The Mozilla Foundation has announced that it plans to block all ad trackers by default in future versions of Firefox. 
The new settings are designed to be implemented gradually, starting with an initiative focused on blocking trackers that slow down page loading.
After that, the Mozilla Foundation plans to remove cross-page tracking, and then move on to blocking cryptomining, which also slows down computer performance.
“Some sites still want user data in exchange for content,” Mozilla’s Nick Nguyen said in a blog post, “but now they will have to ask for it. It’s a welcome change for people who until now had no idea what they were being asked to do.”
Firefox has already started testing these features in Firefox Nightly, a pre-release version of Firefox that is updated every night. This version of Firefox currently includes a feature that blocks ad trackers that slow down page loading. The Mozilla Foundation plans to test this feature in September, and if it goes well, it will start blocking ad trackers by default in Firefox 63.
Tip: For those interested in the new Firefox Nightly builds, you can find them here.
Firefox Nightly also already blocks cross-site tracking via cookies, and it also plans to conduct a study on this issue. The goal is to make this setting available in Firefox 65.
Finally, the Mozilla Foundation said that future versions of Firefox will block by default “deceptive practices that invisibly collect personally identifiable information from users or that degrade the user experience,” using techniques such as fingerprinting or hidden cryptomining.
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