Firefox 65: New Cookie Jar Policy to block tracking
Mozilla plans to launch a new anti-tracking method in Firefox 65 that blocks tracking resources from accessing storage on all desktop platforms. The new policy is designed specifically to limit cross-site tracking while minimizing site access and rendering issues.
The actual implementation depends largely on tests in pre-release versions of the Firefox web browser. Mozilla runs a Shield study in Firefox Beta 63 at the moment.
Firefox users may have a couple of questions when it comes to the new "Cookie Jar Policy" and how it differs from using the built-in Tracking Protection feature or third-party extensions to block certain types of connections or content in the browser by default.
Tracking Protection
Firefox's Tracking Protection feature uses a list of known trackers that is maintained by Disconnect. Mozilla uses the "basic protection" list by default but Firefox users may switch to the strict protection list on about:preferences#privacy to block more trackers even if they may cause websites to render incorrectly or function properly.
Firefox won't classify domains as trackers when they are loaded as top-level sites owned by the same organization.
The Storage Policy
The new feature that is undergoing tests right now uses the same Disconnect list that Firefox's Tracking Protection feature uses. The main change that it introduces comes in form of a new policy that blocks access to cookies and site storage for identified tracker resources.
In particular, the following happens when the feature is enabled:
- Cookie request headers are blocked and Set-Cookie response headers are ignored.
- Empty strings are returned for Document.cookie and set cookies request using Document.cookie are ignored.
- Read and write attempts to localStorage and IndexedDB are blocked.
- Read and write attempts to sessionStorage are permitted.
- BroadcastChannel, SharedWorder and ServiceWorker creation attempts are blocked.
- CacheStorage calls are blocked.
- HTTP cache and Image cache are partitioned for tracking resources.
Enable the new Cookie Jar Policy
Firefox users can enable the new policy in pre-release versions of Firefox. We will update the article if the feature is available in Stable versions of Firefox as well. If tests go well, it may be included in Firefox 65 Stable.
Mozilla added a new value to the network.cookie.cookieBehavior of the browser. The preference supports value 4 now which enables the new behavior.
- Load about:config?filter=network.cookie.cookieBehavior in the Firefox address bar.
- Confirm that you will be careful.
- Set the value to 4.
Values explained:
- Value of 1 -- Block all third-party cookies.
- Value of 2 -- Block all cookies.
- Value of 3 -- Block cookies from unvisited sites.
- Value of 4 -- New Cookie Jar policy (prevent storage access to trackers)
Limitations
Mozilla notes that the blocking of some tracking resources would break functionality on some websites. To limit breakage, Firefox allows access to storage for trackers if the user interacts with third-party resources.
Currently, Firefox includes some web compatibility heuristics that grant storage access to third-party resources classified as trackers when a user interacts with those third parties. We do this when we expect that not granting access would result in the web page to break.
Access to storage may be granted "when a user gesture triggers a pop-up window that has opener access to the originating document".
Granted storage access expires after 30 days automatically on a per-site basis. If a tracker is granted access on multiple sites, expiration dates are handled independently from one another.
Closing words
The new Cookie Jar Policy improves user privacy when enabled. While some users may argue that it is not going far enough, others may find it useful enough to use it in favor of other anti-tracking methods.
The feature is a work in progress and subject to change. Firefox users and webmasters interested in the feature can check out the feature's entry on the Mozilla Developer website for additional information.
Webmasters find information on how to test their websites to make sure that the new policy does not break functionality.
Now You: What is your take on the new feature?
Since I’ve rarely wanted to transfer more than one tab between browsers, I’m not inclined to install another extension just for that — especially one that (according to your description) closed all my tabs in the process. In the past I’ve just copied and pasted the URL, but (even for just one tab) that is a little tedious.
I just tried an interesting little experiment, with a useful result. (I did this on my Mac, but I’m guessing it would work on other platforms too.) I’m reading this article in Firefox, so I opened a new blank window in Chrome. At the top of both browser windows, at the far-left end of the URL bar, there’s a little icon of the letter “i” in a circle. (If you hover over it in Firefox, it says “Show site information”; in Chrome, hovering it says “View site information” — that’s the icon I’m talking about.)
I simply dragged the Firefox “i” icon from the top of this page, into the Chrome window — and this page loaded in Chrome! It worked! Then I tried something just a bit trickier, in the other direction — I first (from a bookmark) loaded into Chrome a page from my local web-development server (i.e. not online)… then dragged the “i” icon from the Chrome toolbar into this Firefox window — and it worked then too!
