8 ms·

Firefox can now stop Instagram and Facebook from tracking you online

153 points by john58 8y ago

amelius 8y ago
Why do they call it "Facebook Container", and not just "Container"? I mean, the container concept can be universally applied to any website.
- oatmealsnap 8y ago
  Mozilla made an extension specifically for Facebook.
- kennydude 8y ago
  Firefox has Containers generically, this extension just applies Containers specifically to Facebook
- sp332 8y ago
  If you use the normal Containers addon, you can be logged in to a different FB account in each Container. With the Facebook Container, all traffic to FB is blocked outside of the Facebook Container, and any attempt to navigate to Facebook will be hijacked into the Facebook Container. There is also a special Google Container which works similarly.
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  It is a preconfigured generic container that has a few extra settings to further isolate Facebook specifically, as it is so insidious in its reach around the web. The user 283894 makes a point that sometimes, it's nice to have your logged in Facebook container separate from other Facebook content.
- the8472 8y ago
  A nuclear waste bin is a specialized kind of waste bin
- lucideer 8y ago
  "Facebook Container" is just a simplified version of https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... (both are made by Mozilla).
283894 8y ago
Say you click a link that sends you to facebook content (whether that be a video, or a group or other public content), does that then change you over to your logged in Facebook container tab? Isn't this kind of counter intuitive? I've been using the Containers plugin and its predecessors for years to isolate facebook, but I've always liked it because when someone links to facebook content I can then read it logged out in my normal tab. Obviously on top of this I am using ublock/umatrix anyway.
- gingericha 8y ago
  I'm a bit uninformed on Firefox Containers. Can you help me understand how this is different from using things like ublock/adblock plus/ghostery and why you might want to use both those, and a Facebook container?
  - ldjb 8y ago
    uBlock and Adblock Plus are ad blockers. They block advertisements from appearing on the web pages you browse. I am not familiar with Ghostery. Firefox Multi-Account Containers is an extension [0] that allows you to compartmentalise cookies and other data into different containers. It's possibly best explained by thinking about how you might use it: Suppose you have two Twitter accounts: a personal account and a business account. Twitter usually only allows you to be logged into a single account at a time. This means that if you're currently logged into your personal account, you need to log out first before you can use your business account. With Containers, you can simply create a Business container and log into your business Twitter account in there. That way, you can be logged into two Twitter accounts at the same time. Containers do not act as ad blockers and perform a very different function. For more information on Containers, I would suggest reading the extension's description [0] and/or the support page [1]. This article is talking about a special version of Firefox Multi-Account Containers called Facebook Container [2]. This works similarly to Firefox Multi-Account Containers, but it isolates Facebook to its own dedicated container. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-conta... [1] https://support.mozilla.org/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/kb/containers [2] https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/facebookcontainer/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/facebookcontainer/
dandare 8y ago
How is this different (better) from let's say uBlock or Privacy Badger?
- HugoDaniel 8y ago
  Take a look at the cookies your browser keeps
hellofunk 8y ago
After I read this I immediately installed Firefox for the first time in 15 years. I used to use it exclusively then moved to Chrome and others when the app was getting bloated long time ago. I thought, after reading this, now is the time to switch! I installed it and even on a 1-year-old Macbook Pro, holy cow it's acting like I'm doing machine learning training -- the computer fan goes into overdrive with every little thing I do in this browser! This is on a raw install with no browser extensions other than this FB container mentioned in the article (which comes with the installation). It appears this is a many-months-long known issue about the new Firefox. Disappointing. Back to Chrome....
- labster 8y ago
  Did you try changing your screen resolution? Firefox apparently has issues with certain resolutions on MacBook Pro.
  - hellofunk 8y ago
    No I didn't try that, nor would I. If I have to change how I use my computer for all apps just so I can use one app, then I shouldn't use that one app.
    - lewiseason 8y ago
      Reasonable. Come back in a year I guess, see if it's better. Firefox on Linux is night and day from the last time I used it
- piqalq 8y ago
  Odd. I’ve used Firefox exclusively for the past 4 years and am a tab hoarder (150+) and my laptop is as quiet as the night with Firefox using very little memory when compared to Chrome
  - hellofunk 8y ago
