[Software] Firefox is rolling out new privacy features to stop sites from giving you a hidden digital ID by fingerprinting your system

[JustManiac]

 

I long thought of Mozilla Firefox as a good, mainstream, privacy-focused alternative to Google Chrome. I used it for quite some time, until the Google ecosystem became too all-encompassing to ignore. But over recent years, it seemed the yellow-tailed browser was becoming less privacy-focused after all, leaving it just like the other mainstream options. So it's good news, and perhaps vindication for those who were still holding out hope for Firefox, that it's expanding its fingerprint protections.

By this, it means it's expanding its protections against websites linking you to a "secret digital ID" by "collecting subtle details of your setup—ranging from your time zone to your operating system settings—that together create a 'fingerprint' identifiable across websites and across browser sessions."

Fingerprinting is pretty much standard practice for many sites today. You should never assume that just because you don't have an official account on a website, it doesn't identify you between visits and so on, sometimes even regardless of stored cookies.

Link: https://www.pcgamer.com/software/browsers/firefox-is-rolling-out-new-privacy-features-to-stop-sites-from-giving-you-a-hidden-digital-id-by-fingerprinting-your-system/