I've tested it myself as well as others and the memory and CPU usage is far more efficient with ublock.

 

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance

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Zennon

Zennon

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I had removed that from my post as you must have posted.

 

I found out it was Microsoft software protection service that was kicking in at the same time as firefox, did a startpage search and found out its common to hog the cpu so ive done a regedit and stopped it now all is good.

 

Cpu was at 99% ublock brought it to my attention so its been a good little experiment.

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Od1n

Od1n

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been using ublock origin for a day now and really like it :)

the number it always shows in the upper right corner are the amounts of blocked elements on a site right?

(twitch gave me a 48 yesterday!)

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Netduma Fraser

Netduma Fraser

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been using ublock origin for a day now and really like it :)

the number it always shows in the upper right corner are the amounts of blocked elements on a site right?

(twitch gave me a 48 yesterday!)

 

Same here! Has blocked some useful things I needed here and there but overall pretty positive so far :)

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