Mozilla is offering a new extension called Facebook Container for Firefox that will block Facebook from tracking your online behavior.
With the current privacy scandal surrounding Facebook, Mozilla made a smart move in offering the extension to consumers concerned with their data privacy. The Verge wrote an article explaining in more detail how the browser extension works, but essentially, it isolates your web traffic from your Facebook session so that your browsing history can’t be tracked by Facebook in order to serve you targeted advertising.
Would this extension have prevented the Cambridge Analytica efforts from happening? Nope. But who in the world of infosec would ever say no to more online privacy tools?
It will be interesting to see what other tools and services are released in response to the events of the last few weeks – but we hope that the end result will be more awareness about data and online privacy as well as more solutions targeted to consumers who are hoping to quickly, easily, and safely add a layer of privacy to their online behavior.
It’s worth noting that Mozilla’s private mode browsing and Google Chrome’s “incognito mode,” both of which are marketed as protecting your online privacy, still share some of your browsing data and behaviors with advertisers. The Facebook Container extension is meant to offer data privacy specifically from Facebook.
