Firefox enables Total Cookie Protection by default for all Windows and Mac users

[Tudor Cibean]

Why it matters: Firefox's Total Cookie Protection feature stops websites and third parties from collecting information and tracking your activity across sites you've visited. A new update rolling out today enables it by default for Windows and Mac users. If you want to try it out on mobile, it's available on the Android version of Firefox Focus.

Mozilla has announced it will enable the Total Cookie Protection feature by default for users of its popular Firefox web browser on Mac and Windows.

Total Cookie Protection works by compartmentalizing cookies for each website you visit. Any cookie deposited in your browser by a site or third-party content embedded in it remains confined in a "cookie jar" assigned only to that website, hidden from other sites you visit.

This approach doesn't allow web trackers to link up your behavior on multiple sites, reducing the amount of information companies gather about you. As a result, you'll get fewer targeted ads.

Mozilla initially rolled out Total Cookie Protection about a year ago as a functionality built into ETP Strict Mode. Later, it enabled the feature in Private Browsing windows by default, and earlier this year, the company added the functionality to the Android version of Firefox Focus.

Firefox is currently the 4th most popular desktop web browser, after Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Safari, making it the most popular non-Chromium-based browser on Windows.

In other news, Microsoft will retire and drop support for Internet Explorer tomorrow.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/94940-firefox-enables-total-cookie-protection-default-all-windows.html

 

[Avro Arrow]

This is one of the reasons why I question the sanity of people who don't use Firefox.

 

[psycros]

This is one of the reasons why I question the sanity of people who don't use Firefox.

Any Chromium-based browser that's not Chrome has plugins that can do the same thing. With Google's build of Chromium they embed their spyware at the lowest level possible so its nearly impossible to block it without external tools. Firefox has Google Analytics built in as well, so I'm not sure how completely they can be trusted.

 

[ZedRM]

This is one of the reasons why I question the sanity of people who don't use Firefox.

Agreed.

This is an excellent move by the FireFox devs.

 

[smug69]

This is one of the reasons why I question the sanity of people who don't use Firefox.

I haven't used Firefox for a couple of years and have been using Edge, I recently tried Firefox again and I found it uses nearly twice as much RAM as Edge, with or without addons.

 

[ZedRM]

I haven't used Firefox for a couple of years and have been using Edge, I recently tried Firefox again and I found it uses nearly twice as much RAM as Edge, with or without addons.

And? So what if it uses twice as much RAM, it's also twice as secure. So let's think about that, Firefox with better security but more RAM usage or Edge with crap security and a ton of spying from MS but less RAM usage.... Hmm... Tough choice there. /s

 

[Athlonite]

Vivaldi blocks trackers and ads and if you add uBlock Origin to that mix it's even better

 

[Avro Arrow]

I haven't used Firefox for a couple of years and have been using Edge, I recently tried Firefox again and I found it uses nearly twice as much RAM as Edge, with or without addons.

That may be, but if you have 16GB of RAM like a lot of people do, the amount of RAM used by Firefox is irrelevant. I haven't been concerned about RAM usage in years because, since 2012, I've always had 16GB on my board.

If you're not using up all of the RAM you have, then who cares? I've checked my RAM usage even with Firefox open with 100+ tabs (to try to get an extreme and unrealistic worst-case scenario). My total system never went over 10GB. Even if you have only 8GB, it's not like you're going to have over 100 tabs open at the same time.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Vivaldi blocks trackers and ads and if you add uBlock Origin to that mix it's even better

The problem with Vivaldi is the same as with all other browsers that aren't Firefox and that it's based on Chromium. Since all browsers these days (including even Opera) are based on Chromium, the degenerates are going to be creating hacks for Chromium, not Firefox.

It'll be similar to how, for the longest time, nobody bothered making viruses for MacOS. The victim pool was just too small to be worth their time.

 

[HardReset]

I recently tried Firefox again and I found it uses nearly twice as much RAM as Edge, with or without addons.

Could you give me single reason why that is bad thing? Since DRAM can handle essentially unlimited amount of writes, there is no reason to keep RAM unused.

More Firefox reserves RAM, better. If you haven't noticed, modern Windows OSs (Vista and newer) tend to reserve almost all available RAM for faster operation.

 

[smug69]

Could you give me single reason why that is bad thing? Since DRAM can handle essentially unlimited amount of writes, there is no reason to keep RAM unused.

More Firefox reserves RAM, better. If you haven't noticed, modern Windows OSs (Vista and newer) tend to reserve almost all available RAM for faster operation.

Agree, most of the times it is not an issue, I only tried it with few tabs and saw that it takes more RAM so I thought that it would take a lot if I used it as my main browser when I always have al least 10 tabs open.
I am now using it again and the consumption of RAM is still higher than Edge but is not as I though it would take, I have 8GB of RAM that's why I was concerned.

 

[ZedRM]

Agree, most of the times it is not an issue, I only tried it with few tabs and saw that it takes more RAM so I thought that it would take a lot if I used it as my main browser when I always have al least 10 tabs open.
I am now using it again and the consumption of RAM is still higher than Edge but is not as I though it would take, I have 8GB of RAM that's why I was concerned.

At this very moment, I have 12 extensions installed. With no tabs at all FireFox is using 460MB. With the 14 tabs open(including this one) it's 1120MB. Chrome is just shy of that with the same(or similar) extensions installed and the same tabs it's 960MB. So yes, FireFox uses more RAM, but I have 32GB of RAM. Even if It were only 8GB, that's still not a big difference.

So seriously, FireFox for the win.