One step closer to being invisible on the web
There are certain websites you might not want others to know you visit. Whether it's shopping for a surprise gift, signing up for Justin Bieber's fan club, or (more realistically) surfing porn sites, what you do on the web is your business, except that websites try to make it their business, too.
That's where private browsing modes come into play. Taking it a step further, Firefox 42 Beta adds "Tracking Protection" to the mix, one of several experimental features it wants you to try out.
Mozilla's theory is that "users have a greater expectation of privacy when using Private Browsing" in Firefox. It says users have provided feedback to support this notion, and so it created a feature in Firefox's Private Browsing mode that blocks certain page elements.
"Most websites rely on many different 'third-parties' — companies that are separate from the site you’re visiting — to provide analytics, social network buttons and display advertising. These third-parties sometimes include page elements that could record your browsing activity to create profiles about you across multiple sites and Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox Beta blocks some of these page elements," Mozilla explains.
According to Mozilla, Firefox 42 Beta is the only mainstream browser that protects users from website tracking in such a manner.
If you want to give it a go, install the beta, click the menu button, and click the New Private Window icon to launch a Private Browsing session. A Control Center screen should appear that confirms Tracking Protection is on -- just surf the web as you normally would at this point.
To disable it on a specific website, click the Shield icon on the left side of the URL bar. This brings up the aforementioned Control Center where you can choose Disable protection for this session.
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
From maximumpc
from http://bit.ly/1L8OuwJ
