Let’s say a leaf shaped plate is on your mind and you have searched a lot of stores for the same. Later, you walk into a store and immediately a salesperson offers you an exact plate. Feels lucky, no? That’s how lucky search engines make you feel when you search for a product and start receiving similar suggestions. But you’ll be perplexed to know the situation.
Actually, these are the tracking tools which have been spying your activities and sharing them with similar service providers. Apparently, the good news is that Firefox 70 the latest update from of browser from Mozilla can prevent this creepy situation with its enhanced tracking protection for mobiles.
Let’s dig up and know what does website trackers do and essentially how Firefox 70 can rescue us from this situation?
What Is The Website Tracker?
A tracker is a script on a website designed to track all your preferences, derive data points from them and connect it to their site. Your data is collected through cookies, super cookies, embedded scripts and fingerprints. Yes, you read it correct; it’s your fingerprint too. The fingerprint scripts on the website scratch your data from the installed browser. And, beyond browser’s information, this data can be your device’s OS, its version, screen resolution, fonts and what apps you have downloaded on your device.
Besides this, there are awful third-party trackers too. These trackers are placed by the websites which you have never visited. Their vast ad networks across the web collect data and share with websites which you’ve never heard and never agreed to share your information. All this happens in a loop without your consent.
Sounds disturbing, no? Yeah, it is.
What Do These Trackers Track?
If you are thinking what does a leaf shaped platter ad is following me around would do? Be alert, these data trackers have a lot more to do than your interest. They track information like:
Age, gender, relationship status, family members, mom’s name, your income, education, ethnicity, hobbies, health concerns, financial situation, movie genre preference, diet, fitness routine, sexual desires, the exact location right now and so much more.
How Mozilla Comes To Rescue?
Nearly on every website, your data is transmitted to third parties or companies. According to the paper released by ‘Who Tracks Me’ nearly 80% of web traffic is tracked by Google. Apart from this, Facebook, Amazon and Twitter are some of the most preferred websites for third parties to gather the data. The Firefox combats this situation with its enhanced tracking protection of shield icon.
You can see who is trying to track your information on individual web pages from the color of the shield icon present on the address bar.
Here’s what shield colors say:
- Purple: Firefox has blocked trackers and harmful scripts on a site
- Gray: Firefox has not detected any harmful trackers or scripts on the website.
- Gray and Crossed Out: Enhanced tracking protection has been turned off.
What else does the latest update offer?
The latest update also provides you with the option to boost your privacy from strict, fine-tune to custom settings. Further, with the tracker, you can also see specific trackers behind the scenes trying to lurk on a site you are visiting.
Here’s how you can check it:
- Click on the shield icon.
- Go to the cross-site tracking cookies blocked.
- The list of tracking websites will appear on the screen.
- Click the option of social media trackers (to see where the trackers have been placed to watch your activity)
Also, you can check the report of total bloacked trackers on a daily basis from the last option with 'Show Report' link.
So, if you are still using the old version than update it now. Or if you are any other browser its high time to switch for privacy concerns.
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