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The naming around the various features is confusing. Briefly: - Tracking Protection basically blocks connections to known trackers entirely so the resources do

The naming around the various features is confusing. Briefly: - Tracking Protection basically blocks connections to known trackers entirely so the resources don't even load. - Enhanced Tracking Protection prevents various kinds of cross-site tracking by blocking cookies, etc. (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...). ETP is on by default. TP is not.

Jerry2 5y ago
I found this paper interesting [1] and how they characterize Firefox' behavior out of the box: We investigate the request behavior of each browser (Figure 7). Brave is the most effective at reducing third- party tracking-and-advertising requests; its claim to (1) is supported. The other privacy-focused browsers vary significantly in terms of reducing third-party tracking- and-advertising requests. Firefox Focus and Ghostery differ significantly in how much they reduce third- party tracking-and-advertising requests, but the perfor- mance of both supports their claims, (1) and (2). Fire- fox is least effective at reducing third-party tracking- and-advertising requests. This is unsurprising, as Fire- fox’s enabled-by-default “standard” tracking protection “blocks fewer trackers” [79]. It errs on the side of caution in what it blocks, focusing on restricting tracking cook- ies, social-media trackers, and fingerprinting scripts; it does not block other content (loaded ads, videos) that may perform tracking [78, 105]. Thus, while Firefox claims (2), its blocking of tracking and advertising is limited with its default settings. This is quite disappointing given Mozilla's marketing around privacy. [1] https://petsymposium.org/2022/files/papers/issue1/popets-2022-0012.pdf https://petsymposium.org/2022/files/papers/issue1/popets-202...

Jerry2 5y ago

I found this paper interesting [1] and how they characterize Firefox' behavior out of the box: We investigate the request behavior of each browser (Figure 7). Brave is the most effective at reducing third- party tracking-and-advertising requests; its claim to (1) is supported. The other privacy-focused browsers vary significantly in terms of reducing third-party tracking- and-advertising requests. Firefox Focus and Ghostery differ significantly in how much they reduce third- party tracking-and-advertising requests, but the perfor- mance of both supports their claims, (1) and (2). Fire- fox is least effective at reducing third-party tracking- and-advertising requests. This is unsurprising, as Fire- fox’s enabled-by-default “standard” tracking protection “blocks fewer trackers” [79]. It errs on the side of caution in what it blocks, focusing on restricting tracking cook- ies, social-media trackers, and fingerprinting scripts; it does not block other content (loaded ads, videos) that may perform tracking [78, 105]. Thus, while Firefox claims (2), its blocking of tracking and advertising is limited with its default settings. This is quite disappointing given Mozilla's marketing around privacy. [1] https://petsymposium.org/2022/files/papers/issue1/popets-2022-0012.pdf https://petsymposium.org/2022/files/papers/issue1/popets-202...