Firefox starts activating redirect tracking protection

Mozilla Company announced about the intention to activate the mechanism of advanced protection against movement tracking ETP 2.0 (Enhanced Tracking Protection). Support for ETP 2.0 was originally added in Firefox 79, but was disabled by default. In the coming weeks, this mechanism is planned to be brought to all categories of users.

The main innovation of ETP 2.0 is the addition of protection against tracking through redirects. To bypass the blocking of Cookie installation by third-party components loaded in the context of the current page, advertising networks, social networks and search engines, when clicking on links, began to redirect the user to an intermediate page, from which they were then forwarded to the target site. Since the intermediate page opens on its own, outside the context of another site, tracking cookies can be easily set on such a page.

To combat this method, ETP 2.0 added a blocking provided by the Disconnect.me service domain listthat use redirect tracking. For sites that do this kind of tracking, Firefox will clean up cookies and data in internal storage (localStorage, IndexedDB, Cache API, and etc.).

Since this behavior can result in the loss of authentication cookies on sites whose domains are used not only for tracking, but also for authentication, one exception has been added. If the user has explicitly interacted with the site (for example, scrolling through the content), then the cookie will be cleared not once a day, but once every 45 days, which, for example, may require re-logging into Google or Facebook services every 45 days. You can use the "privacy.purge_trackers.enabled" setting in about:config to manually turn off automatic cookie purge.

Additionally, it can be noted intention Google enable today blocking inappropriate adsdisplayed when watching a video. Unless Google cancels previously set implementation dates, Chrome will enable blocking of the following types of ads: Interstitials of any duration that interrupt the video in the middle of viewing; Long commercials (longer than 31 seconds) displayed before the start of the video, without the ability to skip them 5 seconds after the start of the ad; Display large text ads or image ads on top of the video if they cover more than 20% of the video or are displayed in the middle of the window (in the middle third of the window).

Source: opennet.ru