As users and nations around the world increasingly take data protection quite seriously, it is now and always at the top of focus for a browser that has always put the security of its users first. Nevertheless, the recent talks about the “privacy-preserving” tracking features being developed on the browser have, in turn, brought the question of balance in staying private versus staying usable to the fore.
What Is Firefox’s Privacy-Preserving Feature?
Firefox, in efforts to prevent third-party tracking in following across sites, utilized technologies such as Total Cookie Protection and SmartBlock. The browser still aggregates some data that aid in improving your experience, which is a practice known as telemetry. The firm claims to have collected anonymized data, along with privacy preservation, to ensure that user-identifying details were never exposed to the outside.
So telemetry refers to metrics of performance and interaction, which can help developers optimize and troubleshoot the browser. It can also include crash reports, performance data, and sometimes even user behavior, like how often you use certain features.
How Does It Work?
Firefox, for example, uses differential privacy – a mechanism that introduces statistical noise to individual data points. That way, even if someone tried to backtrack the dataset, it would be impossible to identify the individual users. For Firefox, it means that they could have gained useful insights without compromising user privacy.
Why Is It Controversial?
Noble intentions or not, critics argue that anything that tracks- even anonymously -is contrary to the very spirit of the ethos being claimed by the browser. The question is: Can privacy really be “preserved” when data is still being collected anonymously?
Secondly, users, perhaps naturally do not know telemetry is switched on by default, raising issues over informed consent.
Should You Care?
Privacy The privacy features of Firefox are as robust for most users as any competitor offers, but may not be good enough for the technically inclined privacy purist, who might need to manually go to Preferences > Privacy & Security and turn data collection off.
Conclusion
Firefox’s “privacy-preserving” tracking is an interesting tradeoff between functionality and user privacy. Truer words are unlikely; granted, of course, it still holds the lead of more mainstream choices in each category for privacy; yet to my purist mind, you really should pay some attention to the settings on how much data collection you want going on.
In the end, though if you’re paying attention-Firefox is a great choice for those wanting tighter controls on their privacy.
