Firefox Gonna Block Tracking Software And Sneaky Cryptocurrency

The new feature on Firefox

Mozilla is working on giving Firefox the ability to wipe out off two of not really pretty parts of the internet: software that tracks you without your knowledge and the ones that use your hardware to mine cryptocurrency.

They have been testing this feature on Firefox Beta and Nightly - the two test versions of the Firefox browser. These two versions already have the native option to block out tracking technology and crypto mining. For the moment, this feature is turned off unless you turn it on in the setting for preferences. But later on, Mozilla is going to set it on by default.

The open-source platform has announced these changes in an official blog sport this Tuesday. This is their effort to take back some of the influence from the hand of Google's Chrome by getting rid of some bad habits of the web.

They are new examples of browsers working on improving our behaviors online. With this new blocking feature the browsers will no longer just do what the websites want but will be more active in intervening the privacy, cut down on advertising, extend battery life and declutter websites. This move may not receive favorable comments from website operators but it will help improve the experience of the users.

Fingerprinting scripts and crypto-mining

The technology that Mozilla uses to detect fingerprinting scripts and crypto-mining is Disconnect service.

Recently we also see another big push from many browsers to cut the tracking cookies and software that track our activities online. They also could use fingerprinting technology to track you. It is capable of bypassing the normal tracking methods while running many tests of the abilities and settings of your browser. Then they will use that configuration to identify and track you online. All of that tracking data then could be sold to advertising firms who will use it to advertise to you. It is similar to Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Cryptocurrencies mining is a very intense computing operation with the purpose to check the transactions and look for the reward. However, there are some scripts online what will take advantage of your computer hardware to do the computing while they get all the benefits.