The upcoming version of Firefox will include anti-fingerprinting technology to increase your privacy when browsing the web. Fingerprinting is a bit different from dumping a cookie on your system, instead advertisers can recognize a person based on the way in which their browser is configured. Your font choices, screen resolution, extensions and a wide variety of other data is provided by your browser and the combination can be unique enough to identify you quite accurately and Firefox intends to put a stop to it according to The Inquirer.
On a somewhat related topic over at Slashdot, we find that Chrome, Safari and Opera will be removing your ability to disable hyperlink auditing pings. Firefox disabled this by default many versions ago, but the aforementioned browsers have it enabled and a user would need to know this and disable it manually. The ability to manually disable this feature will soon be removed and you will have no way to prevent a site from monitoring your activities if you follow a link which uses this tracking method. The story at Slashdot describes how to disable this, for now at least.
"As part of a partnership with Disconnect, a privacy specialist which already offers a Chrome extension, future versions of Firefox will use a blacklist of sites to ensure that you cannot be "fingerprinted" by advertisers."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Windows XP Dies Final Death As Embedded POSReady 2009 Reaches End of Life @ Slashdot
- Microsoft's April Patch Tuesday fixes two Windows zero-day vulns @ The Inquirer
- Google Cloud flashes flower power in bid to realize 'write once, run anywhere' dream @ The Register
- Data Centre Networks US boffins tangle with quantum entanglement in spooky rack-mounted networking hardware @ The Register
- Quick And Dirty Immobilizer Hack Lets You Use Cheaper Dumb Keys @ Hackaday
- win Racing Flash gaming chair @ DVHardware