So, although I have no interest in the OneTab extension, I just learned something useful! I hope other people find this trick useful too. (Later I’ll try it in Safari — maybe it works in every browser?)
Interresting find Jonas, thanks for sharing!
Your comment doesn’t appear to be one of the real @Martin, because there is no black label rounding the entire title of the comment as before. :S
I also used onetab already and didn’t even know they had this feature. Thanks so much.
Exporting tabs to FF: “The address wasn’t understood. Firefox doesn’t know how to open this address, because one of the following protocols (chrome-extension) isn’t associated with any program or is not allowed in this context.”
Useless.
And the most important information was left out of the article or it don’t even exist in the first place: how to completely disable such functionality.
Your comment doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s an explicit user action to import data from other add-ons. If you don’t want it you just don’t do it.
This comment actually does make a lot of sense, and I am actually searching for this. Some people do NOT want websites to be (badly) translated, so they never use such a feature. The things is, every time I visit a non-english website this annoying menu pops up, and the button is another element in the URL bar cluster of useless unused features. I do not want to add all languages to a “do not translate” list, instead I want a “hide button” or “disable translations completely” setting.
This comment actually does make a lot of sense, and I am currently searching for this. Some people do NOT want websites to be (badly) translated, so they never use such a feature. The things is, every time I visit a non-english website this annoying menu pops up, and the button is another element in the URL bar cluster of useless unused features. I do not want to add all languages to a “do not translate” list, instead I want a “hide button” or “disable translations completely” setting.
my bad. somehow my, and I think DMoRiaM’s comment got mixed into the wrong article. Haha.
go to about:config and set browser.translations.automaticallyPopup to false.
Does this hack still work on FF 107 or whatever is most current?
Firefox 118 seems to be officially rolling this out by default: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation
Hoping Mozilla won’t remove the option altogether in the future as they already did for other, ahem, unwanted features… Why don’t they listen to their users instead?
@zed,
your reply seems to be Addlibs (according to your RSS reader),
Addlibs did not intend to comment on this article “OneTab browser extension”, but regarding Firefox’s new built-in fullpage translation “Firefox Translation”.
Firefox Fullpage Translation
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation
what the heck is going on with comments on this site lately?
first comment on THIS article was 9-2019.
Looks like the comments database is corrupted.
Besides old comments appearing in new articles, the same comment appears in multiple articles.
Also I answered a comment in one article, and the same answer appeared as an answer to a different comment by the same person.
@Martin Brinkmann,
Anyway, please deal with this anomaly ASAP.
Comments are a mess, irrelevant and chaotic.
If there is no prospect, Ghacks Technology News should be put on hiatus until the system is fixed.
It’s the same as before with endless monologues or people telling others why they are wrong.
Actually, Frankel, it’s you who’s wrong
This is all techo-BS. What people want is far simpler: a hotkey toggle: images on/images off. Is that really so complex? Seems so. It’s like autoplay videos on/off. In that case you can set it to off but it doesn’t stick. Typical digiocy.
This isn’t great but it might help people that have moved from chrome to firefox to some extent. I can’t tell you the amount of time I have seen people complain that a certain extension they use on google is not available and the only thing holding them back from moving over when they are actually wrong and the very same developer has a Firefox version also. I would always encourage manually looking as there are always hidden gems.
In regards to the website I have reached out to Martin personally and to his credit he replied very quickly. He has informed me that they are aware of the problems and are attempting to fix it.
Martin is no longer involved in the technical management of the site so I imagine if we want to ask someone then our comments would perhaps be better directed towards Softonic.
I don’t understand what is happening here with the comments. The counter shows zero comments and then inside there are some comments from older dates even since years. And mostly of them are non related by the way with the article. So sad what’s going on and nobody is still fixing it. :S
This site now appears to be mostly be created and run by AI. On the positive side (if there is one), I guess we can assume at some point the AI will be capable of recognizing and fixing corrupted files and the like.
“Import Chrome extensions” …. (by installing comparable Firefox extensions) … (for a small number of extensions).”
What a bunch of bogus PR spin. Someone who liked uBlock Origin on Chrome could already install it just fine on Firefox with a couple of mouse clicks. This just adds extra unnecessarily complicated steps to something that was already dead simple, all in order for Mozilla to claim fake one-to-one compatability that doesn’t actually exist.
It would be interesting if Firefox could install Chrome Addons directly from the Chrome Web Store. Although there would probably be some incompatibility, perhaps there’s a shim to translate some Chrome-specific WebExtension APIs over to Firefox. Microsoft Edge can install extensions directly from the Chrome Web Store, but Edge is using the same Blink web engine as Chrome so that makes things easy.