    Appears to be a common problem with FF on MBP: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_quantum_is_eating_your_cpu_help_us_debug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_qua...
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
For anyone using Firefox, as soon as Containers became available outside of Nightly, I created one just for Facebook. Is the "Facebook Container" any different than what I already made?
- zie 8y ago
  Not really, the only difference I've found is the Facebook container plugin won't let any other non-facebook owned URL use that container.
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    I didn't notice it did that! That's actually very nice and I wish it were something I could do for other containers too.
    - zie 8y ago
      see https://github.com/mozilla/contain-facebook https://github.com/mozilla/contain-facebook and https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  It sets up the Facebook container so you'll automatically switch to it whenever you go to Facebook. If you checked "Always open in Facebook" in the containers dropdown while on facebook.com, then checked "Remember my decision for this site" before clicking "Open in Facebook container" when opening facebook in a different container, it's the same. The extension also cleans up Facebook cookies from your other containers. This extension is what got me using containers, but I deleted it after I realized it doesn't do anything after the initial installation. Edit: Apparently this extension also prevents you from opening other sites in the Facebook container.
- analogmemory 8y ago
  Mozilla has an extension so you can do this without Nightly. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... I mostly use it to manage the 3 google accounts i use daily
Santosh83 8y ago
So, do I still need this even when I'm using uBlock with nearly all the social/annoyances lists activated (fanboy, easylist etc.)?
908087 8y ago
They should be doing this for Google as well, but something tells me we won't be seeing that any time soon.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  You can do it yourself using the standard containers extension. If you really need a special extension just to create Google containers, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...
mickael-kerjean 8y ago
Mozilla, if you ever read this: - when will you stop twitter from knowing all about youporn's user ? yes HN user, open your developer console and look out for the cookie coming from syndication.twitter.com. If you ever try to visit http://syndication.twitter.com http://syndication.twitter.com, you end up on "Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!". - when will you ask for user permission before revealing hardware related information (via the screen object and navigator object)? I can't think of any use case to reveal how many core my computer has when js only use 1. Same for the screen object as we already have the window object. - when will you create a feature to dynamically update the user agent ? - when will you create a feature to trick browser fingerprinting ? - when will you enforce a no third party cookie by default? Especially for website that don't comply with the do not track header. Unfortunatly, our entire industry don't seem to care about the do not track header (funnily google is the rare good student in this area) I guess there's a lot more "industry standard" I'm not aware.
- bzbarsky 8y ago
  > when js only use 1. That's not true with web workers. And "How many workers should I spin up?" is a common question people actually using them want to answer... I'm highly sympathetic to reducing fingerprinting attack area, by the way; we should just be clear that providing sites less information does mean they can't do various performance optimizations, and in some cases can't even provide correct functionality. That tension is at the heart of all the anti-fingerprinting efforts browsers are involved in... Asking users for permission isn't really a solution either, unfortunately: all the bad actors will just spam permission prompts continuously. I've browsed before in a "prompt for attempts to set cookies" mode, back when Firefox had this feature. It wasn't pretty, even in the mid-2000s. > when will you enforce a no third party cookie by default? When it can be done without breaking too many users' day-to-day browsing. > Especially for website that don't comply with the do not track header How does one go about determining that? This is an honest question; I'm not aware of any database of sites that classifies them along this dimension. Dicslosure: I work on Firefox and various people including myself have been pushing for various anti-tracking bits for a while now. Some of them have shipped; others are in the works.
yarrel 8y ago
Now how do I remove Pocket? No, I said "remove".
lucideer 8y ago
This article title is false and extremely misleading. The Facebook Container and Multi-account Containers addons are great, and I would highly recommend their use. I've been using Multi-account Containers since they were first released. However they do not "stop Instagram and Facebook from tracking you online". They significantly reduce the extent to which they can track you, but are a long long way from complete prevention.

