LONDON: Rather than just cover your tracks on your computer, Firefox’s enhanced private browsing mode will make it harder for advertisers to track you online.
Most web browsers feature a “private browsing” or “incognito” mode, which can create a false sense of security. Enabling these modes doesn’t actually mask your identify as you surf the web, nor does it hide your activities from your employer or internet service provider. Instead, these modes only delete the telltale signs of your web surfing habits from your computer – such as your browsing history and temporary files like cookies – to hide your activities from other people using that computer.
Popular web browser Firefox is beta testing an enhanced private browsing mode that both erases your tracks on your computer and foils some tricks used by advertisers to track you online. While Firefox and other browsers support the “Do Not Track” standard, many websites refuse to respect this feature so more aggressive anti-tracking measures are required.
Firefox’s improved private browsing mode will block elements on web pages used to track people between websites, such as tracking cookies and social media buttons. It may also combat browser fingerprinting – a popular trick with advertisers which examines your installed plugins, fonts and advanced settings to build a detailed profile used to track you even when tracking cookies are disabled.
While attempting to foil advertisers, Firefox’s private browsing mode is not designed to avoid employer and government surveillance or to bypass metadata retention schemes. The privacy mode will not mask your location and IP address like a Virtual Private Network. Nor will it sidestep website filtering in the way a VPN or proxy server can reroute your web traffic.
There is already a range of browser plugins designed to address privacy concerns, from Electronic Frontier Foundation’s basic Privacy Badger to advanced privacy plugins like Ghostery and Disconnect. Meanwhile privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo, Ixquick and StartPage offer an alternative to Google.
