In a surprising turn of events, the Mozilla team has announced they will be adding more privacy features to their upcoming Firefox releases. More importantly, they will use some of the Tor features to achieve this goal. This news is not entirely surprising, albeit it has taken some time until the partnership between both parties resulted in this change.
More Privacy In Firefox is A Good Thing
Back in 2014, the Tor Project partnered with Mozilla to bring more privacy to browsing experiences. Additionally, they would share expertise regarding patches, bug fixes, and other technical aspects. However, it has taken some time until a more tangible partnership was established, which brings us to this recent news.
Mozilla has been an advocate for user privacy, causing them to clash with the FBI several times. Mozilla feels the law enforcement agency should release information regarding their Tor exploit, as it deanonymizes users. However, the FBI continues to deny any allegation regarding this tool being an “exploit:.
New nightly builds of the Mozilla Firefox browser are showing some new features, which will provide more privacy to users. Although the number of features is still limited, it is clear to see the developers are working closely together with the Tor Project. More changes will be coming in the following weeks, although no specific details were released.
It is also important to note none of the new features are enabled by default. Users who want to achieve more privacy through the Firefox browser will have to go into the settings and turn on the new features. One of the biggest additions is trying to remove browser fingerprinting, which lets websites extract information from its visitors.
There is an obvious reason as to why these features are not enabled by default, though. Despite many people wanting more privacy, the Tor Project is not intended to be used without some technical expertise. It will be interesting to see what the remaining eight patches will offer, and how this will affect the browsing experience as a whole.
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