153 points by john58 8y ago

Why do they call it "Facebook Container", and not just "Container"? I mean, the container concept can be universally applied to any website.

oatmealsnap 8y ago
Mozilla made an extension specifically for Facebook.
kennydude 8y ago
Firefox has Containers generically, this extension just applies Containers specifically to Facebook
sp332 8y ago
If you use the normal Containers addon, you can be logged in to a different FB account in each Container. With the Facebook Container, all traffic to FB is blocked outside of the Facebook Container, and any attempt to navigate to Facebook will be hijacked into the Facebook Container. There is also a special Google Container which works similarly.
unethical_ban 8y ago
It is a preconfigured generic container that has a few extra settings to further isolate Facebook specifically, as it is so insidious in its reach around the web. The user 283894 makes a point that sometimes, it's nice to have your logged in Facebook container separate from other Facebook content.
the8472 8y ago
A nuclear waste bin is a specialized kind of waste bin
lucideer 8y ago
"Facebook Container" is just a simplified version of https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... (both are made by Mozilla).

283894 8y ago

Say you click a link that sends you to facebook content (whether that be a video, or a group or other public content), does that then change you over to your logged in Facebook container tab? Isn't this kind of counter intuitive? I've been using the Containers plugin and its predecessors for years to isolate facebook, but I've always liked it because when someone links to facebook content I can then read it logged out in my normal tab. Obviously on top of this I am using ublock/umatrix anyway.

gingericha 8y ago
I'm a bit uninformed on Firefox Containers. Can you help me understand how this is different from using things like ublock/adblock plus/ghostery and why you might want to use both those, and a Facebook container?
- ldjb 8y ago
  uBlock and Adblock Plus are ad blockers. They block advertisements from appearing on the web pages you browse. I am not familiar with Ghostery. Firefox Multi-Account Containers is an extension [0] that allows you to compartmentalise cookies and other data into different containers. It's possibly best explained by thinking about how you might use it: Suppose you have two Twitter accounts: a personal account and a business account. Twitter usually only allows you to be logged into a single account at a time. This means that if you're currently logged into your personal account, you need to log out first before you can use your business account. With Containers, you can simply create a Business container and log into your business Twitter account in there. That way, you can be logged into two Twitter accounts at the same time. Containers do not act as ad blockers and perform a very different function. For more information on Containers, I would suggest reading the extension's description [0] and/or the support page [1]. This article is talking about a special version of Firefox Multi-Account Containers called Facebook Container [2]. This works similarly to Firefox Multi-Account Containers, but it isolates Facebook to its own dedicated container. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multi-account-conta... [1] https://support.mozilla.org/kb/containers https://support.mozilla.org/kb/containers [2] https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/facebookcontainer/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/facebookcontainer/

dandare 8y ago

How is this different (better) from let's say uBlock or Privacy Badger?

HugoDaniel 8y ago
Take a look at the cookies your browser keeps

hellofunk 8y ago

After I read this I immediately installed Firefox for the first time in 15 years. I used to use it exclusively then moved to Chrome and others when the app was getting bloated long time ago. I thought, after reading this, now is the time to switch! I installed it and even on a 1-year-old Macbook Pro, holy cow it's acting like I'm doing machine learning training -- the computer fan goes into overdrive with every little thing I do in this browser! This is on a raw install with no browser extensions other than this FB container mentioned in the article (which comes with the installation). It appears this is a many-months-long known issue about the new Firefox. Disappointing. Back to Chrome....

labster 8y ago
Did you try changing your screen resolution? Firefox apparently has issues with certain resolutions on MacBook Pro.
- hellofunk 8y ago
  No I didn't try that, nor would I. If I have to change how I use my computer for all apps just so I can use one app, then I shouldn't use that one app.
  - lewiseason 8y ago
    Reasonable. Come back in a year I guess, see if it's better. Firefox on Linux is night and day from the last time I used it
piqalq 8y ago
Odd. I’ve used Firefox exclusively for the past 4 years and am a tab hoarder (150+) and my laptop is as quiet as the night with Firefox using very little memory when compared to Chrome
- hellofunk 8y ago
  Appears to be a common problem with FF on MBP: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_quantum_is_eating_your_cpu_help_us_debug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_qua...

