While Private Browsing (which is Firefox’s counterpart to Chrome’s Incognito mode) ensures that none of your browsing history and cookies for this private session are saved locally, some of your data can still leak out to third-party sites. The new tracking protection ensures that third-party trackers, including those from social networks and analytics companies, can’t receive any data from your browsing session.
tracking_protectionThat’s not all that different from how plug-ins like Ghostery and the EFF’s Privacy Badger work, but for the time being, tracking protection only works within the confines of the Private Browsing mode.
It’s worth noting that the tracking protection feature isn’t about blocking ads, but given that many ads also track you, chances are you will see significantly fewer ads in Private Browsing mode now.
A Mozilla spokesperson told me today that Mozilla built this new feature into the browser “because the organization believes in giving you more choices and control over your web experience. Creating a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical to the health of the web. Mozilla is dedicated to keeping this balance.”