Don’t really care about importing as I never use that feature.
Just retire Gecko and join the Blink bandwagon already, Mozilla. Then you can guarantee 100% Chrome extension compatibility! /s
Not like your browser is getting much attention let alone budget compared to your other woke social justice initiatives.
Hello,
does anyone know if the STG has issues with the sidebar at the moment? I just added it and can not find any option to use it in the sidebar. I am also using an add-on for tree style tab…this might be the source of the problem?
Greetings, Anja
tried typing- about:config -in the search bar -( I want to enable javascript) but it simply will NOT open!
I tried Firefox Translate, but it doesn’t do Chinese or Japanese, and that’s a deal-breaker for me. I uninstalled it and am sticking with the Google Translate extension.
“…Vivaldi and Brave use self-hosted solutions, which still require connections, but offer better privacy than an integration of Google Translate or other third-party translation services would offer.”
While I like Brave as a browser, their translation “solution” just plain sucks. I’d rather have the data sent to Google or Bing, than have a translate feature that just doesn’t work properly. Not only is it not possible to select just a section of text to translate, but to make it worst, most of the time translating the whole page in Brave is either really unbearably slow, or more often than not, it just won’t translate the page at all and displays a “This page couldn’t be translated” error. It’s pretty pointless if their users need to keep using something else to translate pages and have to give up their privacy anyway.
The native translate feature in Firefox sounds like a much better solution than what Brave use.
Great news, thanx FF devs! Hopefully, more languages will be available in the future. So happy!
Floorp comes with its own built-in translator. It’s been like that ever since the first release in fact.
https://floorp.app/download
Article title: Firefox 117: native language translations, last Firefox 102 update and security fixes
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/29/firefox-117-native-language-translations-last-firefox-102-update-and-security-fixes/
I think for now every time I comment on an article I am going to put the title of the article and/or the URL of said article because I am seeing my own comments which are from another Firefox related article but not exactly this one.
In regards to this website Martin does not have administrative access to the back end of the website. It would fall on softonic international to fix it now which seems to be of very low priority.
This might be the straw that broke the camels back for ghacks which is a shame because it had many good comments and articles that go way back. Moving away from it would suck.
Maybe try contacting them here to see if you can get any action.
https://hello.softonic.com/contact/
Can you help me please.
Latest version, they pust their VPN (powered by Mullvad) yet again. Instead of writing version changes. sigh. https://imgur.com/g6N20bN
Luckily I had a recent backup available. Firefox was no longer giving me access to profiles when I reinstalled version 116.03 and was asking me to create a new profile. It asked me to upgrade last night and to my surprise all theJS scripts were gone.
https://github.com/xiaoxiaoflood/firefox-scripts/issues/265
Firewall: “Deny [Firefox] outgoing connections to domain nextdns.io”
Firewall: “Deny [plugin-container] outgoing connections to domain cloudflare-dns.com (including mozilla.cloudflare-dns.com)”
It’s exciting to hear that Mozilla is actively working on a design refresh for their Firefox web browser, internally referred to as Photon. The last major redesign, known as Proton, was introduced in Firefox 57 back in November 2017. Since then, Mozilla has made some interface changes, including the controversial address bar overhaul in Firefox 75 Stable.
While specific details about the design refresh are currently limited, Mozilla has created a meta bug on Bugzilla to track the changes. Although no mockups or screenshots have been shared yet, the bug names provide some insights into the elements that will receive a refresh, such as the address bar, tabs bar, main menu, infobars, doorhangers, context menus, and modals.
The new design is scheduled to be released in Firefox 89, which was initially planned for a mid-2021 release, specifically May 18, 2021. However, as development work is still ongoing, there is a possibility of a delayed release.
@ Zibtek,
I’m already using Photon on Floorp which is a fork of Firefox. Here’s a pix of what it looks like:
https://i.postimg.cc/8PsK7DjV/floorp-photon.png I enabled the menu bar at the top, but you can turn it off if you don’t like it.
Floorp is a Japanese browser based on FF102. I’ve been using it as my default browser ever since ‘owl’ pointed it out on the Ghacks site last year (or was it this year, can’t remember exactly when). In any event it contains many more enhancements than the vanilla version of Firefox. It also comes with searXNG search engine in the list of search engines provided which saves having to install it yourself.
Floorp download: https://floorp.app/en/
My comment is regarding the following,
Article title:
Mozilla patches critical WebP security issue in Firefox and Thunderbird
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/#respond
Indeed, today, those patch versions were applied through automatic updates.
However, since I had disabled the “WebP” function, I was not interested in that topic (Google, etc.).
