Personal data protection specialists have just announced that Mozilla Firefox will have a number of improvements to protect users against online tracking activity. Companies such as Facebook, Google or Amazon perform these tracking activities for marketing purposes; to improve the user’s privacy experience, Firefox has developed Track THIS, to show the user how online tracking works.
To perform this tracking, companies rely on the use of cookies, a feature of web pages that allows them to store some records about user activity. Among the most prominent features of cookies is the ability to make multiple purchases at once in a single online session or the language preference of a specific site. However, they also have potentially harmful uses for users. Web cookies are also used to collect information about user activity, usually without any consent.
Track THIS opens about 100 tabs filled with random content so that third-party cookies are “out of combat”, confusing the tracking software. Track THIS has four different options to open the tabs that will confuse tracking, no matter which option you choose, the protection will remain the same.
According to experts in personal data protection, Track THIS works on Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge, although it is not yet optimized for mobile devices. The best thing is that you don’t need to manually close all the tabs that open in the browser when you finish using it, just close the program from the task manager, or by choosing the “Close all tabs” option in Track THIS.
Specialists in personal data protection from the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) mention that at the moment Track THIS only works as a temporary distraction for third-party tracking software, as it passes the Trackers will adapt to this behavior and start advertising again. Considering this situation, the optimal way to bypass online activity tracking may still be to use a VPN.
He is a well-known expert in mobile security and malware analysis. He studied Computer Science at NYU and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2003. He is actively working as an anti-malware expert. He also worked for security companies like Kaspersky Lab. His everyday job includes researching about new malware and cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in mobile security and mobile vulnerabilities.
