Starting today, Firefox is rolling out its “Total Cookie Protection” by default to all Firefox users worldwide, across all browsers.
Total Cookie Protection is Firefox’s strongest privacy protection to date, confining cookies to the Site where they were created, thus preventing tracking companies from using these cookies to track browsing from Site to Site.
Total Cookie Protection offers strong protections against tracking without affecting a user’s browsing experience.
Total Cookie Protection creates a separate cookie jar for each website you visit. (Illustration: Meghan Newell)
Total Cookie Protection works by creating a separate “cookie jar” for each Website you visit. Instead of allowing trackers to link up your behavior on multiple Sites, they just get to see behavior on individual sites.
Any time a Website, or third-party content embedded in a Website, deposits a cookie in your browser, that cookie is confined to the cookie jar assigned to only that Site, said Mozilla. No other Websites can reach into the cookie jars that don’t belong to them & find out what the other Websites’ cookies know about you — giving you freedom from invasive ads & reducing the amount of information companies gather about you.
This approach strikes the balance between eliminating the worst privacy properties of third-party cookies – in particular the ability to track you – & allowing those cookies to fulfill their less invasive use cases (e.g. to provide accurate analytics).
Click here to read about the other features of Total Cookie Protection.