Regarding Thunderbird:
Today finally,
My Thunderbird 102.14.0 (en-US) was updated with “Thunderbird 102.15.1 (x64)” through the automatic update feature.
By the way,
Naturally, it will not be automatically updated to 115 (Supernova).
Anyway,
it is clear from Bugzilla that the bug fixes related to migration from 102 to 115 are not complete, so existing users of “102” should refrain from manually updating to 115.
>> ghacks.net/2023/09/08/thunderbird-102-to-115-upgrades-are-now-enabled/#comment-4573569
Betterbird has been released 115.2.1-bb11 (12 September 2023) . Betterbird make Thunderbird a faithful upstream.
Betterbird: Release Notes
>> betterbird.eu/releasenotes/?locale=en-US&version=115.2.1&channel=default&os=WINNT&buildid=20230911203543
@Martin Brinkmann,
I posted in response to an article published on 2023/09/13.
Article title: Mozilla patches critical WebP security issue in Firefox and Thunderbird. >> ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/
However, the link was to an unrelated article published on 2019/09/27.
>> ghacks.net/2019/09/27/how-to-import-tabs-from-chrome-to-firefox-and-vice-versa/
This kind of “disorder of Articles and Comments” has been going on for another month.
Is this an obvious (by Softonic, which operates and manages ghacks.net) act of sabotage against Martin and Ashwin?
It’s really frustrating!
[ My comment is on “Mozilla patches critical WebP security issue in Firefox and Thunderbird” https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/ though not directly related to that article ]
What happened to gHacks? When the site was bought out, Martin assured us it wouldn’t go downhill and he’d maintain editorial control, but the AI-written articles are ruining the quality of the site. I’ve been tempted to drop the site from my RSS reader because of this. Is there an RSS feed with only the human-written articles? Individual feeds for each author isn’t a good solution.
Article Title: Mozilla patches critical WebP security issue in Firefox and Thunderbird
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/
If anyone was unaware you should download the extension “Don’t Accept WebP” regardless of the patch. WebP is absolute trash that is unnecessary and clearly an issue. I would rather my images be in their native format and not some recompiled trash such as WebP.
I have absolutely no love for the parent company of this website.
I agree, this is so atrocious – most of the time you can even tell by the URL what format the original image was in – this “reconvert-on-the-fly” nonsense is terrible – but especially so when you’re converting a lossy format, which should be avoided as often as possible.
Sometimes you can edit the image URL to get it to send the right image, unfortunately “don’t accept WebP” doesn’t always work – but that’s why they offer a built in conversion, I suppose.
@ Mystique,
Thanks for the tip (about the addon). I wasn’t aware that Webp was a vulnerability.
I read only Martin Brinkmann’s, Mike Turcotte’s, and Ashwin’s articles. Add uBlock Origin news filter for ghacks:
! 2023-09-13 https://www.ghacks.net/
ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
@ https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/13/mozilla-patches-critical-webp-security-issue-in-firefox-and-thunderbird/#comment-4573641
I tried your uBlock filter on Brave snap packaga for Ubuntu, but it doesn’t work, do I need to restart the browser?
I have noticed uBO doesn’t fully work on Brave, for instance the Element Picker can’t pick anything while the Zapper do, but not 100%, Nuke Anything works much better, but it’s only temporarily.
“important address bar change” alright calm down… lol
I have gotten rid of the stupid shield and the “not secure” box, and have it set up so that it always displays the full URL (I think…?).
In a perfect world, it should just always show the full url, no icons, or emojis, or anything like that.
“Users may want to know why Firefox is no longer displaying https:// in the address bar” I’ll bet nobody will notice anything – apart from a select few autists like myself who customise everything and don’t like change.
“Users may want to know why Firefox is no longer displaying https:// in the address bar”
Why, I don’t know either (a breeze of madness or is it of love in the air), but there’s an about:config to handle that as well (Firefox) :
// display all parts of the url in the location bar (do not trim)
pref(“browser.urlbar.trimURLs”, false); // Dfault=true
Things, too many, too often are decided in spite of common sens.
Firefox is always copying whatever Chromium does… it is like they are a Chromium browser without the name and having trouble rendering many websites. In fact, it is like they are getting 400million just for existing and adopt anything Google releases or does, like web extensions, widevine, safe browsing and then visual changes like this.
I like how some people think there is a choice, and the choice is better than the leader… while still failing at basic stuff.
What’s the point of these useless changes? Just show the full address with the protocol at all times and be done with it…
I set the User Agent address bar to always show the entire URI in a unmasked format.
