Mozilla will soon block secret attempts to mine virtual currencies on Firefox, and crack down on in-browser website trackers that can "fingerprint" your internet presence.
You can try the new features in Mozilla's "Nightly" test builds of Firefox; switch them on in the settings panel. They will be on by default in future Firefox releases.
The company decided to add the features to better protect people's online privacy. The fingerprinting scripts, for instance, work by harvesting your computer's system configuration to identify your internet presence. Marketers can then use this data to track you around the web, in an effort to learn what you like and serve targeted ads.
The cryptocurrency mining, on the other hand, works by exploiting your PC's computing power via a programming script embedded inside a webpage. The longer the script runs, the more virtual currency it can generate — but at the cost of potentially slowing down your PC and draining the battery life.
To tackle the problem, Mozilla is partnering with a San Francisco-based company called Disconnect, which specializes in developing privacy-enhancing software. "We have compiled lists of domains that serve fingerprinting and cryptomining scripts," Mozilla developer Arthur Edelstein wrote in today's announcement. "Now in the latest Firefox Nightly and Beta versions, we give users the option to block both kinds of scripts as part of our Content Blocking suite of protections."
It isn't clear how expansive the list of blocked domain is, but Edelstein said: "In the coming months, we will start testing these protections with small groups of users and will continue to work with Disconnect to improve and expand the set of domains blocked by Firefox."
Here's how to activate the new features in the Firefox Nightly builds. They're tucked away in the preferences section, under "privacy & security."
Rival browser Opera can also block cryptocurrency mining scripts on webpages. To block the scripts on Chrome, you can consider installing third-party anti-cryptocurrency mining extensions.