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

For anyone using Firefox, as soon as Containers became available outside of Nightly, I created one just for Facebook. Is the "Facebook Container" any different than what I already made?

zie 8y ago
Not really, the only difference I've found is the Facebook container plugin won't let any other non-facebook owned URL use that container.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  I didn't notice it did that! That's actually very nice and I wish it were something I could do for other containers too.
  - zie 8y ago
    see https://github.com/mozilla/contain-facebook https://github.com/mozilla/contain-facebook and https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google https://github.com/containers-everywhere/contain-google
daveFNbuck 8y ago
It sets up the Facebook container so you'll automatically switch to it whenever you go to Facebook. If you checked "Always open in Facebook" in the containers dropdown while on facebook.com, then checked "Remember my decision for this site" before clicking "Open in Facebook container" when opening facebook in a different container, it's the same. The extension also cleans up Facebook cookies from your other containers. This extension is what got me using containers, but I deleted it after I realized it doesn't do anything after the initial installation. Edit: Apparently this extension also prevents you from opening other sites in the Facebook container.
analogmemory 8y ago
Mozilla has an extension so you can do this without Nightly. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... I mostly use it to manage the 3 google accounts i use daily

Santosh83 8y ago

So, do I still need this even when I'm using uBlock with nearly all the social/annoyances lists activated (fanboy, easylist etc.)?

908087 8y ago

They should be doing this for Google as well, but something tells me we won't be seeing that any time soon.

daveFNbuck 8y ago
You can do it yourself using the standard containers extension. If you really need a special extension just to create Google containers, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-container/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-contai...

mickael-kerjean 8y ago

Mozilla, if you ever read this: - when will you stop twitter from knowing all about youporn's user ? yes HN user, open your developer console and look out for the cookie coming from syndication.twitter.com. If you ever try to visit http://syndication.twitter.com http://syndication.twitter.com, you end up on "Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!". - when will you ask for user permission before revealing hardware related information (via the screen object and navigator object)? I can't think of any use case to reveal how many core my computer has when js only use 1. Same for the screen object as we already have the window object. - when will you create a feature to dynamically update the user agent ? - when will you create a feature to trick browser fingerprinting ? - when will you enforce a no third party cookie by default? Especially for website that don't comply with the do not track header. Unfortunatly, our entire industry don't seem to care about the do not track header (funnily google is the rare good student in this area) I guess there's a lot more "industry standard" I'm not aware.

bzbarsky 8y ago
> when js only use 1. That's not true with web workers. And "How many workers should I spin up?" is a common question people actually using them want to answer... I'm highly sympathetic to reducing fingerprinting attack area, by the way; we should just be clear that providing sites less information does mean they can't do various performance optimizations, and in some cases can't even provide correct functionality. That tension is at the heart of all the anti-fingerprinting efforts browsers are involved in... Asking users for permission isn't really a solution either, unfortunately: all the bad actors will just spam permission prompts continuously. I've browsed before in a "prompt for attempts to set cookies" mode, back when Firefox had this feature. It wasn't pretty, even in the mid-2000s. > when will you enforce a no third party cookie by default? When it can be done without breaking too many users' day-to-day browsing. > Especially for website that don't comply with the do not track header How does one go about determining that? This is an honest question; I'm not aware of any database of sites that classifies them along this dimension. Dicslosure: I work on Firefox and various people including myself have been pushing for various anti-tracking bits for a while now. Some of them have shipped; others are in the works.

yarrel 8y ago

Now how do I remove Pocket? No, I said "remove".

lucideer 8y ago

This article title is false and extremely misleading. The Facebook Container and Multi-account Containers addons are great, and I would highly recommend their use. I've been using Multi-account Containers since they were first released. However they do not "stop Instagram and Facebook from tracking you online". They significantly reduce the extent to which they can track you, but are a long long way from complete prevention.