Martin, as of 19 September 2023, the gHacks comments system is still severely mangled. Data subjects have considerable rights conferred on them; where those decisions are likely to affect them.
Let’s start again. “I set the User Agent address bar to always show the entire URI in [an] unmasked format.”
Hallowed be the memory of the Lost Souls.
“HTTPS doesn’t mean safe:
Many people assume that an HTTPS connection means that the site is secure. In fact, HTTPS is increasingly being used by malicious sites, especially phishing ones.”
[https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/https-does-not-mean-safe/20725/]
HTTPS doesn’t mean safe
Many people assume that an HTTPS connection means that the site is secure. In fact, HTTPS is increasingly being used by malicious sites, especially phishing ones.
HTTPS doesn’t mean safe
Many people assume that an HTTPS connection means that the site is secure. In fact, HTTPS is increasingly being used by malicious sites, especially phishing ones.
website still wacked huh?
Article: Firefox 119 will launch with an important address bar change
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/19/firefox-119-will-launch-with-an-important-address-bar-change/
Just one thing regarding the URL bar as it looks like now in latest Firefox, the relatively new feature where some extensions would add their icon inside the URL bar, how bad can it get?
https://imgur.com/uIlWI58
https://postimg.cc/YvYnpzGh
https://ibb.co/QQT584N
ps. uploaded same pic to several links just to make sure some will work.
(For those who can’t see the pic it’s a snapshot showing a URL bar full of extensions, and also Firefox own built in icons that would appear inside the URL bar depending in some cases on which type of website is being viewed, there’s no space left for the actual thing the URL bar is supposed to view, namely the URL address itself)
Yes, I have several extensions on the toolbar, but the menu bar is pretty full and I want to keep some on the toolbar too, and usually Firefox would also push excessive extensions behind a drop-down menu for access to them as well, but as it looks like now the URL bar is given too little space priority, or is there a way to restrict to a minimum URL bar size?
You can modify Firefox with a “profileFolder/chrome/userChrome.css” file:
/* https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS */
/* https://github.com/MrOtherGuy/firefox-csshacks */
@import url(urlbar_info_icons_on_hover.css);
@import url(page_action_buttons_on_hover.css);
@import url(compact_extensions_panel.css);
#urlbar-container:focus-within { min-width: 60vw !important; }
#navigator-toolbox .chromeclass-toolbar-additional { margin-inline: -2px !important; }
#unified-extensions-button { order: 1 !important; }
Well, Mozilla and Firefox are saved because of this and many other changes / ‘news’ in the past days!
A while ago they separated the “Firefox” brand from the “Firefox Browser” brand, now they are abandoning the Firefox brand? Or are they abandoning the Firefox Browser brand? I don’t know.
While that small change would make sense as standalone, it’s unfortunately done in a context where Google (and thus Mozilla) wants to get rid of the URL ultimately and just display search engine data on that bar, going on with that trend of the browser only being a search engine carrier.
Were users forced to use the same account for different Mozilla products ? Maybe those who want their news reading habits to be tracked and monetized by Mozilla Pocket do not want their e-commerce habits to be tracked and monetized by Mozilla Fakespot under the same identity ? This is really starting to look like a Google account. When I think that this Firefox account thing more or less started with just an end-to-end encrypted sync service where Mozilla could not access the data. Now they use accounts to monetize user data. Sigh.
There are probably still drones haunting the web claiming the highly repeated lie that “Mozilla does not even have user personal data” (meaning they only monetized the fuck out of every possible piece of sensitive private user data under other forms, without the risk of breaching GDPR). Well, sure they have, lots of that too.
“users who signed-in using Google or Apple credentials”
Wait, what ?
“Firefox 118 release brings new web translation feature and end of Firefox ESR 102”
——
Ugh, is this really their priority? If you want to provide translation, if you want to do a great job, it takes lots of time and effort, and you’ll have better luck if you severely limit the number of languages – this is a big job to provide decent translation, any POC can provide poor translation.
Curious how good it is, and how much of the firefox time/resources are being wasted on this that could be used elsewhere.
Great extension, shame firefox is just pants, now all a sudden in 118 I can no longer copy the URL address in firefox and paste it in any other app.
All other apps works perfectly fine, I can even copy and paste from a web page within firefox, but not from the URL bar…. idiots.
Err, really, are you sure this is a real problem?
I don’t have 118, but if you’re on a page, you should be able to highlight and copy that URL.
One thing I noticed on chrome recently is it won’t let you copy any of the URL auto-complete suggestions unless you actually click on one and go to it, after you do, you can then copy it,
I want to hear more about this as I may be going to 118 at some point, on the lookout for “breaking changes” such as this.