Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to all desktop users worldwide | It is Firefox’s strongest privacy protection to date, confining cookies to the site where they were created

ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 671 points –
Firefox Rolls Out Total Cookie Protection By Default | The Mozilla Blog
blog.mozilla.org
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For those who don't care to read the full article:

This basically just confines any cookies generated on a page, to just that page.

So, instead of a cookie from, say, Facebook, being stored on site A, then requested for tracking purposes on site B, each individual site would be sent its own separate Facebook cookie, that only gets used on that site, preventing it from tracking you anywhere outside of the specific site you got it from in the first place.

Hahahahaha so it doesn't break anything that still relies on cookies, but neuters the ability to share them.

That's awesome

Honestly, I thought that's how it already worked.

Edit: I think what I'm remembering is that you can define the cookies by site/domain, and restrict to just those. And normally would, for security reasons.

But some asshole sites like Facebook are cookies that are world-readable for tracking, and this breaks that.

Someone correct me if I got it wrong.

They've been doing this with container tabs, so this must be the successor to that idea (I'm going to assume they'll still have container tabs).

Container tabs are still a thing in FF. This is based on that work, if I remember correctly.

I love container tabs. It's one of the reasons I went back to FF.

Total Cookie Protection was already a feature, (introduced on Feb 23st 2021) but it was only for people using Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) on strict mode.

They had a less powerful third-party cookie blocking feature for users that didn't have ETP on strict mode, that blocked third party cookies on specific block lists. (i.e. known tracking companies)

This just expanded that original functionality, by making it happen on any domain, and have it be the default for all users, rather than an opt-in feature of Enhanced Tracking Protection.

That's not what I was thinking of, which was even more fundamental. But that's good info (and another way to cover stuff in the article).

Edit: what I was thinking originally was really stupid, that 3rd-party cookies weren't allowed at all. Which was really dumb since of course they are.

For those who don't care to read the full article

Or even the whole title, really

I don't know why this wasn't the case long ago.

It increases implementation complexity of the browser and loses people who fund Firefox and contribute code $$$

Isn't this basically Firefox's version of the third party cookie block that Chrome rolled out a few months ago? Or am I missing something here?

I mean, it's good news either way but I just want to know if this is somehow different or better.

Sites are much more contained now. Is much more like a profile per site.